Infrared communications on a mobile device

• US 9,965,949 B2
• Filed: 03/30/2016
• Issued: 05/08/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 02/06/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Peel Technologies Incorporated
• Original Assignee: Peel Technologies Incorporated
• Inventors: Metrani, Samyeer Suresh, Muthukumarasamy, Siva Subramanian
• Primary Examiner(s): Phan, Hanh
• Application Number:
  US15/085,984
• Publication Number:
  US 20160210848A1
• Time in Patent Office: 769 Days
• Field of Search: 398106, 398107, 398172, 398118, 398119, 398127, 398128, 398130, 398135, 398202, 398208, 398136, 398164, 398182, 398183, 398131, 34082569, 34082572, 34082522, 455420, 455418, 455352, 4555561, 348734
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/10 Distribution of clock signals , e.g. skew
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4208 being a system bus, e.g. VME bus, Futurebus, Multibus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 13/4282 on a serial bus, e.g. I2C bus, SPI bus on daisy chain buses G06F13/4247
• CPC Class Codes: G08C 23/04 using light waves, e.g. infrared
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A system, a method and a computer-readable medium are disclosed for generating an infrared code from an envelope waveform of an infrared signal on a computing device. An envelope waveform is created by reflections of the original infrared signal between the emitter of the infrared signal and the receiver of the computing device. The computing device generates an intermediate signal from the received IR signal and then determines a digital envelope waveform from the intermediate signal. The computing device queries a database storing known pairs of digital envelope waveforms and IR codes and receives an IR code.

Claims

1. A method of generating an infrared (IR) code from an IR signal on a computing device, the method comprising:

receiving, at an IR system, an IR signal for transmission on a data bus, the IR signal being modulated;

generating, through the data bus, an intermediate signal on a processor of the computing device by sampling the IR signal at a capture rate of the data bus, the intermediate signal comprising a plurality of bits;

determining a digital envelope waveform based on the intermediate signal, the digital envelope waveform being unmodulated; and

determining an IR code associated with the digital envelope waveform based on a database of known pairs of digital envelope waveforms and IR codes, the IR code associated with the IR signal.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the data bus is a serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the database is stored remotely.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein a carrier frequency of the infrared signal is greater than the capture rate of the data bus.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein the capture rate is on the scale of milliseconds and the carrier frequency is on the scale of microseconds.

6. The method of claim 4, wherein the data bus is a general purpose input output (GPIO) bus.

7. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by a processor cause the processor to:

receive, at an IR system, an IR signal for transmission on a data bus, the IR signal being modulated;

generate, through the data bus, an intermediate signal on the processor by sampling the IR signal at a capture rate of the data bus, the intermediate signal comprising a plurality of bits;

determine a digital envelope waveform based on the intermediate signal, the digital envelope waveform being unmodulated; and

determine an IR code associated with the digital envelope waveform based on a database of known pairs of digital envelope waveforms and IR codes, the IR code associated with the IR signal.

8. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 7, wherein the data bus is a serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus.

9. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 7, wherein the database is stored remotely.

10. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 7, wherein a carrier frequency of the infrared signal is greater than the capture rate of the data bus.

11. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the capture rate is on the scale of milliseconds and the carrier frequency is on the scale of microseconds.

12. The non-transitory computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the data bus is a general purpose input output (GPIO) bus.

13. A system comprising:

a processor; and

a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that when executed by the processor cause the processor to;

receive, at an IR system, an IR signal for transmission on a data bus, the IR signal being modulated;

generate, through the data bus, an intermediate signal on the processor by sampling the IR signal at a capture rate of the data bus, the intermediate signal comprising a plurality of bits;

determine a digital envelope waveform based on the intermediate signal, the digital envelope waveform being unmodulated; and

determine an IR code associated with the digital envelope waveform based on a database of known pairs of digital envelope waveforms and IR codes, the IR code associated with the IR signal.

14. The system of claim 13, wherein the data bus is a serial peripheral interface (SPI) bus.

15. The system of claim 13, wherein the database is stored remotely.

16. The system of claim 13, wherein a carrier frequency of the infrared signal is greater than the capture rate of the data bus.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the capture rate is on the scale of milliseconds and the carrier frequency is on the scale of microseconds.

18. The system of claim 16, wherein the data bus is a general purpose input output (GPIO) bus.