Earlier this year Patently Apple posted two patent reports (01 & 02) relating to gas sensors being considered for both iDevices and Macs that would ensure a user would be notified if gas levels in their home or other environment were at dangerous levels. Today the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple titled "Gas Sensor Baseline Correction using Multiple Co-Located Gas Sensors."

Apple's patent application notes that metal oxide (MOX) gas sensors are among the most promising technologies to be integrated with consumer electronic devices due to their small size, low power consumption, compatibility with semiconductor fabrication processes, and relatively simple architecture.

Chemical poisoning and deactivation of the sensor materials in metal oxide sensors, however, can cause drift in both baseline resistance and sensitivity, which can pose great challenges to the mass market adoption of miniature gas sensors.

Many MOX gas sensors consist of a porous MOX material disposed on a micro-hotplate, which is used to regulate temperature. When heated to the working temperature, the resistance of the metal oxide material changes with the gas environment and concentration.

The target gas can be an oxidizing gas such as ozone (O.sub.3) or nitrogen oxide (NO.sub.x), which increases MOX resistance. The target gas may be a reducing gas, for example, hydrogen (H.sub.2) or volatile organic compounds (VOC), which decrease the MOX resistance.

Apple's patent FIG. 6 above is a block diagram illustrating an example iPhone (wireless communication device #600) that is equipped with one or more miniature gas sensors that could be integrated in a single chip or a single system on a chip, or may be realized in a multi-chip chipset. The first gas sensor may be calibrated (e.g., by the 642 of FIG. 6) using a stable baseline

Apple's patent FIG. 1 below is a schematic diagram illustrating example gas-sensing devices using co-located gas sensors for baseline calibration; FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram illustrating example gas-sensing devices using co-located gas sensors for baseline calibration, in accordance with one or more aspects of the subject technology.

Apple's patent FIGS 3A and 3B above are flow diagrams illustrating example processes for calibrating a gas sensor using a co-located gas sensor.

Apple's patent application 20190257933 that was published today by the U.S. Patent Office was originally filed back in Q1 2018. Considering that this is a patent application, the timing of such a product to market is unknown at this time.

Two of the inventors include: Roham Solasi, Manager Engineer Program Management; and Miaolei Yan, Sensing Hardware Engineer.

Apple Watch with 5G using Multiple Millimeter Wave Antennas

In a second patent application from Apple published today Apple points to 5G communications coming to a future Apple Watch using multiple millimeter wave antennas as noted in patent FIGS. 1 & 7 above.

Apple's patent filing notes that millimeter wave circuitry may perform two-way communications with external equipment (e.g., an external wireless communications device such as a cellular telephone, computer, wearable device, wireless access point or base station, etc.) using a millimeter wave communications protocol.

When performing two-way communications, millimeter wave circuitry may encode wireless data using the millimeter wave communications protocol, may transmit the wireless data to the external equipment at millimeter or centimeter wave frequencies, may receive wireless data transmitted by the external equipment at millimeter or centimeter wave frequencies, and may decode the received wireless data using the millimeter wave communications protocol.

Such millimeter wave communications protocols may include, for example, IEEE 802.11ad communications protocols or 5th generation wireless systems (5G) communications protocols.

Apple's patent 20190257933 was published today by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It was originally filed in February 2018. To dig into the patent a little deeper, review it in full here.

Apple Inventors

Mattia Pascolini: Senior Director, Antenna Design

Matthew Mow: Wireless Systems Manager

Carlo DiNallo: Sr. Manager Antenna Technology

Andrea Ruaro: Antenna Engineer

Eduardo Lima: Antenna Engineer

Mario Martinis: Antenna Engineer

Simone Paulotto: Sr. Antenna/Wireless Engineer

Jayesh Nath: Antenna Engineer

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