About some good (but neglected) ideas

(i.e. about what I have or have not patented)

Author: Glauco Masotti Keywords: patents, sharing existing cables for multiple purposes, floating point numbers with error estimation, reliable power line communication method, intelligent ni-cd, ni-mh battery charger, roller shutters, transforming an old refrigerator in a cellar, electronic watchdog, alarm systems, microwave Doppler motion sensor, automatic gain control (A !) and dynamic range compression device for audio systems.

Preface
In this document I am going to present, more or less in chronological order, some ideas in various fields, which I think are good and that are beneficial to me in my house, thus although they failed to yield to me big royalties, and although they seem unknown or neglected, they could be beneficial to you too. At the time I developed them I thought that these ideas could be original, not having seen, read or heard of anything similar. Unfortunately for some of them, after an in-depth search, it resulted that someone else thought and patented something similar years before, nevertheless these ideas seem ignored or forgotten, it may thus be a good thing to resume them. In some other cases I found no evidence in one sense or another, however I decided not to proceed for a patent, being too uncertain the possible revenues. Finally, for two of them, I decided to apply for a patent. I only applied for Italian patents, which are relatively cheap, at least for the first 3- years, particularly if one does everything autonomously, nevertheless they grant you priority and one year of time to e!tend your patent to the "uropean level, or even worldwide. #hese procedures are much more e!pensive, and are thus $ustified only if, in the first year, you have foreseen an interest in doing so. #hese two patents are both e!pired. In fact the first one is already 3% years old, the second one dates back to &%%', it(s thus relatively recent, but I decided not to pay ta!es to e!tend its validity beyond the fourth year. )ou can thus use freely the ideas that I am going to e!pose, which on the other hand are in principle already public, being accessible *although not easily+ at the "uropean or Italian archives. )et, my interest in publishing them here, as well as the other ideas that I have not patented, is at least that of establishing my paternity for them. #his should be an obvious conse,uence of the act of publishing this document, an act which should also imply that these ideas will not be patentable by anyone else in the future. -owever, in case you will use the ideas e!posed here, as they are, or after having elaborated them further, I am asking you at least of recogni.ing my contribution with a citation, where appropriate *I cannot hope in more concrete signs of recognition, but... who knows /+ It may look like strange that, although my main concern in my life has been for software systems, the two patents which I hold have to do with electronic hardware. #he fact is that, at the time of my main innovations in the software field *an issue which may deserve to be treated in a separate document+, asking patents for software code, or even ideas, was out of ,uestion. #his practice has come into use only in recent years and it0s still a debated issue, but at that time, copyright was the only viable solution for software protection. 1atenting ideas which translate themselves in concrete ob$ects is instead a much clearer issue, and also a more common practice, although, based on my e!perience, I certainly advice you to think twice before undertaking the burden and the e!penses of patenting something. 2ell, I do know someone who made a deal out of a patent, but, according to statistics 345, only a very small percentage of patents are economically successful, I am not an e!ception in regard to this and I am in the bulk of the losers. -owever, it may be wise to patent something which you are going to produce by yourself, as this will give you a competitive advantage in the market. If, instead, you have in mind to sell your idea, things are much more difficult. Unless you invented something which industry is already looking for, you may have an hard time in convincing others that your idea is good and that there can be a market for it, moreover, consolidated schemes are hard to break.

1. The first patent

67ecessity is the mother of invention8 and so it was for me. From time to time I have occasion to put at work my knowledge and passion for electronics to design and build some useful device which I cannot find on the

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market. In early 9%0s intrusion alarms based on radar:;oppler modules were still e!otic ob$ects. #hus I decided to design and build one myself, hoping to achieve 6superior8 performance. #his was the funny part of the pro$ect, but completing a fully functional system for my house, by installing and interconnecting the various modules, presented itself as a lot of tedious work. It0s so that I thought of e!ploiting some e!isting cables/ the coa!ial cable of the centrali.ed #< system, plus another wire, out of five which were formerly used to control an antenna rotor. =ommunication between the sensors and the central module was performed via current pulses, along the same wire carrying power, while the control unit communicated with the central module via tones fed though the coa!ial cable, which also provided the ground connection. >ust the coa!ial cable could have been used for everything, but the availability of the third wire simplified things a bit. ?therwise I should have modified the #< sockets, with a bypass for ;= current and low fre,uency signals for the connection of the various modules, and a block capacitor *having negligible impedance at @F fre,uency+ at line termination, like shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 1 : Aodified cable connections for integrated use. #his solution worked fine. It also appeared to me that nobody did something similar before. "verybody was using dedicated cables with multiple wires to connect the modules of an alarm system and they din0t even think of simplifying the connections, or of using e!isting cables, or of sharing them for multiple purposes *like for distributing the #< signal and for the alarm system+, with obvious savings of material and work, i.e. of total cost. Isn0t this an idea which can be e!ploited commerciallyB I though yes, thus I decided to patent it. At that time I knew nothing about patents, thus I asked the help of a professional study speciali.ed in the field. #he final form of the patent 3&5 was written by the patent professionals. -onestly, I always had the impression that they concentrated too much on the formalism and less on clarifying the substance of my idea, but I hope this is clear to you, in case you want to use it. I proposed the idea to producers of alarm systems and #< e,uipments. Come of them were active in both fieldsD #hese were the ideal candidates for accepting my proposal, while those active in only one field could have found interesting to widen they offer with products designed to be part of an integrated system, like described above. Unfortunately I had an hard time in all the phases of the business. #he first difficulty is to discover the right contact for each industry. Eetters not addressed to a specific person will be most likely ignored and left unanswered. Fut even if you succeed in writing or talking to the right person it will be difficult to get attention, to be understood and to succeed in rendering your idea seductive. 1eople are usually enthusiast of their own ideas, but tend to be tepid with the ideas of others. )our counterpart must see hisGher own convenience in endorsing your idea, and changes re,uire an effort, otherwise it0s much easier to continue along the usual, well known road, isn0t itB As a matter of fact, despite my efforts, I didn0t succeed to sell the patent. Aost of my letters remained unanswered and those who answered, or those whom I talked to, showed only a moderate interest in the thing. It0s so that, after an year or so, I desisted, and I left the patent in a drawer.

2. Floating point numbers with error estimation

Feing 6software inventions8 out of ,uestion, like I said before, the ne!t time I had to face the problem of patenting something or not, was after having discovered the properties of what I have called +floating point

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numbers with error estimates, . #he issue is e!tensively presented and discussed in my first publication on this site, while the latest revision of this work can be found in 335. #his method allows robust floating point computation to be carried out, thus solving a critical problem for several applications. It0s thus obvious that I thought of patenting the idea, and I was in doubt for some months. Finally I decided to publish it instead. #he motivations behind this decision were that times *in 4HH4+ were not mature for a commercial e!ploitation of the idea. In fact its implementation would re,uire a dedicated hardware, and hardware was still e!pensive in those years. Aoreover the applications which could benefit by the adoption of the method were still too confined in niches of the market, but a precondition for its success should be a wide acceptance of the method also by software developers. In short, the thing was too complicated to have enough probability of success. -owever I discovered later that times were not mature also for a publication of the method, given the hard times that I had, but finally the idea was published in 3 5. In subse,uent years the idea received some appreciations and someone even re-proposed it recently, unaware of my previous publication 3 5. #he document 335 reports the whole story, but regrettably, more than &% years after, I have to register that no practical application of the method has been implemented yet. It0s a meager satisfaction to conclude that, at least, I took the right decision, saving the money for the patent.

3. A reliable Power ine !ommunication method

Come years ago, after some power line faults in my house, due to overload, I thought it could be a good idea to build a system for monitoring power consumption, possibly with a display on my desk. #he solution which I devised consisted in an inductive sensor *a toroidal inductance coupled with the power cables+ placed $ust after the main power meter *i.e. where the power cables enter in my house+. #he related circuitry transforms the voltage induced by the absorbed current in a modulated train of pulses of a &4 I-. carrier, which are transmitted over the power line cables. #he fre,uency of the pulses is proportional to power consumption *to be more precise it(s proportional to the apparent power, as no correction for the power factor is applied, but this is in the to-do list /+. At the receiver point, in my office, the signal is recovered by amplification and filtering, then a demodulator drives a current meter which displays an indication correspondent to a moving average of the instantaneous power consumption *as a bonus, the device works also as a remote doorbell, which activates when a continuous tone is sent in place of the train pulses+. #he device appears as in Fig. &.

Fig. 2 : #he remote receiver and display of the power meter.

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After designing and making the various modules *I may publish also the schematics, sooner or later+ I firstly interconnected them 6the standard way8, i.e. using the hot-neutral *--7+ couple of cables. -owever I soon reali.ed that the propagating conditions were terribleD Attenuation was a lot greater than I e!pected, perhaps for the great number of electronic devices connected in pro!imity of the receiver, each of these is a shunt for the signal, because of the anti-@FI capacity across the hot-neutral line. 7evertheless, or perhaps for the same reason, the noise level was high, thus the CG7 ratio was very poor and also a lot variable, causing signal fading *all well known problems 3J5+. -owever, instead of complicating the device, to cope with these difficult conditions, I though/ 6but why I cannot use a different couple of cablesB8. In fact I thought that the neutral-ground couple of wires should be characteri.ed by more favorable propagating conditions/ the 6neutral-ground8 *7-K+ channel should e!hibit a more or less stable, mainly resistive impedance around 4%-&% ohms, plus no shunt capacitors, no varying loads, no noise spikes due to all sort of appliances turning on and off, or changing state, etc. #hus attenuation should be much lower and the CG7 ratio more favorable. #his in fact was what I reali.ed trying this connection channelD I thus wondered why the --7 channel is commonly used, rather than the 7-K channelD -ow could be possible that nobody has thought this thing beforeB #his in fact was not true. After a long research I found at least tree patents which e!plicitly refer to the use of the 7-K channel for powerline communications/ UC %4L &H *4H''+, UCJ%LLH3H *4HH4+ and UCL 4''L& *&%%&+, the idea thus was not new. Aoreover I recently discovered a Aaster thesis by #ao Mhong 3L5 *4HHL+, whose main focus is e!actly on comparing the characteristics of the two modes of connection, providing theoretical and e!perimental analysis. -e summari.ed his results as follows/ +.se of /eutral- round channels appears to have substantial advantages over use of 0ot-/eutral channels... It is suggested that /eutral- round should be used as the channel for *ower 1ine 2odem transmission whenever possible,. #his is in substantial agreement with my *more empirical+ conclusions. It(s thus a mystery to me why this, which appears to be a good idea it(s so neglected. If some e!pert in the field will ever read these notes I will appreciate hisGher comments on this issue. Anyway, fortunately it appeared enough soon and clear to me that the field was 6mined8 and that the idea of using the 7-K channel could not be patented.

". An intelligent #i$!d% #i$&h battery charger

I e!perienced a similar story, some time later. I needed an universal, intelligent 7i-=d, 7i-Ah battery charger. #he commercial products were not e!actly suited for my needs, therefore I thought of designing and building one by myself, according to my re,uirements. I e!amined a number of schematics which I could find on the web. Aost of them involved digital signal processing and were built around some comple!, dedicated I=(s. I wondered if the same tasks could be accomplished by a much simpler circuit. In fact I devised a much simpler solution employing only standard analog op-amps, but I couldn(t find any similar solution described anywhereD Co, once again I had to face the ,uestion of whether this was a new idea. Again I though that the field was too much investigated for this to be true, but, despite a long an tedious research I found nothing similar reported. 2hile continuing researches on e!isting patents *mainly UC and "U patents+, I started writing a draft of a possible patent I could apply for. Unfortunately, only after having almost completed it I discovered some patents describing, more or less, the same idea *so I wonder why the latest ones were released, IA-? this shows also some deficiencies in the patenting process+. In particular/ UCJ%3L&9 , UCJ4HL'9% and UCJLH4L& , are somewhat similar, although I may claim for some improvements in my embodiment. For your convenience, I am reporting in 3'5 6as is8 *don0t be too pickyD+ the draft of the 6missed8 patent. #he schematic of the preferred embodiment is what I actually reali.ed and that I am still using. It works fine for me, so maybe for you too, if you want to build a copy. #he only problems arise with old batteries, or batteries left discharged for a long time. #hese have an abnormal <-t characteristics which e!hibit a premature voltage peak. Fut it0s usually sufficient to repeat the charge cycle &-3 times to recover the battery and fully charge it.

'. Two ideas related to roller shutters

#he two ideas which follows are very simple, down to earth ones, and thus they look like trivial *like any idea, after they told you /+, however not all patents are complicatedD A lot of them deal with such simple things like these, but which solve practical problems, that0s why, some years ago, I considered patenting them. A possibility which then I discarded. About 4J years ago I substituted my old, self-built alarm system *reali.ed as described above+, with a commercial one. @eliable wireless models were available, thus I had anymore the problem of cabling the house to interconnect the various modules. Cuch systems are generally e!pandable, i.e. additional sensors
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or utility modules can be added to an e!isting system virtually without limits. In more recent years, to increase security, I added some thread sensors to the roller shutters.

Fig. 3 - Cectional view of a conventional mount of the thread. #he conventional method suggested for mounting the thread *see Fig. 3+ has the drawback that, if an intruder cuts the roller shutter above the bottom element, heGshe can fool the sensorD In fact the upper part of the cut roller shutter could be lifted without moving the thread. #he alternative mounting method that I devised, shown in Fig. , can overcome this problem.

Fig. 4 - =ut proof mount of the sensor thread

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2ell is this something that can be patentedB And, if yes, would it be worth to do thatB After all, once the trick is known, any installer could mount the thread this way without paying you any royalty. Fut a producer of sensors could think of being the first to suggest to do this, providing also the re,uired accessories together with the sensor, and impeding others to do so in force of a patent. I contacted the producer of my alarm system, and I asked, without e!plaining the details, if they could be interested in a thing like this, but they didn0t give a hang about it. After a couple of months without receiving an answer I gave up on trying further. #alking of windows with a roller shutter, if you have a room with such type of windows and you have the problem of placing an e!tractor fan in that room, there is a way to mount it without making a hole through the wall or through the glass of the window, in fact it0s usually possible to make the hole by cutting or drilling the casing of the roller shutter, and mount the e!tractor fan there, as shown in Fig. J.

Fig. 5 : "!tractor fan mounted on a roller shutter casing. #his solution has several advantages with respect to the alternatives. In this way the air is pumped inside the casing and from there it goes outside from the same opening used by the roller shutter. #his solution re,uires much less work than drilling a wall, is much less prone to undesired air or noise entering from outside and works e,ually well with the roller shutter open or closed, while placing the air e!tractor on the window works awfully with the roller shutter closed. -owever, considerations similar to those e!pressed above can be made. In this case I didn0t even try to propose the idea to some factory.

(. )ow to transform an old refrigerator in a cellar

Another down to earth idea of some years ago was that of transforming an old refrigerator, still perfectly working, but otherwise destined to recycling, in a *small+ cellar. I don0t have an underground basement suitable for storing wine or other goods which are well maintained at a temperature around 4&-4L N=, and conventional refrigerators cannot be set in that temperature range. #here are indeed special ones, designed for wine storage, but they are ,uite e!pensive. It0s so that I thought of adapting the old refrigerator to maintain an internal temperature in the desired range. In substance I reali.ed an e!ternal control, a special purpose thermostat, suitable for the task. #he thermostat simply drives the refrigerator onGoff, to maintain the inside temperature almost constant around a central value which can be set in the 44-49 N= range. #he most 6difficult8 task is to place the internal temperature sensor, which has to communicate with the e!ternal control module. ?ne could drill a small hole in the refrigerator case to allow passage of a couple of wires, but this is
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undesirable. An alternative is to pass the wires through the refrigerator opening, but very thin, better if flat, wires are re,uired in order not to compromise the retention of the rubber closure of the refrigerator. Another difficulty has to do with the fact that we are driving onGoff a relatively heavy inductive load, thus we need an ade,uate circuitry for that. #he doubt if patenting this thing or not vanished ,uite fast. 7o was the answer, in fact, in this case more that for others, I though that the elements of novelty where not sufficient to $ustify a patent. #he application was new, but it is an almost trivial composition of well known apparatuses. Aoreover the potential market is perhaps too thin. 7evertheless I am pretty sure that an hypothetical commercial producer of such a thing would find a way to protect itself from imitations with some sort of patent. ;on(t you think soB

*. An electronic watchdog
6-uhD8, you may say, is it still possible, after decades of developments, to invent something in the field of alarm and security systemsB And how can this 6electronic watchdog8 be any different from the many systems already out thereB Fasically the idea consists in supplying, to people that should be alerted, a rich and comprehensible analog information about the kind of perturbation acting in a guarded environment, in place of the usual binary form of 6alarm ?7G?FF8 commonly used. #he supplied information can take the form of audible *andGor visible+ signals, in order to make possible a level of human $udgment, for discriminating real threat conditions from disturbances, particularly for outdoor early warning alarm systems, where the chances of false alarms are higher, compared to those offered by systems operating in an indoor environment. I reali.ed a short video 3H5, to show how the prototype works. In the video you can see me moving around, simulating an intrusion from the terrace, and you can see the clatter emitted by the prototype, visible at the bottom of the screen. I built it around an old =E9HL% ;oppler module, which is visible in Fig. L. #he black speaker at the left, can be placed in a suitable position.

Fig. 6 #he 6electronic watchdog8 prototype. As you can reali.e the clatter is directly related to my movements. In the prototype I implemented only fre,uency multiplying of the microwave ;oppler signal, to map it in the audible range. In my patent, as an improvement of the techni,ue, I also proposed a more comple! processing of the signal, to compensate for the distance of the target, in order to make the amplitude of the output signal proportional to the real si.e of the target and not to its apparent si.e *which decreases with the distance of the target+. In the prototype the signal resulting from the fre,uency multiplier is fed directly to the audio amplifier as is, without further filtering or processing, thus the effect is ,uite crude and can certainly be improved, but... an alarm sound need not to be gentle. Isn(t itB In the video you may notice what follows/ - #he amplifier is normally s,uelched, thus a weak sound can be heard in correspondence with small or initial movements of the target *i.e. me, in this case+. #hen, as in conventional systems, if the ;oppler signal is

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strong enough and lasts long enough *for at least &G3 of a second, with current regulation+ the amplifier is activated and a strong sound is heard. #his e!plains the delay of intervention which can be observed upon motion start. - #he sound tone is proportional to the speed of the target. #he sound volume is somewhat proportional to the target(s apparent si.e, although the amplifier saturates ,uickly, thus the device e!hibits a ,uite scarce dynamic range. #his should be improved. - #he circuit processing the signal from the diode mi!er has low noise and it(s set for high sensitivity. #hen follows a band pass filter which cuts above 3%% -. and with a very low corner fre,uency of about J -., in order to detect also slowly moving targets. #hese conditions should account for some instability, which causes the prolonged reaction of the circuit, which dampens slowly after motion stops. #his also should be improved. #he outside terrace is an e!ample of uncontrolled or semi-controlled environment, where various disturbances, which can be misinterpreted by a sensor as a human body moving in the surveilled area, may occur. #here are many kind of outdoor, intrusions sensors 34%5, but the most practical ones are motion detectors based on microwave *A2+ or passive infrared *1I@+ technologies. A2 based sensors, in principle, are sensible to any reflective ob$ect, of sufficient apparent si.e, moving, not too slow and not too fast, in the surveilled area. Animals are obvious candidates for generating false alarms *even if you don0t have dogs or cats, you cannot e!clude the presence of birds and other animals in an outdoor environmentD+, but wind and gravity can move also unanimated ob$ects. 1I@ sensors, instead, are sensible to any fast enough variation in the temperature field of the surveilled area. Cuch kind of variations can be caused by humans, but also by animals, by intermittent e!position to the sun of ob$ects *caused for e!ample by the wind moving plants or tents, thus generating variable shadows+, by intermittent reflections of sunrays toward the sensor. It is also known that a 1I@ sensor can be triggered by car headlights or other artificial lights directed toward it 34%5. ?ther known sources of disturbances for outdoor 1I@ sensors are the e!ternal units of air conditioners, because they can warm up ,uickly and they also e!pel hot air. Finally we should take into account unforeseeable and e!ceptional events, for instance I had once a photocell messed up by the fireworks fired by my neighbor at the new year0s eve, how would have reacted a 1I@ sensor to such a perturbationB #hese are only some e!amples of disturbances that can cause false alarms, particularly if two or more of these are concomitantD Ay e!periments indicate that sensors commonly sold, even those which combine A2 and 1I@ technologies, are ,uite sub$ect to false alarms in an outdoor environment. 7evertheless we should keep in mind that, re,uiring both sections to be activated, also the probability of detection is reducedD #his can be a problem particularly in hot summer days, when the spatial field of temperatures tend to uniform around 3'N= , so that a human body moving in this hot field may not be sensed 34%5. Although the most recent *and e!pensive+ sensors employ sophisticated signal processing, which considerably reduce the probability of false alarms *without reducing too much the probability of detection+, IA-? the problem is still an open issue. In fact, I believe that a surveillance system should not give false alarms at allD "ven a false detection every 3 or years can greatly reduce the confidence in the system of the owner, and of the neighbors even more. #herefore I was not confident in adopting a conventional approach for this application, i.e. letting an outdoor sensor activate a siren for a predetermined amount of time *not to talk of triggering an automatic call to the policeD+. In fact, you may agree with me that a siren could inappropriately awake you and your neighbors, but most of all it would not let you know what0s really going on. #hus I had the idea of developing a system where the alarm sounds are always and strictly correlated with the perturbation of the controlled environment. If the alarm activates for an irrelevant reason, contrarily to a siren, it should also recover ,uickly a ,uiet condition, creating minimal disturbance to you and perhaps no perceivable disturbance to your neighbors. If instead a real intrusion is taking place, this should manifest clearly to you, and also to your neighbors, by the produced sounds, so that you should be able to decide on appropriate actions to be taken. #his time I had clues for thinking that the idea could likely be original and economically e!ploitable, thus I put a lot of effort in searching across the net, and particularly in "uropean and UC databases, for similar ideas patented or published. #he only approach, to some e!tent similar, that I discovered was in a patent by #rucchi and 7egro *UCL%944H3+. -owever their patent presented a more complicated and IA-? less effective implementation of the idea, also restricting its potential application to the specific case of soliciting intervention of remotely located surveillance personnel, thus lacking in generality, while my approach,
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although it(s particularly suited for outdoor, early warning systems, widens the potential applications to any kind of surveillance system. #herefore I decided that it could be worth to patent the idea and so I did 395. Fut then, as I don0t have a factory involved in this business, and it wasn0t my intention to set up one for the occasion, as my main professional interests were in other fields, I had in mind to sell the patent to someone who could e!ploit it in the best manner, having already technical, productive and commercial capacity for doing it. #hus I contacted a number of companies in the field, sending them the abstract of my patent, plus some additional information. ?f course I started at first with those well known Italian and "uropean companies playing a main role in our local market. Fut I received no answer at all. Ouite disappointed I tried to e!tend contacts to other smaller, less known companies, as well as to companies outside "U, including the multinationals. #he great ma$ority of the companies to whom I wrote didn0t respond at all. I think this means that there is something wrong in the system, isn0t itB A few others replied politely something like/ +7han8s for contacting us. 9e wish you success with your idea, but we are not interested in developing it,. Fetter than nothing, but still a discouraging no. It0s so that, une!pectedly, when my residual hopes were about to vanish, one of the multinationals manifested an interest in the thingD I must say that this time I had the illusion that I could make the big deal, but after some months of correspondence the cold shower came/ also the multinational replied with a polite, but substantial 6no8. It may be worth recalling, at this point, what I wrote at the end of the preface and in sect. 4.

+. An automatic gain control ,A-!. and dynamic range compression de/ice for audio systems
I recently reali.ed this AK= device which is described in 3445. 2hat is this forB Fasically I was tired of continually ad$usting the audio level each time I changed source in my audio system. #his device accomplishes the task automatically, precisely and ,uickly. #he ma!imum audio level is maintained nearly constant over time. ;ifferent settings determine how much dynamic range of the input source is preserved, ranging from a negligible alteration to a substantial amount of dynamic range compression. Unfortunately this function is not provided in standard consumer audio systems, moreover I couldn(t find any consumer product with the desired characteristics. It(s so that I decided to design and build a suitable device myself. Come of the solutions that I devised appeared to me, if not absolutely new, at least unusual. #herefore I was in doubt if some of these ideas could be patented or not. #hus I spent a few days in an e!hausting search throughout patent databases, to ascertain if these ideas were really unprecedented or not. #he result was somewhat surprising. In fact I found three patents were some solutions similar to those adopted in my design appear, although with a different implementation and in different conte!ts. -owever none of these patents recogni.e the positive implication of the solutions which are relevant to me, because they are not the main focus of the patents and conse,uently they are not highlighted, nor claimed. It seems that the authors used certain methods incidentally, without completely understanding what they didD 7evertheless it was also apparent that similar solutions, although unnoticed or not completely understood, already appeared in the literature, in one form or another. #hat(s why, like in other cases, I e!cluded the possibility of patenting this work, and I opted instead for publishing it.

!e"erences
345 - http/GGwww.inventionstatistics.comGInnovationP@iskP#akingPInventors.html 3&5 - Klauco Aasotti, 6Cistema integrato di allarme per ambienti8, I#44JLL3' *F?4H9&A%%3 HH+, 4H9&. 335 : Klauco Aasotti, 6(loating point numbers with error estimation (revised),, >an. &%4&, http/GGar!iv.orgGabsG4&%4.JH'J 3 5 - Klauco Aasotti, 6(loating point numbers with error estimation,, =omputer-Aided ;esign, vol. &J, no. H, pp. J& -J39, Cept. 4HH3. 3J5 - 1hil Cutterlin and 2alter ;owney, 6A *ower 1ine !ommunication 7utorial : !hallenges and 7echnologies,, "chelon =orporation,4HH9, www&.ing.unipi.itGQa%%93&9GdocumentiGpowerlinesG1owerEine=omGFibliografiaG@if3L.pdf

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