Digital Commons Network^™

Enhanced Call Quality Using User-Specific Voiceprint Model, Chilin Kuo, Hsinhu Wang, Ssu-Ting Tsai, Chin-Kuo Huang

Defensive Publications Series

The audio quality of a call conducted using a user device such as a phone can be unsatisfactory due to a variety of reasons. Such reasons include noisy surroundings at the location from which the user conducts a call, position of the phone near the user’s face, users that speak with a soft voice, presence of far-end echoes, etc. This disclosure describes techniques that use a user-specific voiceprint to home into the user’s speech and cut out surrounding disturbances from a voice call. The techniques are implemented with user permission to generate and use the voiceprint.

3d Face Messaging On A Watch, Vinay Venkataraman, Eric Caplain

Defensive Publications Series

A system and method are disclosed that may send a video-like message to a receiver even when the receiver is offline. The system includes a user smart device incorporating an application, and a receiver smart device incorporating the similar application. The method captures a single 2D image of the user’s face using a camera incorporated in the communication device. The 2D image of the user’s face is then recreated as a 3D model. The message to be sent to a receiver is recorded as an audio message and sent along with the 3D model. At the receiver end the audio …

A Virtual Call Assistant, Anonymous

Defensive Publications Series

A system for adding a virtual assistant as a user to a call is disclosed. The virtual assistant (implemented as a web Real Time Communication (webRTC) client) can be added by a manual selection on a Graphical User Interface (GUI) of a calling application (app) when a call is in progress between users. The virtual assistant responds to queries of the users. The users may ask queries from the virtual assistant using a trigger phrase, such as “Hi assistant!”. The virtual assistant implements speech recognition algorithms and searches for requisite information in a knowledge graph over the Internet and answers …

Intelligent Wireless Network Selection, Jiwoong Lee

Defensive Publications Series

WiFi network selection is typically based on the received signal strength of an access point (AP). However, the strongest signal does not necessarily lead to good user experience. For example, a strong signal or SSID may simultaneously attract many WiFi clients, causing congestion.

This disclosure utilizes machine learning models trained to intelligently select a wireless access point or an SSID based on multiple factors, e.g., neighboring APs, neighboring clients, historical service information, signal and interference levels, ping jitter, time-of-day, day-of-week, etc. Per the techniques, the selected AP is associated with a best overall score as determined by the machine learning …

Mode Selection For Augmented Reality Application To Control Access To Real-World Data, Klaus Weidner

Defensive Publications Series

In situations where virtual, mixed, augmented, and extended reality applications or services are operated by remote providers, images, video, and/or other world-understanding data captured by a camera or other sensors of a user device may be made available to the applications to enable integration of virtual objects with the user’s real world surroundings. It is important to allow users control over how the video generated by the camera is provided to such applications. Current application configuration settings such as permissions to access camera usually offer a binary choice that requires the user to provide the requested access or forego using …

Voice Interface Responses Based On Prior User Interactions, Minkoo Seo, Brian Spilsbury, Gadi Ben Amram, Joo Hyung Lee, Togan Gencoglu, Youngchan Park

Defensive Publications Series

Voice interfaces, such as those provided by virtual assistant applications on smartphones, smart speakers, and other devices utilize natural language when providing responses to user queries. Per techniques of this disclosure, user interaction patterns are used to generate natural language responses to queries posed over a voice user interface. With user permission and express consent, data that pertain to prior user interaction, e.g., text entry such as search terms entered; other input operations such as clicks, taps, swipes, mouse hovers; viewports for the user, etc. are obtained. For ease of interaction, such permission is obtained, e.g., at initial setup, and …

Automatic Dating Of Videos Based On Matching Photos, Rainer Vincent Mager

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure includes techniques to automatically date a video based on a matching photo. With user permission, the video is analyzed to determine an identity of a person and an identifying feature depicted in the video. Based on the identity of the person, a photo associated with the person in the video that includes the identifying feature is identified. Metadata is extracted from the image to determine a date of capture of the image. If the date of capture of the image is different from the date of capture of the video, a suggestion is provided to the user to …

Notification Output Via Watch Bezel, Aleksandr Rozman

Defensive Publications Series

Rather than requiring a user to view the face of a wearable computing device (e.g., a smartwatch), in order to ascertain information about a notification received at the wearable computing device, the wearable computing device may include a bezel with one or more lights, such as light emitting diodes (“LEDs”), which illuminate upon the wearable computing device receiving a notification. That is, a wearable computing device may include one or more LEDs that provide the user with an indication that the computing device has received notification data associated with one or more applications executing on the wearable computing device. In …

Controlling Access By Tagging Data, Juan Vasquez, Jesper Johansson

Defensive Publications Series

A customer (first party) uses an application developed by an application service provider (second party). A third party needs legitimate access to data of the customer stored on a server operated by the application service provider. In such a scenario, the third party requests the customer to permit the third party to access to such data. However, in some instances, the type of access requested by the third party is broad. This disclosure describes techniques to restrict the types of data that are made available to the third party by enabling a customer to tag data stored by the provider. …

Challenge Keyword Generation For Voice-Based Authentication, Shuyang Chen, Nicholas Felker

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure describes use of challenge keywords for use in voice authentication systems. Verification keywords are generated for a particular user and serve to verify the authenticity of the user. With user permission, keyword generation is performed based on analysis of previous voice-based interactions of the user. A uniqueness score is assigned to words uttered previously by the user in interactions with the voice interface. The uniqueness score for a word is determined based on a rarity of usage of the word in the user’s speech and a distinctiveness of user pronunciation of the word.

Security Event Timeline

Defensive Publications Series

This publication describes a security solution that incorporates security events in a single place and presents them in an easy-to-understand timeline. The intrinsic dynamic essence of the timeline enables the user to see what affects the overall security and offers guidance for the user to take steps to achieve a desired security state. The security solution shows the most-relevant security events at the highest level, but it also allows the user to see all of the security event details, if the user chooses to do so. The user can easily determine the time at which overall security became compromised and …

Determining Region-Of-Interest Based On Motion Patterns, Ruiduo Yang

Defensive Publications Series

An auto-focus camera determines and focuses on a region-of-interest (RoI), e.g., faces, plates of food, flowers, etc. There is a slight lag, of the order of milliseconds, between the determination of the RoI and the capture of an image. During the time period of the lag, the subject of the photograph can sometimes move out of the just-determined RoI which can cause an off-target focus. This disclosure describes techniques to predict the RoI for a frame based on the RoIs of immediately-previous frames, the camera state, machine-learned patterns of motion, etc. The techniques enable robust and accurate auto-focus on the …

Image Recognition For Consumer Shopping Applications, Jibing Wang, Erik Stauffer, Aamir Akram

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure utilizes image recognition techniques in consumer retail applications. Objects in an image are recognized and corresponding retail information, e.g., links to purchase an object, is provided to users. Image recognition techniques are integrated into point of sale applications and utilized for product identification based on a barcode, a QR code, based on the image of the product, etc. Application program interfaces are provided to link the image recognition application with payment processing and inventory management systems.

Intelligent Presentation Slide Assistant, Sammy El Ghazzal, Sandro Feuz

Defensive Publications Series

A technique is proposed for assisting a user with creating and polishing a document such as a presentation slide stored on a cloud-content based platform. A slide assistant service provided by the cloud-content based platform receives content to be included in a slide for a presentation. The slide assistant service can determine a level of seriousness of the presentation based on the content. Then, the slide assistant service can predict a theme appropriate for the presentation based on the level of seriousness and the content. Next, the slide assistant service can provide a slide that includes the slide objects arranged …

Process Of Improving Software Engineering Predictability With Business Benefits, Ravi Saxena, Atul Deshpande

Defensive Publications Series

A refined process to make software engineering predictable by associating bidding concept. This process helps in delivering software engineering products and solutions to customers with increased business values viz. customer satisfaction, better control over operating cost, profit margins and time to market.

This process greatly enriches decision making to enhance time to delivery, profit margin, knowledge sharing and keeping healthy collaboration among various geographically distributed teams within an organization.

Automatic Extraction And Provision Of Coupon Codes For Online Shopping, Matthew Sharifi

Defensive Publications Series

The disclosure describes techniques to automatically extract coupon codes from email, chat, SMS messages and suggest the use of available coupon codes when a user visits a website or other platform where the coupon codes are valid. Coupon codes are stored in a user account, e.g., on a server, and are synchronized to the user’s devices. User visits to shopping websites are detected, e.g., by a browser application, and corresponding coupon information is provided as a suggestion when the shopping website matches an available coupon. Expired coupons are automatically removed. User permission is obtained to extract coupon information and to …

Transmit Power Setting Based On Dynamic Sar, Qi Jiang, Paul Husted, Srenik Mehta, Nihar Jindal

Defensive Publications Series

Emitted power from consumer devices is required to meet a specific absorption rate (SAR) limit. Since SAR limits apply to the total transmitted power, mobile devices that have multiple radios limit transmit power on each radio based on the on/off status of other radios. For example, if cellular is enabled, then the maximum power available to WiFi is reduced. Such an approach does not account for the actual instantaneous power transmitted by a radio. For example, the cellular radio may be transmitting well below its maximum power when proximate to a base station. In such a case, the WiFi (or …

Turning Off Or Dimming A Device Screen Based On User Attention, Vidhya Navalpakkam, Tomer Shekel, Dmitry Lagun

Defensive Publications Series

Device screens are often set to turn off and/or dim automatically if no user interaction is detected for a specified amount of time. Turning off or dimming the screen saves power and prolongs the amount of time the device can operate without needing to recharge the battery. However, such timeout-based actions can result in false positives or negatives. With user permission, this disclosure utilizes contextual input of a user’s gaze and attention for management of the automatic turn off or dimming of the device screen. The techniques are applied to reduce the false positives and negatives and ensure that the …

Smart Auto-Deactivation Of Device Airplane Mode, Gregory B. Roth

Defensive Publications Series

The transmitting and receiving capabilities of a device are turned off when it is put in airplane mode. As a result, a device in airplane mode is unable to transmit information about its location to an external entity, e.g., that tracks its whereabouts to help find the device when it is lost or stolen. This disclosure proposes techniques for smart auto-deactivation of airplane mode of a device without explicit user action. The auto-deactivation is based on one or more user-permitted signals, such as device sensor data, user’s calendar and context, information from airline sources, time, device battery charge, etc.

Internet Of Things Construction Monitors, Thomas A. Stern

Defensive Publications Series

The present disclosure relates to a monitoring system and related method for determining the state of a structure, determining when a structural failure is apt to occur, and sending notifications associated with the state of a structure to external computing devices. The monitoring system can include a computing system that receives state data including information associated with the state of a structure. The state data can be used to determine when the structure is apt to fail. Further, alert notifications can be generated and sent to external computing devices and services when such failures are determined to be likely.

Connectivity Assessment Survey For Technology Emergency Response (Caster), Rakesh Bharania, Chandler Johnson, Dustin Li

Defensive Publications Series

Disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis often cause widespread communication outages, and there is a need to quickly assess which areas have been impacted so that teams such as Tactical Operations can optimize the delivery and installation of emergency communications infrastructure. By placing a software defined radio (SDR) in low earth orbit on a satellite and processing the data to geolocate radio frequency (RF) signals, heat maps may be generated depicting "ground truth" RF changes, providing timely and accurate data to inform decision-making for emergency communications deployments. This, in turn, will serve as a force multiplier, amplifying the positive …

Item Recommendations For Cache And Synchronization Of Application Stores, Wei Chai, Zhiwei Gu, Sundeep Sancheti, Yilan Liu

Defensive Publications Series

To reduce the latency of rendering the page of an app in an application store (e.g., that provides access to downloads of apps to a mobile device), the application store app periodically synchronizes with its backend and caches on the user mobile device app pages that a user is likely to visit.

This disclosure uses deep learning models to predict the next N apps that a user is likely to visit based on permitted user activity signals, e.g., demographic information, historical visits to deep links associated with the app, etc.

Embedded Ready To Use Hybrid Mesh Network For Iot Applications, Jérôme Elleouet, Emmanuel Helbert

Defensive Publications Series

Gathering data from IoT (Internet of Things) sensors requires a communication infrastructure. This infrastructure could rely on WiFi, LAN or other proprietary networks as well as on mesh networks using any kind of radio technology. Thus, these networks are a prerequisite to conveys this data. In addition, some IoT applications such as asset or human tracking requires a dedicated network of sensors as well. That means that the overall solution requires device provisioning, configuration, installation and maintenance, as well as devices and network planning, leading to huge cost due to manual installation, ad-hoc configuration and maintenance …

Web-Based Currency For Online Content And Transactions, Kentaro Hara

Defensive Publications Series

A web currency is described for settling digital transactions between parties. Users acquire web currency by outright purchase and based on user contributions. User privacy and security is enabled via the use of anonymized addresses that are mapped in a secure and private manner to a user wallet. User access of content is enabled by transmission of an address from the user's wallet that is representative of a value of web currency to be transferred. Users can obtain a subscription to multiple content providers via a browser platform that enables viewing of content of participating content providers. The web currency …

Direct I/O Solution For Containerized Hpux, Maheshwara Aithal, Dinesh Thanumoorthy, Harish K

Defensive Publications Series

This disclosure relates to the field of hardware emulation solution called c-UX (code named Kiran) which runs HPUX in emulated (Itanium hardware emulation on x86) mode as a futuristic solution for the margin rich UNIX business. The value of containerized HPUX is that it allows customers using legacy HPUX applications to continue running on x86 hardware. c-UX design relies on instruction level emulation which has inherent performance issues. Especially, compute intensive workloads are prone to performance issues while running in emulated environment. However, I/O workloads on such emulated systems can make use of direct device access or device assignment when …

Fast & Scalable I/O For Emulated Hpux, Maheshwara Aithal, Dinesh Thanumoorthy, Ranjith Vk

Defensive Publications Series

HPE has positioned containerized solution called c-UX (code named Kiran) which runs HPUX in emulated (Itanium hardware emulation on x86) mode as a futuristic solution for the margin rich UNIX business. The value of containerized HPUX is that it allows customers using legacy HPUX applications to continue running on x86 hardware. Significant effort has been expended to increase the effectiveness of hardware resource utilization on c-UX. The next step in fully optimizing I/O in c-UX environment is to provide truly scalable high-performance, by enabling a single I/O device to provide DMA for multiple VMs. This scalability challenge can be solved …

Heuristic Algorithm For Spanning Tree Protocol Root Bridge Determination, Michael Michaelides, Arabinda Samantaray

Defensive Publications Series

Techniques are presented to avoid requiring network administrators to have Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) domain specific knowledge while still achieving a stable and high performing Layer 2 (L2) topology in their Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs). Configuring the STP is easily ignored since it is operable initially, but networks might run at a suboptimal efficiency as a result.

Proxy Monitoring Of Session State For Shared Fate Entities, Stefan Olofsson, Khalid Raza

Defensive Publications Series

By using a general protocol that allows for sharing of bidirectional forwarding detection (BFD) state across a shared path between neighboring routers, scale, simplicity and flexibility in designs may be achieved with at least a 2:1 ratio compared to a traditional implementation. Each participating node hosts BFD sessions that monitor a locally attached link and then shares the state of the BFD sessions to other neighboring nodes, effectively proxying the BFD state for consumption by participating devices in an efficient manner.

A Deep Gaussian Mixture Model Approach To Scoring Based On Feedback, Pranjal Daga, Antonio Nucci

Defensive Publications Series

Techniques are described herein for taking into account actual written feedback provided by customer in terms of comments to generate a score. The score, in turn, may help in efficient executive decision making. The textual feedback is more holistic as it describes in detail why a customer might dislike/like/love a product.

Performance Delay Measurement And Fault Detection Of Sr / Srv6 Te Policies In Software Defined Networks, Clarence Filsfils, Rakesh Gandhi, Tarek Saad, Patrick Khordoc, Sagar Soni

Defensive Publications Series

Mechanisms are provided for Performance Measurement (PM) Delay Measurement (DM) as well as Fault Detection (FD) for Traffic Engineering (TE) Segment Routing (SR) policies (applicable to both SR-MPLS and SRv6 data-planes) in Software Defined Networks (SDN). For an SR policy, end-to-end atomic paths are "dynamically" computed using adjacency SIDs (or prefix SIDs in some cases) of all its ECMP paths by the path computation process running locally or on a controller. Key of the atomic path based on IP address of each hop is used for Telemetry, histogram and Client notification. The PM probe messages (or FD messages) are injected …