| ECOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FEDERALE DE LAUSANNE (EPFL) Patent applications |
| Patent application number | Title | Published |
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| 20120069345 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR RETRIEVAL OF AMPLITUDE AND PHASE OF NONLINEAR ELECTROMAGNETIC WAVES - The present invention discloses a method and its associated apparatus to retrieve the amplitude and, especially, the phase of nonlinear electromagnetic waves. The application field of the present invention is optical imaging. A sample is probed by coherent electromagnetic radiation, and by a nonlinear interaction such as harmonic generation a nonlinear object wave is emitted. A nonlinear reference wave is generated by interaction of the same nature with the coherent electromagnetic radiation, and an interference between the nonlinear object wave and the nonlinear reference wave is sensed by a detector array. As an example, the technique makes possible real-time nanometric localization and tracking of nonlinear field emitters, such as, but not limited to, nanoparticles. | 03-22-2012 |
| 20120066988 | REINFORCEMENT ELEMENT FOR STRUCTURAL CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION - A reinforcing element ( | 03-22-2012 |
| 20120010411 | MODIFIED SURFACE - The present invention relates to modified surfaces. The surfaces comprise an inorganic material on which a phosphinic acid derivative is adsorbed. The phosphinic acid thus turns out to be a new anchoring group useful for surface derivatisation. The invention has many applications for photoelectric conversion devices, batteries, capacitors, electrochromic displays, chemical sensors, biological sensors, light emitting diodes, electrodes, semiconductors, separation membranes, selective adsorbents, adsorbents for HPLC, catalysts, implants, nanoparticles, antiadhesives, and anticorrosion coatings, for example. | 01-12-2012 |
| 20110268225 | ORTHOGONAL DIFFERENTIAL VECTOR SIGNALING - Using a transformation based at least in part on a non-simple orthogonal or unitary matrix, data may be transmitted over a data bus in a manner that is resilient to one or more types of signal noise, that does not require a common reference at the transmission and acquisition points, and/or that has a pin-efficiency that is greater than 50% and may approach that of single-ended signaling. Such transformations may be implemented in hardware in an efficient manner. Hybrid transformers that apply such transformations to selected subsets of signals to be transmitted may be used to adapt to various signal set sizes and/or transmission environment properties including noise and physical space requirements of given transmission environments. | 11-03-2011 |
| 20110265876 | NOVEL ANCHORING LIGANDS FOR SENSITIZERS OF DYE-SENSITIZED PHOTOVOLTAIC DEVICES - The present invention relates to novel pyridine compounds that can be used as anchoring ligands in metal-based sensitizing dyes of dye sensitized solar cells (DSC | 11-03-2011 |
| 20110261602 | MAGNETIC MEMORY DEVICES AND SYSTEMS - A method of storing one or more bits of information comprising: forming a magnetic bubble; and storing a said bit of information encoded in a typology of a domain wall of said magnetic bubble. Preferably a bit is encoded using a symmetric topological state of the domain wall and a topological state including at least one winding rotation of a magnetisation vector of the domain wall. Preferably the magnetic bubble is confined in an island of magnetic material, preferably of maximum dimension less than 1 μm. | 10-27-2011 |
| 20110249157 | CAMERA DESIGN FOR THE SIMULTANEOUS CAPTURE OF NEAR-INFRARED AND VISIBLE IMAGES - The present invention aims to capture two images simultaneously in the visible part of the spectrum and a NIR image. This is achieved through a camera for simultaneously capturing a visible and near-infrared image by at least a sensor producing sensor response data and having at least one colour filter array (CFA) comprising at least four different filters, said colour filter array having visible and near-infrared light filters, and said camera comprising means to obtain a visible image while using the sensor response data from the visible part of the spectrum and a NIR image using the sensor response data from the near-infrared part of the spectrum. | 10-13-2011 |
| 20110223217 | BLOCK COPOLYMERS AND USES THEREOF - An encoding/decoding apparatus and method using a low-density parity-check code (LDPC code) is disclosed. Basic column group information, serving as a set of information regarding positions of rows with weight 1, is extracted from a reference column in each column group of a predetermined parity-check matrix. Column group information transforms the positions of rows with weight 1 into positions whose lengths are within a required parity length. A parity-check matrix is generated according to the generated column group information. Data is encoded or decoded based on the generated parity-check matrix. | 09-15-2011 |
| 20110217804 | THERMALLY ACTIVATED MICROMIRROR AND FABRICATION METHOD - A method for fabricating a micromirror in a wafer, including the steps of: depositing and etching layers forming two arms; etching the wafer such that in the back face only a thin portion of the wafer remains in the region of formation of the micromirror and the arms; performing an anisotropic etch, such that the thin portion remains only in the areas of the micromirror and the arms; and performing an isotropic etch to remove the thin portions under the arms, the etching step for forming the arms being performed following their shape and so as to form holes traversing the arms, the holes being positioned at edges of the region separating the micromirror and the wafer on both the side of the micromirror and the side of the portions of the wafer remaining after the anisotropic etching step. The invention also concerns the micromirror. | 09-08-2011 |
| 20110190789 | ADJUSTABLE STEREOTACTIC DEVICE AND METHOD FOR FRAMELESS NEUROSURGICAL STEREOTAXY - The system comprises at least three anchors ( | 08-04-2011 |
| 20110175611 | Method for NMR spectroscopy or MRI measurements using dissolution dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) with scavenging of free radicals - A method for sample preparation for magnetic resonance measurements using Hyperpolarization by Dissolution Dynamic Nuclear Polarization, involves preparation of frozen beads of a first kind containing paramagnetic substances in addition to the solute under investigation; insertion of the frozen beads into a polarizing magnet; creation of enhanced polarization of nuclei in a magnetic field; heating of the sample to room temperature; transfer of the sample to an MR magnet; and carrying out an MR measurement. In addition, frozen beads of a second kind containing a reducing agent are prepared and inserted into the polarization magnet together with the frozen beads of the first kind. By this method, longitudinal and transverse relaxation times in NMR are extended and free radicals in hyperpolarized solutions are eliminated. | 07-21-2011 |
| 20110169978 | FUNCTIONAL OPTICAL COHERENT IMAGING - The present invention relates to a functional optical coherent imaging (fOCI) platform comprising at least one active camera unit (ACU) comprising a coherent and/or a partially coherent light source, and means for spectral filtering and imaging a selected body area of interest; an image processing unit (IPU) for pre-processing data received from an ACU; at least one stimulation unit (STU) transmitting a stimulation to a subject; at least one body function reference measurement unit (BFMU); a central clock and processing unit (CCU), with interconnections to the ACU, the IPU, the STU, for collecting pre-processed data from the IPU, stimuli from the STU body function reference data from the BFMU in a synchronized manner; a post-processing unit (statistical analysis unit, SAU); and an operator interface (HOD. Further the invention relates to a process for acquiring stimuli activated subject data comprising the steps of aligning a body function unit at a subject and monitoring pre-selected body function; selecting a stimulus or stimuli; imaging a body area of interest; exerting one or a series of stimuli on the subject; imaging the body area of interest synchronous with said stimuli and the preselected body functions; and transferring said synchronized image, stimuli and body function data to a statistical analysis unit (SAU) and performing calculations to generate results pertaining to body functions. | 07-14-2011 |
| 20110124985 | VISCOSIMETRIC BIOSENSOR FOR MONITORING ANALYTE LEVELS - The invention relates to a viscosimetric sensor for monitoring an analyte level in a patient or in body fluids ex vivo. In particular, the invention relates to a sensor for monitoring analytes, such as glucose levels in a patient. The sensor comprises at least two hermetically closed chambers ( | 05-26-2011 |
| 20110066098 | NON-INVASIVELY ADJUSTABLE DRAINAGE DEVICE - The device comprises at least an inlet tube for the passage of fluid to be drained, said tube being connected to a chamber wherein said chamber comprises rotating means for adjusting the flow rate in said tube. | 03-17-2011 |
| 20110055521 | MICROPROCESSOR HAVING AT LEAST ONE APPLICATION SPECIFIC FUNCTIONAL UNIT AND METHOD TO DESIGN SAME - Customisable embedded processors that are available on the market make it possible for designers to speed up execution of applications by using Application-specific Functional Units (AFUs), implementing Instruction-Set Extensions (ISEs). Furthermore, techniques for automatic ISE identification have been improving; many algorithms have been proposed for choosing, given the application's source code, the best ISEs under various constraints. Read and write ports between the AFUs and the processor register file are an expensive asset, fixed in the micro-architecture—some processors indeed only allow two read ports and one write port—and yet, on the other hand, a large availability of inputs and outputs to and from the AFUs exposes high speedup. Here we present a solution to the limitation of actual register file ports by serialising register file access and therefore addressing multi-cycle read and write. It does so in an innovative way for two reasons: (1) it exploits and brings forward the progress in ISE identification under constraint, and (2) it combines register file access serialisation with pipelining in order to obtain the best global solution. Our method consists of scheduling graphs—corresponding to ISEs—under input/output constraint | 03-03-2011 |
| 20110022600 | METHOD OF DATA RETRIEVAL, AND SEARCH ENGINE USING SUCH A METHOD - A method of data retrieval from a data repository in response to a query having either list of keywords and/or list of attribute-value pairs, the method comprising the steps of:
| 01-27-2011 |
| 20110001477 | Method for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy measurements using long-lived coherences (LLC) - A method for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy of a sample comprises preparation of the sample and carrying out an NMR spectroscopy measurement. Preparation includes excitation of long lived coherences (LLC) between the singlet state S | 01-06-2011 |
| 20110001475 | Methods for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements using long-lived states - A method for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements, includes creation of enhanced polarization of nuclei of a first kind within a sample in a magnetic field at cryogenic temperatures and transfer of the polarised sample to room temperature. The enhanced polarization of nuclei of the first kind is thereby transformed into long-lived states (LLS) of nuclei of a second kind and these LLS are sustained. The LLS is at least partially converted into observable magnetisation and an NMR or MRI measurement is carried out. The method allows one to extend the time needed between hyperpolarised magnetisation and NMR detection. | 01-06-2011 |
| 20100314861 | Authentication with built-in encryption by using moire parallax effects between fixed correlated s-random layers - This invention discloses new methods and security devices for authenticating documents and valuable products which may be applied to any support, including transparent synthetic materials and traditional opaque materials such as paper. The invention relates to parallax moire shapes which occur in a compound layer consisting of the superposition of specially designed and possibly geometrically transformed s-random base layer and s-random revealing layer with a small gap between them. The base and revealing layers are formed respectively by base layer element shapes and revealing layer sampling elements positioned at s-random locations, where the base layer locations and the revealing layer locations are strongly correlated. When tilting the compound layer or changing the viewing angle, a parallax moire intensity profile of a chosen shape is seen moving in the superposition, thereby allowing the authentication of the document. A major advantage of the present invention is in its intrinsically incorporated encryption system due to the arbitrary choice of the s-random number sequences used for defining the positions of the specially designed base layer element shapes and revealing layer sampling elements that are used in this invention. | 12-16-2010 |
| 20100292978 | SYSTEM FOR GENERATING COMPUTER PROCESSOR - A method and apparatus to produce a net list of gates and Flip-Flops for one algorithm in order to find the best compromise between power consumption, speed and silicon surface by using a two step process. First the algorithm is written for a processor that has no restrictions in terms of number and size of register, core, operations set, memory handler and instructions. The program assembly of this processor fits into a two-dimensional table. To increase speed, the tables are configured to place the program operation in as many columns as possible, and to reduce silicon the tables are configured to place operations in a single column with many rows. The second stage consists of converting this virtual processor with its program tables into an HDL file ready for synthesis. | 11-18-2010 |
| 20100278707 | METHOD FOR RECOVERING SILICON FROM SAWING WASTE - A method for separating and recovering silicon debris from sawing waste is characterized in that it includes the following steps:—treating the sawing waste so as to deoxidize the silicon debris in a manner that reduces their surface energy,—applying to the sawing waste thus treated a flotation method using a flotation liquid and a nonoxidizing flotation gas, and—recovering the silicon debris at the surface of the flotation liquid. | 11-04-2010 |
| 20100171569 | ACTIVE DOUBLE OR MULTI GATE MICRO-ELECTRO-MECHANICAL DEVICE WITH BUILT-IN TRANSISTOR - The present invention exploits the combination of the amplification, provided by the integration of a FET (or any other active device with two or more terminals), with the signal modulation, provided by the MEM resonator, to build a MEM resonator with built-in transistor (hereafter called active MEM resonator). In these devices, a mechanical displacement is converted into a current modulation and depending on the active MEM resonator geometry, number of gates and bias conditions it is possible to selectively amplify an applied signal. This invention integrates proposes to integrate transistor and micro-electro-mechanical resonator operation in a device with a single body and multiple surrounding gates for improved performance, control and functionality. Moreover, under certain conditions, an active resonator can serve as DC-AC converter and provide at the output an AC signal corresponding to its mechanical resonance frequency. | 07-08-2010 |
| 20100164491 | Magnetic Field Sensor For Measuring A Direction Of A Magnetic Field In A Plane - A magnetic field sensor for measuring a direction of a magnetic field in a plane comprises a sensing structure comprising a ring-shaped well, a plurality of contacts of equal size placed at equal distance from each other along the ring-shaped well, and an electronic circuit comprising a plurality of electronic switches associated with the contacts of the sensing structure, a logic block for controlling the electronic switches, at least one current source, a means for measuring a difference between a first voltage and a second voltage, a timing circuit providing a control signal for controlling the logic block and providing a reference signal, wherein the logic block is adapted to close and open the electronic switches under the control of the control signal according to a predetermined scheme such that a predetermined number of contacts of the plurality of contacts form a vertical Hall element that is supplied with current from the at least one current source and that has two contacts connected to the means for measuring, and such that the vertical Hall element is moved in steps along the ring-shaped well, and a means for measuring a phase shift between the reference signal and an output signal of the voltage measuring means. | 07-01-2010 |
| 20100140589 | FERROELECTRIC TUNNEL FET SWITCH AND MEMORY - A Ferroelectric tunnel FET switch as ultra-steep (abrupt) switch with subthreshold swing better than the MOSFET limit of 60 mV/decade at room temperature combining two key principles: ferroelectric gate stack and band-to-band tunneling in gated p-i-n junction, wherein the ferroelectric material included in the gate stack creates, due to dipole polarization with increasing gate voltage, a positive feedback in the capacitive coupling that controls the band-to-band (BTB) tunneling at the source junction of a silicon p-i-n reversed bias structure, wherein the combined effect of BTB tunneling and ferroelectric negative capacitance offers more abrupt off-on and on-off transitions in the present proposed Ferroelectric tunnel FET than for any reported tunnel FET or any reported ferroelectric FET. | 06-10-2010 |
| 20100080124 | METHOD TO MANAGE THE LOAD OF PERIPHERAL ELEMENTS WITHIN A MULTICORE SYSTEM - A method to provide reliability, power management and load balancing support for multicore systems based on Networks-on-Chip (NoCs) and to efficiently implement architectural support for this method by introducing complex packet handling mechanisms is achieved by modifying the basic network interfaces attached to the cores of multicore computation systems. It also proposes policies to leverage the proposed hardware extensions. This aim is achieved with a method to manage the load of peripheral elements within a multicore system comprising several processing units accessing peripheral elements through a NoC, each processing unit and peripheral element attached to a Network Interface in charge of formatting and driving the packets sent to or received from the NoC, wherein, while considering at least two peripheral elements having a similar function, the Network Interface dedicated to a first peripheral element reroutes the incoming packets to a second Network Interface dedicated to a second peripheral element. | 04-01-2010 |
| 20100021758 | POROUS METAL ARTICLE AND METHOD OF PRODUCING A POROUS METALLIC ARTICLE - A process for producing a metal article containing at least 10% interconnected porosity, using a preform ( | 01-28-2010 |
| 20100010351 | TIME OF FLIGHT ESTIMATION METHOD USING BEAMFORMING FOR ACOUSTIC TOMOGRAPHY - It is disclosed an acoustic tomography method to improve the time of flight estimation, said method comprising the steps of: sequentially triggering a set of N transmitters so as to generate a sequence of N acoustic waves through a volume being scanned; receiving each of said acoustic waves after transmission through said volume with a set of M receivers, which are called received signals; delaying by varying delays the N different said received signals that each receiver receives from the N different transmitters, and adding them together to form a new received signal, which is called transmit-beamformed signal for that receiver; delaying by varying delays the M different said transmit-beamformed signals for each receiver and adding them together at each receiver to form a new signal, which we call transmit-receive-beamformed signal. | 01-14-2010 |
| 20100007209 | Device for feeding a charge including integrated energy storage - A device for supplying power to a load, requiring both a pre-determined supply of electrical power and high power for short durations of the operating cycle of the load, where the operating cycle is repeated. The power supply device includes a connection to an electrical grid, an AC voltage transformation circuit, a voltage rectification means and a plurality of DC/DC converters mounted in series to terminals of the load. Each of the DC/DC converters has a storage capacitor mounted in parallel to it and at least one of the DC/DC converters is supplied directly by the voltage rectification means. At least another one of the DC/DC converters is not supplied directly by the voltage rectification means. The power supply device may compensate for losses in the power supply device and load, and may substantially continually and uniformly balance voltages at terminals of the storage capacitors. | 01-14-2010 |
| 20100002601 | METHODS FOR HARDWARE REDUCTION AND OVERALL PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT IN COMMUNICATION SYSTEM - The aim of the present invention is a method to achieve the customization of the communication network of a multicore communication system. This goal is achieved thanks to a method to design a multicore communication system, said communication system comprising a communication network having a plurality of switches and several elements communicating through the communication network, said method comprising the steps of: a) defining the communication network topology, comprising a number of switches, the architecture of said switches and the interconnection between said switches, b) defining routes to communicate among the elements through the switches according to the application running on the system, c) marking the input-to-output connections used within the switches traversed by these routes, d) removing all or part of the electronic components related to the non-marked connections. | 01-07-2010 |
| 20090313592 | METHOD TO DESIGN NETWORK-ON-CHIP (NOC) - BASED COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS - A method to design a Networks on Chips (NoCs)-based communication system for connecting on-chip components in a multicore system, said system comprising several elements communicating through the communication system, said communication system comprising at least switches, said method comprising the steps of modelling the applications running on the multicore system, establishing the number and configuration of switches to connect the elements, establishing physical connectivity between the elements and the switches, for each two pairs of communicating elements: (a) a defining a communication path, (b) calculating metrics as affected by the need to render said path into physical connectivity, taking into account any previously defined physical connectivity, (c) iterating the steps a and b for a plurality of possible paths, (d) choosing the path having the optimal metrics, and (e) establishing any missing physical connectivity between the switches so that the selected optimal path occurs across physically connected switches. | 12-17-2009 |
| 20090208052 | INTERACTIVE DEVICE AND METHOD FOR TRANSMITTING COMMANDS FROM A USER - According to the present invention, it is provided an interactive device comprising a display, a camera, an image analysing means, said interactive device comprising means to acquire an image with the camera, the analysing means detecting at least a human face on the acquired image and displaying on the display at least a pattern where the human face was detected wherein the interactive device further comprises means to determine a halo region extending at least around the pattern and means to add into the halo region at least one interactive zone related to a command, means to detect movement onto the interactive zone and means to execute the command by said device. | 08-20-2009 |
| 20090153155 | DEVICE FOR MEASURING THE QUALITY AND/OR DEGRADATION OF FLUID, PARTICULARLY A FOOD OIL - The invention relates to a device for measuring the quality and/or degradation of a fluid, especially an oil, comprising a sensor consisting of at least one pair of electrodes which are distanced from each other. Said sensor is immersed in the fluid which is to be measured. The electrodes and the fluid form a capacitive element whose capacity varies according to the dielectric constant of the fluid. The sensor can provide an electric output signal representing said dielectric constant. The inventive device also comprises processing means which receive the output signal and which can determine the degree of quality and/or degradation of the fluid on the basis of said output signal. The invention is characterized in that the electrodes extend substantially on the same plane and in that the fluid surrounds the two surfaces of the electrodes on both sides of said plane. | 06-18-2009 |
| 20090146194 | SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE AND METHOD OF MANUFACTURING A SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE - The local bending of a silicon nanowire induces tensile strain in the wire due to the stretching of the silicon lattice. This in turn enhances the mobility of the free carriers (electrons) in the direction of transport along the wire. Thus, for example, when Gate-All-Around MOSFETs are fabricated along the nanowire, the mobility enhancement will translate into an improvement in the performance (current drive, speed) of the silicon nanowire MOSFETs. In summary, a semiconductor device comprises a substrate and a nanowire in connection with the substrate at a drain and at a source region, and the nanowire is bent to achieve enhanced mobility of charge carriers. | 06-11-2009 |
| 20090072279 | Capacitor-less memory and abrupt switch based on hysteresis characteristics in punch-through impact ionization mos transistor (PI-MOS) - The present invention exploits the impact ionization induced by drain voltage increase and the onset of a bipolar parasitic in an Ω-gate field effect metal oxide insulator transistor (called PI-MOS), in order to obtain a memory effect and abrupt current switching. | 03-19-2009 |
| 20080287875 | INFUSION PUMP WITH PHASE SEPARATOR - An infusion pump comprising a substance and pushing fluid inlet, a substance outlet, a central chamber communicating with said inlet and said outlet, and injecting means for injecting a substance into a biological object, wherein the infusion pump further includes a pushing fluid outlet in communication with the central chamber in such a way as to allow a pushing fluid to exhaust the pump. The outlet of the infusion pump is advantageously connected to the proximal end of a catheter, the distal end being inserted into the biological object. A sensor, e.g., an optical device, is preferably placed at the outlet of the infusion pump and checks that the outlet is free of gas. The infusion pump is preferably remotely controlled so that it can be placed in limited access locations. It is also preferably computer controlled. | 11-20-2008 |
| 20080259400 | Printing color images visible under UV light on security documents and valuable articles - In the present invention, we propose a method of creating fluorescent color images visible under UV light. It relies on the new colorants that can be achieved by superposing ink dots, possibly at a reduced size, in order to avoid quenching effects. It also relies on juxtaposed halftoning, which ensures that colorants are printed side by side and do therefore not overlap, thereby preventing quenching effects. It also support the selection of a fluorescent set of inks which comprises at least one ink whose emission spectrum yields a color different from the standard red, green and blue colors, for example a yellow color emitting ink. The method comprises the following techniques: (a) creating new colorants by superposing carefully selected amounts of the fluorescent inks, (b) mapping the gamut of the image to be reproduced into the gamut of the resulting fluorescent colorants and (c) creating the target fluorescent color image by juxtaposed halftoning of the fluorescent colorants. | 10-23-2008 |
