VIRTUAL CONNECTOR BASED ON CONTACTLESS LINK

• US 20090098826A1
• Filed: 10/14/2008
• Published: 04/16/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 10/16/2007
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Doron Rainish, Rafi Zack
• Original Assignee: Doron Rainish, Rafi Zack
• Inventors: Zack, Rafi, Rainish, Doron
• Granted Patent: US 8,121,542 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 455/41.1
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 1/40 Circuits

Abstract

The today'"'"'s mobile handheld and portable devices become slim and thin while need to communicate with other devices and accessories that are attached or at very short range. The interface (contact based physical connector) becomes a real challenge and unreliable to the consumer that needs to attached and detach its device several times a day.

It is an object of the present invention to provide system and method of replacing a contact based physical interface (connector) with very short range wireless (contactless) interface. This technique is called “contactless virtual connector” or CVC. The method of the present invention is based on a transmission of a very low power and wideband RF signal. The new innovating mechanism replaces the traditional physical connector with new radiated signal technique that consumes very low power and may be cost competitive with the today'"'"'s physical connectors.

The innovated contactless technology may be used for small flexi-cable replacement in the handheld devices as flip or slider based handheld devices. Although the contactess technique is a wireless based solution, yet, the link may be well secured at the Physical layer when the near-field technique is used.

Claims

1. A contactless virtual connector substantially as is described in the above specification, attached Figures and appending claims.

3. A communication system in claim 1 is a wireless system for very short range (defined as contactless) that replacing a contact-based connector and it is defined as contactless virtual connector, comprising:

contactless transmitter and contactless receiver.

4. The virtual connector system in claim 3 is point-to-point based system which supports master-slave based topology having a control/data frame period.

5. The virtual connector system in claim 1 carries digital and/or analog signals with or without power transferring from the transmitter side to the receiver side using the contactless transmitter and contactless receiver

6. The contactless transmitter of claim 5 comprising:

modulator, baseband to RF up-converter and antenna.

7. The contactless transmitter of claim 6 is wherein the transmitter is binary based modulator with On-Off Keying (OOK), 4-Levels Amplitude Shift Keying (4-ASK) or Differential Phase Shift Keying (D-PSK) schemes

8. The contactless transmitter of claim 7 is wherein the transmitter is based on bit repetition or REED-SOLOMON coding to enable various bit rates and quality of service.

9. The contactless transceiver of claim 8 is wherein the transmitter transmits the radio signal at a frequency range between 57 GHz and 66 GHz and the receiver receives the Radio signal at a frequency range between 57 GHz and 66 GHz.

10. The contactless receiver of claim 4 comprising:

Antenna, RF down-conversion, non-coherent demodulator, majority based bit detection or REED-SOLOMON error correction.

11. The contactless receiver of claim 5 is wherein the receiver is non-coherent demodulator with OOK detector, 4-ASK or/and Differential coherent Phase Shift Keying (D-PSK) detector schemes.

12. The contactless receiver of claim 11 is wherein the receiver receives a signal which assumes to be Line Of Sight (LOS)

13. The contactless receiver of claim 7 is wherein the receiver has a clock recovery circuitry to enable reference clock to the output digital signals as associated with the digital input signals.

14. The contactless virtual connector transmission side in claim 5 comprising of analog to digital converter, Parallel to serial units, Event detector, multiplexer controller, multiplexer handles the transmission of the various type of digital and analog signals.

15. The contactless virtual connector transmission side of claim 14 uses the event detector to detect any change in the input of asynchronous digital signals and uses the multiplexer controller to generate the control word that reconstruct the signal changes at the receiver.

16. The contactless virtual connector transmission side in claim 15 uses the multiplexer controller to generate the order of multiplexing the inputs signals of the master multiplexer and to generate the control word that describes the exact multiplexing order at the data frame which is the multiplexer output.

17. The control word at claim 16 is transmitted to the receiver in order to configure the de-multiplexer and reconstruct the data frame at the Virtual connector receiving side.

18. The contactless virtual connector receiving side in claim 5 comprising of digital to analog converter, Serial to Parallel units, Asynchronous signals reflector, De-multiplexer controller, De-multiplexer handles the receiving of the various types of the digital and analog signals.

19. The asynchronous Signals Reflector at claim 18 reconstruct the timing and change of the asynchronous signals according to the received control word.

2. A communication system for very short range that replaces a contact-based connector or flexi-cable and comprising transmitter and receiver.