Digital Commons Network^™

Privacy-Preserving Application Programming Interface For Discovery Of Features, Eugenio Marchiori

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes methods, implemented through an application programming interface (API) on a computing device, for handling application feature discovery requests while preserving user privacy. To preserve user privacy, responsive to receiving a request (call) from an application (a caller) relating to the availability of a feature, the API provides a response indicating that the feature is not available and that it will query a service to make the feature available (e.g., download a module). The response is provided by the API regardless of whether or not the feature is currently available on the device. In aspects, the API then …

Normalizing Non-Linear Speech Speed For Maintaining Listener Comprehension At Increased Playback Speeds, Malcolm Slaney

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes methods of normalizing the speed of non-linear speech by applying an algorithm to allow for improved listener comprehension at increased playback speeds. The algorithm computes an amount of tension for a given audio file and subsequently computes a running average of the tension. A high-pass filter is then applied to the tension to remove the average tension. The resulting audio file allows a listener to increase playback speed or maintain a desired average speed while retaining comprehension.

Fully Integrated On-Device Search And Web-Based Search Framework Incorporating Privacy Controls, Eugenio Marchiori, Donghui Feng, Trystan Upstill

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes a framework, implemented on a computing device, for integrating search results provided by a user device system-level search with internet-based search results provided by an internet search engine application, while retaining the privacy of a user of the device. The search results may be ranked based on both the user device system-level search and the internet search.

Globally Non-Deterministic, Locally Deterministic Unique Identifier To Enable Local Tracking Of A Connected Wi-Fi Access Point, Chinmay Dhodapkar

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes methods of preserving user privacy through the prevention of Wi-Fi location tracking by generating a unique identifier (UID) for a Wi-Fi access point (AP) on a per-computing device basis (e.g., a first UID is generated for use by a first computing device, a second UID is generated for use by a second computing device). The generated UIDs are locally deterministic (unique to a specific computing device), but globally non-deterministic (different UIDs are generated for different computing devices).

Method To Facilitate A Concurrent Telephone Call And Conference Meeting, Rafal Pilarczyk, Hui-Ling Lu, Piotr Rozen

Defensive Publications Series

In order to answer a telephone call on a mobile telephone during an online video collaboration session or meeting, an individual must first mute their meeting, then remove their headphones, and finally answer their mobile telephone. While answering the telephone call, the individual is disconnected from the conference meeting audio channel, prohibiting them from participating in the meeting. For example, they would not know if someone in the meeting called upon them. To address such challenges, techniques are presented herein that enable the automatic switching between different communication mediums within a video collaboration environment. Aspects of the presented techniques support …

Containerized Deployment Of Webrtc-Sip Interworking Function To Interoperate With Legacy Sip Line-Side Edges, Faisal Siyavudeen, Ram Mohan R, Sachin Mehrotra, Krishna Kumar Rai

Defensive Publications Series

Conventional Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) line-side edges are not always distributed, and they require that registrations and calls be handled by the same entity. Servers that support Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) clients do not require a hard state and with cloud deployments they are increasingly being deployed as containerized workloads. Containerized deployments (such as Kubernetes) are typically stateless, and even with stateful implementations special handling is required to ensure that registrations and calls are consistently sent to the same SIP edge node, with high availability, in the face of frequent pod failures. To address such challenges, techniques are presented herein …

Enhanced User Interface For Scrubbing Video Segments, Wenni Zhou, Robert Thompson, Min-Hsuan Tsai, Matthew Darby, Jon Effrat, Cory Lee, Corinne Longman, Chad Sager, Alexandre Gois

Defensive Publications Series

When watching video content, users often skip to specific moments within the video, rewatch specific parts, or navigate between sections of interest. Such actions are supported via user interface elements such as a scrubber bar with a scrubber knob that display the progress and current playback position within the video, respectively. This disclosure describes techniques for display of UI components and timed metadata related to the playback of video content. The UI helps viewers find and navigate to specific marked moments or sections of interest within a video. When a user scrubs a video using the scrubber bar or scrubber …

A Method To Provide Cellular Qos For Tethered Clients, Jayachandran C, Hui Wang

Defensive Publications Series

A host device includes a quality of service (QoS) access control module to establish and manage connections having levels of QoS between tethered devices and a network. The QoS access control module authenticates a tethered device to ensure that the tethered device is authorized to use a connection having the requested QoS, establishes a network route and rules for accessing the connection and establishes a secure connection between the host device and the tethered device. As a result, in some cases, the system prevents erroneous operation due to tethered devices attempting to perform tasks that require a connection having a …

Early Determination Of Sim Switching In Mobile Telecommunication System, Edison Chen

Defensive Publications Series

A user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication network performs early determination of SIM switching to mitigate delays in SIM switching typically experienced by the UEs when a no-service event has occurred. During frequency band scanning for a carrier network associated with a primary or current SIM in use by the UE, the modem provides an available network indication(s) to an early SIM switching component of the UE, such as a local profile assistant, indicating that a different carrier network has been detected. Responsive to receiving the available network indication from the modem, the early SIM switching component directly switches …

Prioritization Of Frequencies To Camp On A Better Cell, Tsu-Jou Shen

Defensive Publications Series

A user equipment (UE) stores information for candidate frequencies to expedite a future cell selection procedure. The information may include carrier frequencies and information on cell parameters from previously received measurement control information elements or from previously detected cells. The UE initiates a subsequent cell selection process by retrieving the stored information and selecting a cell to camp on based on the candidate frequencies and measurements of signal strengths of each of the candidate frequencies.

Sequential Stream Ordering For Live Co-Creation In Online Video Conferences, Viktor Martensson, Nicolas Faralli

Defensive Publications Series

Current video conferencing solutions are not well-suited for live co-creation of artistic production. Different participants experiencing a different level of connection lag can lead to synchronization problems that negatively affect the quality of the co-produced experience.

This disclosure describes techniques that enable a group of users participating in an online conference to produce co-created experiences, such as a music production co-created by artists in a band connecting from separate physical locations. When recording, the videoconference is switched to a stream that follows an order mutually agreed upon by the group. Users can add their individual pieces when the stream is …

Automatically Generated Gameplay Strategy Recommendations, Abhilash Kuduvalli

Defensive Publications Series

Video game players can get stuck at certain levels of gameplay. Current techniques to make progress through a game, e.g., looking up articles or how-to videos, asking friends for tips, etc., are time-consuming and interrupt game flow. This disclosure describes techniques that, with user permission, detect when a game player is stuck at a certain level in gameplay. Based on user-permitted analysis of prior gameplay streams from other game players, strategies to advance in the game are automatically identified, e.g., video snippets that illustrate the specific actions that the player needs to perform. Such strategies are then presented to the …

Grouping Browser Tabs For Organized Workspaces, D Shin

Defensive Publications Series

Users opening multiple browser windows can sometimes have duplicate tabs opened in different browser windows, leading to inefficiency/ wastage of computational resources. This disclosure describes an enhanced user interface (UI) that leverages topicality in browser tabs to enable the user to group and shortcut a set of tabs when opening a browser. The user interface can improve user productivity.

Adjusting Equalizer Settings Based On Learned User Preferences, Michael D. Townsend

Defensive Publications Series

Currently, the equalizer settings for media playback via a headset are selected based on a limited number of user studies. Equalizer preferences depend on various factors, including earbud fit (which impacts audio leakage levels) and the genre of audio being listened to. This disclosure describes techniques to automatically set or recommend equalizer settings using machine learning models that are trained on a crowdsourced dataset of user preferences, obtained with user permission. Equalizer settings, audio genre, and magnitude of acoustic leakage are obtained from deployed media playback devices and are used to train the machine learning model. During operation, the trained …

Opportunistic Data Network Selection For User Equipment With Multiple Subscriber Identification Module Cards, Sooraj Sasindran, Amruth Ramachandran

Defensive Publications Series

A user equipment (UE) includes multiple subscriber identification module (SIM) cards to connect to different networks, including any available opportunistic data network. To support connection to 5G opportunistic data networks, the UE employs the primary network stack (the network stack associated with the primary SIM card) to connect to a 5G communications network (e.g., a 5G cellular network), and further employs the primary network stack to periodically scan for opportunistic data networks. In response to detecting a 5G opportunistic data network, the primary network stack transfers the 5G connection capability to a secondary network stack (a network stack associated with …

Using Digital Maps To Find Shelter For Pedestrians And Cyclists During Inclement Weather, Andy Lavery, Eli Daiches, Jesse Huang

Defensive Publications Series

Walkers, runners, hikers, and bicyclists or other travelers that use non-motorized vehicles are at risk of being caught in bad weather. Currently, such users of a road or hiking/bicycling pathway need to find shelters on their own or ask locals or fellow travelers for advice. This disclosure describes techniques that enable road or trail users to find nearby shelters to stay in during periods of bad weather or in other situations where they may need to take shelter. With user permission, data from observed points where stops are made during bad weather events, geographic data, reviews and other textual materials, …

Virtual Assistant Device Arbitration By Time-Of-Flight Based On Hotword, Nicholas Jordan Sanders, Roy Winfield Huffman, Junior

Defensive Publications Series

When multiple devices that support a virtual assistant activated by an activation hotword are present in a particular location, the virtual assistant can trigger on more than one device when a user utters the hotword. There is no existing mechanism for accurate device arbitration. This can cause a device other than the one the user intended (e.g., nearest to the user or most suited to the command) to respond to the user request, leading to user frustration. This disclosure describes techniques to determine the relative proximity of each device to a user using audio propagation time from the user’s utterance …

Method And System For Facilitating Authentication Of Secondary Account Holder Device For Transactions Originated Against Primary Cardholder’S Account, Praghathi M S Ms., Amit Kumar Mishra Mr.

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure provides a method and system to facilitate authentication of secondary account holder device 104 for transactions originated against primary cardholder’s account. The present disclosure facilitates primary card holder to update issuer system 210 with valid secondary account holder device 104, which to be approved. Also, the present disclosure facilitates a process through which transaction processing through merchant portal is taken care when second factor authentication is provided by secondary account holder device 104. Therefore, the present disclosure avoids repeated transactions through primary account holder device 102, and hence improved overall Pre-settlement Risk (PSR) rate. A secondary account …

System And Method For Monitoring Fraudelent Transactions At Merchant Level In Real Time Payment, Ila Malde, Juharasha Shaik, Aditi Khare, Durga Kala, Kenny Tsai, Ram Miryala, Rajiv Ranjan, Santanu Chakraborty, Xuepeng Li, Anup Mahadev, Andrey Masharov, Mohan Paudel, Debabrata Chowdhury, Ramya Kankatala, Motilal Mahanta, Chintan Pandya, Manasa Srinivas

Defensive Publications Series

Disclosed herein is a method and system providing Merchants direct access to the powerful issuer authorization rules engine to evaluate and block card payment transaction in real-time from potential fraud at checkout. The access to the intelligent rules can be made by enabling a secure connection to the Risk Manager (RM). The real-time data will empower the Merchant to not forward the fraudulent transaction onto the acquirer for further processing, saving the transaction processing fees as eliminating back-office overheads on failed payments.

Wi-Sun Stabilization For Distributed Automation Gateways By Dynamically Controlling Acceptable Children Numbers, Lele Zhang, Iris Dai, Xue Yuan, Tonglin Yuan

Defensive Publications Series

Resilient mesh products (based on, for example, the Wireless Smart Utility Network (Wi-SUN) communication standard) have been available for many years and are widely used within Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Distributed Automation (DA) settings. A DA Gateway (which, for convenience, may be referred to herein as a ‘DAGW’) follows the AMI elements’ rules in a Wi-SUN network, but that is not highly efficient while forwarding a significant amount of the third-party traffic. The root cause of such inefficiency is that the child AMI elements are not aware of a change in the available resources in a DAGW. To address …

Coordinated Listening By Multiple Voice Assistants In The Smart Home To Localize Smoke Detector Low-Battery Warning Chirp, Justin Eltoft, Nick Young

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes methods for coordinated listening by multiple voice assistant devices (e.g., smart home devices, smart speakers) to localize the sound of a low-battery warning chirp produced by a smoke detector. The voice assistant devices detect the sound of the low-battery warning chirp and measure the volume and timing of the chirp (generate “chirp information”). The chirp information can be provided to a processing unit of a computing device that estimates a location of the smoke detector and provides such information to a user.

Discrete Single-Hand Gestures For Wrist-Worn Device Control, Laura Fulton, Matthew Pateman, David L. Lee, Brett Lider, Bernice Go, Alex Faaborg

Defensive Publications Series

Interaction with wrist-worn devices is currently constrained to either voice control or opposing hand control through physical touch on the device screen, crown, or buttons. With one handed control involving full hand extension and hand clenching in a fist, these movements are not discrete. Traditional smartwatch placement on one hand is controlled using the other hand. This is a discrete, yet inconvenient mode of control, especially in situations where the other hand is involved in another function. Some technologies enable one-handed control with hand clenching into a fist / extending into an open palm. However, this isn't discrete or necessarily …

Improving Speech Recognition Quality Using Grammar Training Phrases, Amit Singhal, Yao Lin

Defensive Publications Series

When a new voice feature is to be launched on a device with a voice interface, e.g., a digital assistant application, the natural language understanding (NLU) model is built using training data for the new feature. Speech biasing models are typically added to improve recognition accuracy for queries that are specific to the feature or contain non-common words. Such biasing models are often built using traffic logs, collected with user permission, after the initial release of the feature. However, this approach may not provide high speech recognition quality during product testing and initial launch. This disclosure describes techniques to improve …

System And Method For Authentication Using Mobile Device, Christian Aabye, Mark Rigby

Defensive Publications Series

The methods and system disclosed in present disclosure is to perform authentication of a user device before provisioning card details in a digital wallet. In present disclosure, user taps user device on mobile device, upon tapping interaction data is sent to user device. The user device further generates cryptogram using interaction data and credentials of user device. The cryptogram generated is sent to server computer, which verifies whether card details can be provisioned by sending token request to token service computer which further sends authentication request to authentication server system. The authentication server system authenticates received cryptogram and generates validation …

Implicit Invocation Of Device-Specific Custom Actions Using A Virtual Assistant, Amit Singhal, Yao Lin

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes techniques to augment the built-in grammar of a general-purpose voice-activated virtual assistant with custom commands and actions that are specific to a particular make and model of a device such as an in-vehicle system. The techniques enable the virtual assistant to service implicit commands that make no reference to vehicular make by providing custom, make-specific responses. A single, consistent grammar enables the general-purpose virtual assistant to handle device-specific commands without the user having to provide a query that includes a device-specific invocation phrase.

Techniques To Expand Grammar Pattern Matching, Amit Singhal, Michael Ng

Defensive Publications Series

Language understanding is an important aspect of supporting spoken queries on a device. Intensive ML models are unsuitable on resource-constrained devices and in such cases, pattern matching grammar can be utilized. However, pattern matching can have low recall and may be limited in understanding user queries. This disclosure describes the use of normalization, optional/stopwords, synonym clusters, and argument expansion to generate more expansive grammar with limited training data and without the use of machine learning. The use of such a grammar can improve recall while maintaining high precision. The techniques are suitable for any context where grammar patterns are used …

Method And System For Determining Sustainability Information In Authorisation Message, Hyeonmin Na, Sajjad Rizvi, Balakrishna Chittari

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to method and system for calculating sustainability information in authorisation message based on transaction data. The present invention uses payment rails, sourcing for delivering sustainability information. The method also comprises sourcing and providing payment network entities and consumers the information on carbon intensity of a purchase. The present disclosure provides a solution for calculating the sustainability score of the registered Permanent Account Number (PAN) using transaction history, where transaction history is used to establish direct connectivity between merchants and issuers for the purpose of processing card transactions.

Autonomous Collection Detection And Remediation Decisions Based On Local Models And Locally Sourced Data, Dave Zacks, Jane (Zizhen) Gao, Nagendra Kumar Nainar, Carlos M. Pignataro, Dmitry Goloubew

Defensive Publications Series

In context of distributed monitoring and anomaly detection, when a networking device performs anomaly detection based on local data, such as when a remote controller is not reachable during network convergence or other network issues. Anomaly relevance improves if telemetry data used for anomaly detection comes not only from a local device, but also from the device's immediate surroundings (e.g., physical neighbors, protocol peers, redundancy units, etc.). Presented herein are techniques through which a device can reach its own and nearby telemetry sources in a manner that may follow an effective network topology and configuration. Thus, techniques herein may enable …

Arriving Container Cargo Prioritization Method, Jerome Henry, Lynn Landers, Carolina Salazar Lagunes, Mahesh Mahesh, Bart Brinckman

Defensive Publications Series

Maritime freight is undergoing a fast transformation with regard to the technology that can be carried by containers, such as sensors, transponders, etc., which can allow for better identification of containers and their condition. However, the correlation between goods carried in containers, their environmental needs, and their state upon arrival still involves manual processes. Techniques herein propose a method for maritime containers to express an unloading/opening urgency based on the reported status of individual merchandise units carried inside containers.

Maritime Freight Is Undergoing A Fast Transformation With Regard To The Technology That Can Be Carried By Containers, Such As Sensors, Transponders, Etc., Which Can Allow For Better Identification Of Containers And Their Condition. However, The Correlation Between Goods Carried In Containers, Their Environmental Needs, And Their State Upon Arrival Still Involves Manual Processes. Techniques Herein Propose A Method For Maritime Containers To Express An Unloading/Opening Urgency Based On The Reported Status Of Individual Merchandise Units Carried Inside Containers., Jerome Henry, Lynn Landers, Carolina Salazar Lagunes, Mahesh Daisy, Bart Brinckman

Defensive Publications Series

Maritime freight is undergoing a fast transformation with regard to the technology that can be carried by containers, such as sensors, transponders, etc., which can allow for better identification of containers and their condition. However, the correlation between goods carried in containers, their environmental needs, and their state upon arrival still involves manual processes. Techniques herein propose a method for maritime containers to express an unloading/opening urgency based on the reported status of individual merchandise units carried inside containers.