Today the U.S. Patent Office published a series of quasi-interesting patents covering high-speed train communications technology, a blast from the past regarding a iPhone made from liquid metal with a wrap around display and the last patent covering a micro-LED burn-in solution.

 

High-Speed Train Beam Management

While high-speed trains have yet to become a widespread reality in the U.S., they're commonplace in Europe, South Korea, Japan, China and elsewhere. For this reason, Apple has filed at least two patents relating to High Speed Trains thus far in 2021 and 2023. Today the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office officially published a patent application from Apple titled "Beam Management For High-Speed Trains."

New radio access system, which is also called NR system or NR network, is the next generation communication system. In NR system, user equipment (UE) and a next generation NodeB (gNB) can communicate via a plurality of beams. To this end, beam management at the UE is needed. The beam management is a mechanism for detecting beam failures of the UE and recovering beams when all or part of beams serving the UE has failed. Moreover, the UE may operate in a high-speed scenario, for example, the UE may be located on a high-speed train (HST). In such a high-speed scenario, the beam management at the UE needs to be enhanced.

Apple's patent relates to devices, methods, apparatuses and computer readable storage media for beam failure management, and in particular for beam management for high-speed train (HST) in Frequency Range 2 (FR2). According to embodiments of the present disclosure, a terminal device receives from a network device a configuration concerning a high-speed mode of the terminal device, the terminal device determines a reduced evaluation period for beam management in the high-speed mode based on the configuration. The reduced evaluation period determined by the terminal device is shorter than an evaluation period in a non-high-speed mode. Then, the terminal device performs the beam management using the reduced evaluation period.

Apple's patent FIG. 5B below illustrates another schematic diagram illustrating an example RS configuration for CBD.

For full details, review Apple's patent application 20240306004.  

Micro-LED Burn-In Compensation

On March 01, 2024 we posted a report titled "It's been a Bad News week for Apple after Killing off their Vehicle and micro-LED Display projects." Apple began their journey into Micro-LED a decade earlier when they acquired LuxVue and their many patents. LG Display acquired 14 key Micro-Led patents to win Apple's business – all for naught. Today, perhaps one of Apple's last filed patents came to light titled "Micro-LED Burn-In Statistics and Compensation Systems and Methods."

It's common for displays with fixed user interfaces for various devices s and gaming to experience burn-in. Apple's patent offered a solution to compensate for that for a smartwatch, vehicle dashboard, iPad, iPhone, television, HMDs, Macs and more.

Apple's abstract states that "Image processing circuitry may include burn-in compensation circuitry that receives image data indicative of luminance outputs for display pixels of an electronic display and compensates the image data for burn-in related aging associated with the display pixels, generating compensated image data. Moreover, compensating the image data may include applying gains based on estimated amounts of aging associated with the display pixels and estimated amounts of current to be delivered to the display pixels. The image processing circuitry may also include burn-in statistics circuitry that tracks the estimated amounts of aging based on the compensated image data."

Apple's patent FIG. 11 below is a flow diagram of the BIC/BIS block and SPUC block receiving input image data and outputting display image data.

To review the full details of this invention, check out patent application 20240304133.    

Liquid Metal iPhone with Wrapped Display

 Back in 2013 (11 years ago), Patently Apple posted a patent report titled "Killer Patent: Apple Reveals Sapphire Flexible Transparent Display Devices Created with Liquid-Metal."

In Apple's patent FIG. 16 we see a perspective view of illustrative structures for display 12 in which the elongated transparent display cover structure and flexible display layer 86 have been configured to form a display having an elongated shape with a rectangular cross section with rounded edges.

In Apple's patent FIG. 17 above we see a perspective view of illustrative structures for the display in which display cover structure and flexible display layer have been configured to form a display having an elongated shape with a triangular cross section.

For more details either review our 2013 patent linked to above or  review Apple's sixth patent update under application 20240302865 with 20 new patent claims.

In 2013 and earlier, there was a lot of buzz about Apple's use of Liquid Metal for Apple devices that seems to have never materialized. Is this patent keeping the dream alive or is yet another failed Apple project?