Disclosure of Invention
The utility model aims to solve the technical problem that a wave carrier leakage elimination device for hyperfrequency radio frequency identification is provided.
In order to achieve the above purpose, the utility model adopts the following technical scheme:
a carrier leakage elimination device for ultrahigh frequency radio frequency identification comprises a first directional coupler, a second directional coupler, a numerical control phase shifter, a third directional coupler, a first attenuation circuit, a second attenuation circuit, an amplitude phase comparator, a microprocessor and a circulator, wherein,
the first directional coupler receives an output signal from the transmitting circuit power amplifier, sends the output signal into the circulator and generates a reference signal at a coupling end of the first directional coupler;
the second directional coupler is used for coupling out part of the reference signal;
the third directional coupler is used for coupling out a part of carrier leakage signals;
the first attenuation circuit is used for adjusting the amplitude of the reference signal coupled out by the second directional coupler;
the second attenuation circuit is configured to adjust an amplitude of the carrier leakage signal coupled out by the third directional coupler, where the amplitude of the carrier leakage signal output by the second attenuation circuit is equivalent to the amplitude of the reference signal output by the first attenuation circuit;
the amplitude phase comparator is used for comparing the amplitude and the phase of the reference signal output by the first attenuation circuit and the carrier leakage signal output by the second attenuation circuit, and sending the determined amplitude difference and phase difference to the microprocessor;
and the microprocessor is used for determining the amplitude difference and the phase difference of the reference signal and the carrier leakage signal before addition according to the parameters of the second directional coupler and the third directional coupler and the parameters of the first attenuation circuit and the second attenuation circuit, so that the amplitude and the phase of the reference signal are changed by adjusting the numerical control phase shifter, and the reference signal and the carrier leakage signal with the same amplitude and opposite phases are obtained.
Preferably, the carrier leakage cancellation apparatus further includes: the combiner, a fourth directional coupler, a third attenuation circuit and a power detector; wherein,
the combiner is used for adding the reference signal and the carrier leakage signal output by the numerical control phase shifter and sending the added signal to the fourth directional coupler;
the fourth directional coupler is used for coupling the signal output by the combiner, and sending the signal into the power detector after being attenuated by the third attenuation circuit;
the power detector is configured to determine whether the carrier leakage signal output from the third attenuation circuit reaches a predetermined value; if yes, stopping searching, and if not, performing small-range amplitude and phase correction on the reference signal.
Preferably, the phase shift range of the numerical control phase shifter is 0-364.5 degrees, and whether each stage of phase shift depends on the closing state of the single-pole double-throw switch.
Wherein preferably the single pole double throw switch in said digitally controlled phase shifter is controlled by a digital logic level.
Preferably, the numerical control phase shifter connects 10-stage phase shift networks in series according to the sequence of 0.5 degrees, 1 degree, 2 degrees, 4 degrees, 8 degrees, 16 degrees, 19 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees and 180 degrees.
Preferably, the digital control phase shifter also comprises a digital control radio frequency signal attenuation circuit, the attenuation precision is 0.25dB, and the attenuation precision is controlled by 7-bit logic level, which is respectively 0.25dB, 0.5dB, 1dB, 2dB, 4dB, 8dB and 16 dB.
Preferably, the first attenuation circuit and the second attenuation circuit are connected by a pi-type resistor.
Compared with the prior art, the utility model provides a when the remove device is revealed to carrier wave for hyperfrequency radio frequency identification can solve high-power transmitting signal, the problem is revealed to the carrier wave of UHF RFID card reader or other microwave reflection communications to improve the communication distance between card reader and the electronic tags, strengthen the practicality of RFID system. The device can also be applied to microwave reflection communication and is used for improving the detection distance of a target object or a front-end device.
Detailed Description
The technical content of the present invention will be described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawings and specific embodiments.
In UHF RFID application scenarios, such as highway ETC charging, or microwave reflective communication application, or continuous wave speed radar, the transmission and reception of radio signals share one antenna, and the transmission signal and the reception signal are performed simultaneously, so that part of the transmission signal is inevitably leaked to the link of the reception signal, thereby affecting the performance of the reception signal.
At present, the transmission power of UHF RFID card readers in China is below 0.5W, and the communication distance between the card readers and electronic tags is generally within 10 meters. In some application scenarios, the communication distance needs to be increased, the most direct way is to increase the power of the transmission signal, but the carrier leakage signal also increases, and when the carrier leakage signal exceeds the bearing capacity designed before the card reader, the signal receiving capacity of the card reader decreases, so that the actual communication distance may not be significantly increased along with the increase of the transmission power.
At present, there are two main types of techniques for eliminating carrier leakage. The device type can be divided into an active device and a passive device, and the processing mode can be divided into an analog signal processing mode and a digital signal processing mode.
Passive devices do not need to be powered, such as circulators, directional couplers and the like, and do not introduce extra noise into the circuit, thereby avoiding the deterioration of the signal-to-noise ratio of a useful signal while eliminating a carrier leakage signal. The active device has stronger processing capability and can amplify signals so as to process stronger carrier leakage signals.
The difference between the analog circuit and the digital circuit in eliminating carrier leakage is the accuracy, the digital circuit can adjust the amplitude and phase of the signal with higher accuracy, and most of the existing carrier leakage elimination technologies are based on the principle that a cancellation signal (which can be called as a reference signal) with the same amplitude as the carrier leakage signal but opposite phase is generated and added to cancel each other, so that the error between the two signals, namely the amplitude error and the phase error of the cancellation signal and the carrier leakage signal, is an important factor influencing the neutralization effect, the higher accuracy means a smaller error, and ideally, the error is zero, and the carrier leakage signal is completely cancelled. Although the digital signal has higher precision and can be controlled more finely by analog-to-digital conversion, the digital signal brings more quantization noise and digital spurs, and these finally turn into negative factors influencing the signal-to-noise ratio of the useful signal.
The emission power of the UHF RFID card reader is smaller and is below 0.5W, the general communication distance is within 10 m, if the emission power is increased for increasing the communication distance or the emission power of microwave reflection communication based on a similar principle is increased, the carrier leakage power is inevitably increased, the leakage power which can be borne by the conventional UHF RFID card reader is below 10dBm, otherwise, a radio frequency receiving channel of the card reader is blocked.
The embodiment of the utility model provides an eliminator is revealed to carrier wave is to great transmitting power (for example between 0.5 ~ 8W), compound carrier wave reveals the elimination technology, has used passive device and active device simultaneously to applied analog circuit and digital circuit. When UHF RFID or other microwave reflection communication is increased in order to improve the communication distance in practical application, the problem that carrier leakage signals are increased along with the increase of the transmission power can be solved, and the feed-forward, feedback and digital control technologies are adopted, so that different radio frequency link control parameters can be generated according to the change of the application environment of the UHF RFID card reader and the antenna, and the UHF RFID or other microwave reflection communication has good self-adaptive capacity.
When the communication distance between a UHF RFID or similar microwave reflection communication system and an electronic tag or a front-end device is increased to meet the needs of some practical application scenarios, increasing the transmission power is an effective and simple way, but while the transmission power is increased, the power of carrier leakage is also increased correspondingly, and even the nonlinearity is deteriorated, whereas a Low Noise Amplifier (LNA) is generally present in a radio frequency receiving link of the UHF RFID or similar microwave reflection communication system, and when the power of a signal leaked to the receiving link exceeds 0dBm, that is, 1mW, the LNA is easily saturated and distorted, thereby causing deterioration of the receiving sensitivity, and when the power exceeds 0dBm, that is, 1mW, even blocking the receiver is serious, so that the system cannot normally operate.
To meet the application requirement, an embodiment of the present invention first provides a carrier leakage cancellation apparatus capable of processing a high-power transmission signal, and a system block diagram thereof is shown in fig. 1. In one embodiment of the present invention, the carrier leakage elimination apparatus includes a first directional coupler, a second directional coupler, a numerical control phase shifter, a third directional coupler, a first attenuation circuit, a second attenuation circuit, an amplitude phase comparator, a microprocessor, and a circulator, wherein,
the first directional coupler receives the signal from the power amplifier, sends the signal to be transmitted into the circulator and generates a reference signal at a coupling end of the first directional coupler;
a second directional coupler for coupling out a portion of the reference signal;
a third directional coupler for coupling out a portion of the carrier leakage signal;
the first attenuation circuit is used for adjusting the amplitude of the reference signal coupled out by the second directional coupler;
the second attenuation circuit is used for adjusting the amplitude of the carrier leakage signal coupled out by the third directional coupler, wherein the amplitude of the carrier leakage signal output by the second attenuation circuit is equivalent to the amplitude of the reference signal output by the first attenuation circuit;
the amplitude phase comparator is used for comparing the amplitude and the phase of the reference signal output by the first attenuation circuit and the carrier leakage signal output by the second attenuation circuit and sending the determined amplitude difference and phase difference to the microprocessor;
and the microprocessor is used for determining the amplitude difference and the phase difference between the reference signal and the carrier leakage signal before the addition according to the parameters of the second directional coupler and the third directional coupler and the parameters of the first attenuation circuit and the second attenuation circuit, so that the amplitude and the phase of the reference signal are changed by adjusting the numerical control phase shifter, and the reference signal and the carrier leakage signal with the same amplitude and opposite phases are obtained.
Wherein preferably, the carrier leakage cancellation apparatus further comprises a combiner, a fourth directional coupler, a third attenuation circuit, and a power detector, wherein,
the combiner is used for adding the reference signal and the carrier leakage signal output by the numerical control phase shifter and sending the added signal to the fourth directional coupler;
the fourth directional coupler is used for coupling the signal output by the combiner, and sending the signal into the power detector after being attenuated by the third attenuation circuit;
and the power detector is used for determining whether the carrier leakage signal output from the third attenuation circuit reaches a preset value, stopping searching if the carrier leakage signal reaches the preset value, and performing small-range amplitude and phase correction on the reference signal if the carrier leakage signal does not reach the preset value.
The embodiment of the utility model provides an eliminator is revealed to carrier wave uses directional coupler, the circulator on the route that big signal flows through, they can bear the power of hundreds of watts, the key self-control numerical control phase shifter also can bear nearly 10W's radio frequency power on the route of flowing through, and these devices are basically all passive, namely, they need not supply power almost, also there is not the effect of amplifying signal, so the risk that the eliminator does not exist saturation distortion is revealed to this carrier wave, can be when receiving and dispatching shared antenna, the processing is eliminated to revealing of 0.5 ~ 8W's high-power carrier signal production.
The system block diagram shown in fig. 1 mainly includes 3 paths, which will be described below.
(1) Path of transmission signal TX to Antenna (ANT)
A radio frequency input signal RF _ IN signal passes through a Power Amplifier (PA for short) to obtain a carrier transmitting signal TX of + 27-40 dBm (0.5-8W), and the carrier transmitting signal TX passes through a directional coupler 1 and then is sent into a circulator and then is sent into a receiving and transmitting shared antenna through the circulator. The coupling degree of the directional coupler 1 is 10dB, the insertion loss of directional output is very small, the insertion loss of the circulator is 0.2dB at the working frequency band, the line loss and other factors are considered, and the insertion loss of a carrier signal after power amplification reaching an antenna port is less than or equal to 1 dB.
(2) Carrier leakage cancellation path
Under the system configuration shown in fig. 1, the leaked carriers mainly come from two parts: firstly, due to the limitation of the isolation of the circulator, the transmitted high-power carrier signal is directly leaked from a transmitting link to a receiving link in the circulator, the isolation range of the circulator of the ferrite is generally 20-30 dB, and the median can be 25 dB; the other part of the carrier leakage comes from the antenna, the impedance of the antenna interface is designed according to 50 ohm pure resistance, but actually the port impedance of the antenna cannot be exactly 50 Ω, and reactive components exist, and objects around the antenna, especially metal materials, can cause the impedance change of the antenna port, generally speaking, the Return Loss (Return Loss) of the antenna port can reach 20dB, and the matching is good, in this case, the carrier power sent to the antenna port is reflected back by PA-20dB, and enters the receiving link through the circulator. The two portions are superimposed to form the main portion of the carrier leakage, which is estimated to be 7-20 dBm (i.e., 5-100 mW) in the prior art configuration.
In the embodiment of the present invention, in order to eliminate the leaked carrier, a Reference Signal (Reference Signal) is first generated, and the amplitude and the phase of the Reference Signal are adjusted to be the same as the amplitude and the phase of the leaked carrier Signal, but the amplitudes and the phases of the leaked carrier Signal are opposite to each other, so that the amplitudes and the phases can be mutually cancelled by adding the Reference Signal and the leaked carrier Signal at the combiner (referred to as COMB for short) shown in fig. 1, thereby achieving the purpose of eliminating the carrier leakage in the system.
As shown in FIG. 1, the reference signal is taken from the signal output by the power amplifier, and is generated by the coupling end of the directional coupler 1, and the size is 17-30 dBm. The GPD in fig. 1 is a short hand for an amplitude-phase comparator, which can compare the amplitude difference and the phase difference of two input signals. In the embodiment of the present invention, a part of reference signals are coupled by the directional coupler 2, a part of carrier leakage signals are coupled by the directional coupler 3, the amplitudes of the signals are properly adjusted by the n-type attenuation 1 and the n-type attenuation 2, so that the amplitudes of the signals when the signals reach the GPD are equivalent, the amplitude Phase comparator can more accurately determine the Phase difference between the signals, the amplitude error a ° and the Phase error β ° of the signals are sent to a Microprocessor (MPU), the amplitude error a ° and the Phase error β ° are accurately quantized by the microprocessor, and the amplitude difference and the Phase difference between the reference signals and the carrier leakage signals before the addition can be obtained by combining the parameters of the directional couplers 2 and 3, the n-type attenuation 1 and the n-type attenuation 2, and the like, so that the amplitude and the Phase of the reference signals and the carrier leakage signals with the same amplitude and opposite phases can be obtained by adjusting a numerical control Phase Shifter (DCPS), they add at the combiner and cancel each other out. The summed signal is coupled out by a directional coupler 4 in a portion (e.g., one hundredth) and sent to a Power Detection (Power Detection) module for detecting the carrier leakage signal remaining after cancellation, and if the desired value is reached, the phase difference and amplitude difference are stopped to be searched, otherwise, the amplitude difference and phase difference are corrected in a small range possibly due to device and line errors until a satisfactory cancellation effect is achieved. The output of the through end of the directional coupler 4 is RX, which is used for interfacing with a radio frequency receiving link of a subsequent UHF RFID reader.
(3) Path from antenna to output signal RX
The space electromagnetic wave returned by the electronic tag is received by the antenna and converted into a weak electrical signal, as shown in fig. 1, the weak electrical signal is sent to the receiving output port through the directional coupler 3, the combiner, and the directional coupler 4, and an RX signal is formed. The insertion loss of the directional couplers 3 and 4 in the ultrahigh frequency working frequency band is only 0.14dB, the influence on the sensitivity can be ignored, and the combiner can deteriorate the sensitivity by 3 dB. If the isolation of the circulator can reach 40dB, the combiner can be replaced by a directional coupler, so that the receiving sensitivity is hardly deteriorated while the carrier leakage is eliminated.
The numerical control phase shifter plays a key role in the carrier leakage elimination device provided by the utility model. As shown in fig. 2, an embodiment of the present invention further provides a 10-bit digital phase shifter based on a transmission line. The phase shift precision of the numerical control phase shifter reaches 0.5 degrees, the phase shift range is 0-364.5 degrees, the phase shift of each stage depends on the closing state of a Single Pole Double Throw (SPDT) switch, and the switches are controlled by digital logic level, which is superior to the existing numerical control phase shifters with the precision of 5.625 degrees mostly. As shown in FIG. 2, 10-level phase shift networks are connected in series according to the sequence of 0.5 degrees, 1 degree, 2 degrees, 4 degrees, 8 degrees, 16 degrees, 19 degrees, 45 degrees, 90 degrees and 180 degrees, the total insertion loss is 6dB at the working frequency band, the input 1dB compression point reaches 39dBm, the input 0.1dB compression point is 36.5dBm, and is 20-30 dBm higher than most of the existing numerical control phase shifters with input 1dB compression points, so that the high-power transmitting signals of the UHF RFID card reader can be processed.
The digital control phase shifter also comprises a digital control radio frequency signal attenuation circuit, namely ATT in figure 2, the attenuation precision is 0.25dB, the attenuation range reaches 31.75dB, and the attenuation range is controlled by 7-bit logic level to be switched on and off, and is respectively 0.25dB, 0.5dB, 1dB, 2dB, 4dB, 8dB and 16 dB. The numerical control phase shifter can reach the parameters of 0.5 degree of phase precision and 0.25dB of amplitude precision, and the cancellation ratio which can be realized by applying the numerical control phase shifter can reach 25 dB.
Fig. 3 shows a work flow of the carrier leakage cancellation apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention. Referring to fig. 3, the workflow includes the steps of:
s301, comparing a carrier leakage signal with a reference signal by using an amplitude phase comparator;
s302, calculating an amplitude error A and a phase error beta by a microprocessor;
s303, controlling the phase shift numerical value and the attenuation numerical value of the numerical control phase shifter;
s304, the power detection module detects leakage residues;
s305, judging whether the leakage residual is less than or equal to the threshold value, if so, detecting and recording new residual by the power detection module, and if not, returning to S301.
Wherein, S303 may specifically include the following steps:
s3031, initializing phase shift precision;
s3032, searching an optimal phase-shifting numerical value;
s3033, judging whether the precision is the highest precision, if not, executing S3034, improving the phase-shifting precision, and if so, executing S3035;
s3035, initializing attenuation precision;
and S3036, determining whether the precision is the highest precision, if not, executing S3037, improving the attenuation precision, and if so, returning.
In summary, the workflow can be divided into the following steps:
the first step, initialization:
resetting parameters including an amplitude error A, a phase error beta, a carrier residual detection value and the like; the preset parameters comprise insertion loss of the numerical control phase shifter, three attenuation circuits II 1, II 2 and II 3, and confidence intervals of the amplitude phase comparator and the power detector.
Secondly, obtaining an amplitude error A and a phase error beta of the carrier leakage signal and the reference signal:
the amplitude phase comparator outputs a voltage A corresponding to the amplitude error and a voltage beta corresponding to the phase error to the microprocessor, and after passing through the ADC, according to the parameters: the method can quickly determine the phase difference between the carrier leakage signal and the reference signal, and can provide a relatively small phase error range compared with the method for aligning the carrier leakage signal by traversing the phase of the reference signal, thereby shortening the search time of the optimal phase of the reference signal.
And thirdly, controlling the phase shift value and the attenuation value of the numerical control phase shifter. The right half of fig. 3 is a detailed breakdown of this step. Firstly, according to the amplitude difference between a carrier leakage signal and a reference signal, carrying out amplitude attenuation on the reference signal in a large scale, then searching for an optimal phase-shifting numerical value, specifically, initializing the phase-shifting precision to be a thicker step, comparing whether the amplitude of a residual signal is reduced or not after phase shifting, if so, determining the residual signal to be an effective phase-shifting numerical value, then improving the phase-shifting stepping precision, and so on until the highest phase-shifting precision is reached. Next, the attenuation value of the digitally controlled phase shifter is determined, because the carrier leakage cancellation device of the embodiment of the present invention has no amplifier, it does not introduce extra noise, but there is also a restriction that the amplitude of the reference signal must be larger than the carrier leakage signal. Therefore, the signal attenuation value of the numerical control phase shifter except for the insertion loss of the numerical control phase shifter is determined at the step. The method for searching the optimal attenuation value is the same as the method for searching the optimal phase shift value, and is not described herein again.
Fourthly, detecting the amplitude of the residual carrier wave after cancellation;
after the optimal phase shift and the optimal attenuation are completed, a small part of residual carrier leakage signals are coupled out by the directional coupler 4, converted into direct-current voltage by the power detection module, sent to the microprocessor for ADC, and then converted into the output power of the actual receiving end RX according to the coupling coefficient and the II attenuation 3 of the directional coupler 4. Because the embodiment of the utility model provides a remove device is revealed to carrier wave sets up before original UHF RFID circuit (specifically be the radio frequency receiving link of UHF RFID card reader), so its carrier wave reveals the range of output as long as satisfy the requirement of UHF RFID card reader to RX signal can. This requirement is the carrier leakage cancellation threshold to be implemented by the present invention. When the measured residual power is smaller than the carrier leakage elimination threshold value, the cancellation process is finished.
And fifthly, residual signal monitoring:
because the antenna is more sensitive to the change of surrounding environment, perhaps the service condition of UHF RFID card reader changes, all can influence radio frequency circuit's performance, so in the embodiment of the utility model provides an amplitude that can real-time supervision carrier wave is remained, in case it exceeds the threshold value, will trigger and carry out the carrier wave of new round and reveal and offset.
Fig. 4 is a schematic diagram of a test architecture adopted by the carrier leakage cancellation apparatus. Wherein, dut (device Under test) is as the unit Under test, is the utility model discloses the corresponding circuit module of carrier leakage remove device that the embodiment provided. It includes 3 interfaces: TX is used for connecting a high-power transmitting signal, ANT is used for connecting a transmitting and receiving shared antenna, and RX is used for connecting a subsequent receiving circuit. The utility model discloses an in the embodiment, produce carrier signal with radio frequency signal source, send into the unit under test after power amplification, emit its space by the antenna again, because the purpose of embodiment is that the effect of elimination is revealed to the test carrier, so do not appear electronic tags in the test configuration picture shown in figure 4, but with the size of remaining carrier wave in the RX signal of direct test unit output of being surveyed of frequency spectrograph, with Isolation TX-RX come the carrier wave of this carrier wave leakage elimination device to reveal the elimination effect.
Table 1 lists configuration parameters of each attenuation circuit in the carrier leakage cancellation apparatus provided in the embodiment of the present invention. As shown in fig. 5, all of the 3 attenuation circuits are implemented by using an pi-type resistor connection, and the resistor may use a sheet resistor of the patch 0603. Because the amplitude phase comparator and the power detection module both have a confidence interval, namely the input range of the corresponding radio-frequency signal when the detection error is smaller, the II-type circuit is adopted to adjust the input signal level of the amplitude phase comparator and the power detection module.
TABLE 1 resistance configuration of the attenuator circuit
Table 2 lists the values of the corresponding carrier residual signal RX for different carrier input signals TX for the DUT according to the schematic diagram of the test architecture shown in fig. 4. The DUT isolation is defined as follows: isolation (dB) ═ TX power (dBm) -RX power (dBm)
Table 2 lists both the optimum phase shift values and attenuation values for different DUT isolations. Fig. 6 is a plot of DUT Isolation (Isolation) versus carrier input signal TX power. Here, it is inconvenient to test in real time by an instrument in consideration of the carrier leakage condition of each stage in an actual circuit, but the DUT isolation degree is characterized: the degree of carrier leakage cancellation in the case of high power transmission is therefore represented by DUT isolation, i.e.: carrier Leakage cancellation (Leakage cancellation) ═ 10log (initial transmit power/residual Leakage power)
TABLE 2 test data for different DUT isolation
Through table 2 and the experimental data illustration that fig. 6 shows, the embodiment of the utility model provides a wave carrier leakage remove device, when the transmission power TX of UHF RFID card reader equals 0.5 ~ 8W, it is all more than 45dB at RX receiving end to the isolation of carrier signal, the carrier signal who actually reveals the RX receiving end all is less than 0dBm, the carrier leakage of this order of magnitude is safe to the low noise amplifier of receiving link, can guarantee to receive the link and can normally work under the condition of receiving and dispatching sharing antenna. Moreover, at this time, the card reader still maintains the original receiving level, so that the communication distance can be increased, namely, when the transmitting power of the card reader is increased, the carrier leakage signal is not increased.
Compared with the prior art, the utility model provides a wave carrier leakage elimination equipment is through generating reference signal to control its amplitude and phase place, it offsets the wave carrier leakage signal of receiving the link again, has following beneficial effect:
firstly, the transmission line phase shifting technology and the combination of multiple switches are adopted, so that the phase and amplitude control requirements of high-power signals can be met;
and secondly, a mode of comparing the phase difference and the amplitude difference of the reference signal and the carrier leakage signal and then searching the optimal phase shift parameter and the amplitude control parameter is adopted. The method reduces the search range of the optimal amplitude and phase control word and improves the processing speed of carrier leakage elimination;
and thirdly, no amplifier or other active vector control device is used in the radio frequency link of the reference signal. This does not introduce additional noise and thus does not significantly adversely affect the sensitivity of the receive chain.
Utilize the utility model provides an eliminator is revealed to carrier wave, UHF RFID card reader or other microwave reflection communication's carrier wave reveals the problem when can solving high-power transmitting signal to improve the communication distance between card reader and the electronic tags. The device can also be applied to microwave reflection communication, thereby improving the detection distance of a target object or a front-end device.
It should be noted that the above-described embodiments are only a part of the embodiments of the present invention, and not all of them. The various embodiments described above may be combined in various ways as desired. The terms and expressions used in the specification of the present invention are used for illustration only and are not intended to limit the claims of the present invention.
It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that changes could be made to the details of the above-described embodiments without departing from the underlying principles thereof. The scope of the invention is, therefore, to be determined only by the following claims, in which all terms are to be interpreted in their broadest reasonable sense unless otherwise indicated.
Any obvious modifications thereto, which would occur to one skilled in the art and which would not depart from the essence of the invention, would constitute a violation of the patent rights and would bear corresponding legal obligations.