| Patent application number | Description | Published |
| 20110083676 | COATED IMPREGNATED POROUS FILTER PLUG - A process for producing a coated filter plug for a smoking article including: (a) incorporating an additive to a porous filter plug, thereby obtaining an impregnated filter plug; (b) coating a surface of the impregnated filter plug with a cross-linkable polymer material; and (c) cross-linking the cross-linkable polymer material, to form a cross-linked, breakable coating substantially enclosing the impregnated filter plug. The process may further include at least partially coating the impregnated filter plug with a cross-linking agent prior to, or subsequent to, coating with the cross-linkable polymer material. | 04-14-2011 |
| 20110232656 | METHOD FOR MAKING PARTICLE OF A HYDROPHOBIC ADDITIVE AND A POLYSACCHARIDE COATING AND TOBACCO PRODUCTS CONTAINING PARTICLE OF A HYDROPHOBIC ADDITIVE AND A POLYSACCHARIDE COATING - A method for providing particles of encapsulated flavorants or chemesthetic agents comprises forming an emulsion comprising: (i) a first aqueous solution, comprising one or more polysaccharides; and (ii) a hydrophobic additive; atomizing said emulsion in an atomizer into droplets; introducing said droplets into a second aqueous solution, comprising one or more metal cations, to form particles comprising one or more cross-linked polysaccharides and said additive encapsulated therein; and removing said particles from said second aqueous solution and drying said particles. | 09-29-2011 |
| 20110232657 | CONTROLLED RELEASE MENTHOLATED TOBACCO BEADS - Encapsulated tobacco beads and processes of making the encapsulated tobacco beads are disclosed. According to an embodiment, a process of making encapsulated tobacco beads comprises mixing tobacco particles and menthol in an aqueous solution to form a wet mass; extruding the wet mass to form extrudates; spheronizing the extrudates to form tobacco beads; drying the tobacco beads; contacting the beads with a solution comprising a cation; and introducing the contacted tobacco beads into a solution of coating material in a concentration effective to induce ionic gelation of the coating material around the beads, to form encapsulated tobacco beads having gel coatings. According to another embodiment, an encapsulated tobacco bead comprises a core comprising tobacco particles and encapsulated menthol, an inner coating layer comprising hydroxypropyl methylcellulose or pectin, and an outer coating layer comprising an ionically-crosslinked gel. | 09-29-2011 |
| 20120037171 | PROCESS FOR MAKING A CONTINUOUS STRUCTURE OF AN ENCAPSULATED MATERIAL - A method for providing an encapsulated flavorant or chemesthetic agent in a smoking article includes forming an emulsion including: (i) a first aqueous solution, comprising one or more cross-linkable polysaccharides; and (ii) a hydrophobic additive comprising one or more flavorants or chemesthetic agents. The method also includes extruding the emulsion into a second aqueous solution in the form of an elongated structure, cross-linking at least a portion of the one or more cross-linkable polysaccharides, removing the cross-linked elongated structure from the second aqueous solution, introducing the cross-linked elongated structure into a filter, or into a rod including a smoking composition, or both; and forming the filter or the rod of the smoking composition into a smoking article. The method can include a drying step. | 02-16-2012 |
| Patent application number | Description | Published |
| 20080198916 | Low power decision feedback equalization (DFE) through applying DFE data to input data in a data latch - Low power decision feedback equalization (DFE) through applying DFE data to input data in a data latch is disclosed. In one embodiment, a decision feedback equalization (DFE) system to remove a post cursor intersymbol interference (ISI) through feeding back previous data scaled with adaptive weights to the DFE system, with each slice of the DFE system may include a first set of decision feedback digital to analog converters (DACs) to generate a first DFE data obtained through the feeding back the previous data scaled with the adaptive weights and a first data latch to generate an output data of the each slice through applying the first DFE data to an input data of the each slice in the first data latch to remove a first delay caused by performing the applying the first DFE data to the input data of the each slice outside of the first data latch. | 08-21-2008 |
| 20090295488 | Self-calibrated wide range LC tank voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) system with expanded frequency tuning range and method for providing same - The present invention is a self-calibrating, dual-band, wide range LC tank Voltage Controlled Oscillator (VCO) system. The system may include a first Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (VCO) and a second Voltage-Controlled Oscillator (VCO). The system may further include a calibration engine. The calibration engine may be configured for being connectable to at least one of the first VCO or the second VCO. The calibration engine may further be configured for automatically establishing/providing a VCO fix capacitor band code setting and a gear control setting for selectively activating or inactivating the first VCO and/or the second VCO. The calibration engine may be further configured for automatically comparing a VCO control voltage of the system to an allowable control voltage range for the system and may be further configured for automatically adjusting the VCO fix capacitor band code setting and/or the gear control setting when the VCO control voltage falls outside of the allowable control voltage range. | 12-03-2009 |
| 20100124891 | FM TRANSMITTER AND NON-FM RECEIVER INTEGRATED ON SINGLE CHIP - Exemplary embodiments include a frequency modulation (FM) transmitter and a non-FM receiver, which may be implemented on the same IC chip. The FM transmitter may include a digital FM modulator, a lowpass filter, an amplifier, and an LC tank circuit. The digital FM modulator may receive a digital input signal, perform FM modulation with the digital input signal, and provide a digital FM signal. The lowpass filter may filter the digital FM signal and provide a filtered FM signal. The amplifier may amplify the filtered FM signal and provide an output FM signal. The LC tank circuit may filter the output FM signal. The digital FM modulator may perform FM modulation by changing a variable divider ratio of a multi-modulus divider within a PLL. A delta-sigma modulator may receive the digital input signal and generate a modulator output signal used to obtain the variable divider ratio. | 05-20-2010 |
| 20100273442 | JAMMER DETECTION BASED ADAPTIVE PLL BANDWIDTH ADJUSTMENT IN FM RECEIVER - A frequency synthesizer within an FM receiver employs a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL) to generate a Local Oscillator (LO) signal. The LO signal is supplied to a mixer. The FM receiver also includes jammer detection functionality. If no jammer is detected, then the loop bandwidth of the PLL is set to have a relatively high value, thereby favoring suppression of in-band residual FM. If a jammer is detected, then the loop bandwidth of the PLL is set to have a relatively low value, thereby favoring suppression of out-of-band SSB phase noise. By adaptively changing loop bandwidth depending on whether a jammer is detected, performance requirements on sub-circuits within the PLL can be relaxed while still satisfying in-band residual FM and out-of-band SSB phase noise requirements. By allowing the VCO of the PLL to generate more phase noise due to the adaptive changing of loop bandwidth, VCO power consumption can be reduced. | 10-28-2010 |
| 20100283551 | OVERLAPPING, TWO-SEGMENT CAPACITOR BANK FOR VCO FREQUENCY TUNING - A VCO (for example, in an FM receiver) includes an LC resonant tank. The LC resonant tank includes a coarse tuning capacitor bank and a fine tuning capacitor bank. The coarse tuning capacitor bank contains a plurality of digitally controlled coarse tuning capacitor elements, each providing a first capacitance value when active. The fine tuning capacitor bank contains a plurality of digitally controlled fine tuning capacitor elements, each providing a second capacitance value when active. To address the practical problem of capacitor mismatch, capacitance overlap throughout the VCO tuning range is created by selecting the first and second capacitance values such that the capacitance value of the fine capacitor bank is greater than the first capacitance value when all of the digitally controlled fine tuning capacitor elements of the fine capacitor bank are active. | 11-11-2010 |
| 20100330941 | FM TRANSMITTER WITH A DELTA-SIGMA MODULATOR AND A PHASE-LOCKED LOOP - A frequency modulation (FM) transmitter implemented with a delta-sigma modulator and a phase-locked loop (PLL) is described. The delta-sigma modulator receives a modulating signal (e.g., an FM stereo multiplex (MPX) signal) and provides a modulator output signal. The PLL performs frequency modulation based on the modulator output signal and provides an FM signal. The FM transmitter may further include a gain/phase compensation unit and a scaling unit. The compensation unit may compensate the modulating signal for the closed-loop response of the PLL. The scaling unit may scale the amplitude of the modulating signal based on a gain to obtain a target frequency deviation for the FM signal. The PLL may operate in a transmit mode or a receive mode, may perform frequency modulation in the transmit mode, and may provide a local oscillator (LO) signal at a fixed frequency in the receive mode. | 12-30-2010 |
| 20110193635 | WIDE BAND LNA WITH NOISE CANCELING - Techniques to improve low noise amplifiers (LNAs) with noise canceling are described. LNA includes a first and a second amplifier which work together to noise cancel the noise generated at an input stage circuit. The input stage circuit receives an RF signal and is characterized by a first node and a second node. The first amplifier converts a noise voltage at the first node into a first noise current at an output of the first amplifier. The second amplifier is directly coupled to the output of the first amplifier and provides noise canceling by summing the first noise current with a second noise current generated by the second amplifier as a function of the noise voltage at the second node. The proposed techniques eliminate the need for large ac coupling capacitors and reduce the die size occupied by the LNA. The elimination of ac coupling capacitors between amplification stages of the LNA allows current reuse resulting in reduced current consumption. | 08-11-2011 |
| 20110286511 | DATA LATCH CIRCUIT AND METHOD OF A LOW POWER DECISION FEEDBACK EQUALIZATION (DFE) SYSTEM - Data latch circuit and method of low power decision feedback equalization (DFE) system is disclosed. In one embodiment, the data latch circuit of the of a decision feedback equalization (DFE) system includes a first parallel n-channel metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (NMOS) pair to input a differential input voltage. The data latch circuit also includes a second parallel NMOS pair coupled to the first parallel NMOS pair to input a decision feedback equalization (DFE) voltage. The data latch circuit further includes a cross-coupled PMOS pair to generate a positive feedback to the first parallel NMOS pair and/or the second parallel NMOS pair. In addition, the data latch circuit includes a cross-coupled NMOS pair to escalate the positive feedback. Furthermore the data latch circuit includes a latching circuit to generate a signal data based on the sinking of a current at an input of the latching circuit and/or the positive feedback. | 11-24-2011 |