1. A radar level gauge system, for determining a filling level of a product contained in a tank, said radar level gauge system comprising:
a transceiver for generating, transmitting and receiving electromagnetic signals;
a propagating device electrically connected to said transceiver and arranged to propagate a transmitted electromagnetic signal towards a surface of the product contained in the tank, and to
return echo signals resulting from reflections at impedance transitions encountered by the transmitted electromagnetic signal, including a surface echo signal resulting from reflection at said surface, back to said transceiver;
processing circuitry connected to said transceiver and configured to determine said filling level based on said surface echo signal; and
a bottom reflector arranged at a bottom of said tank, the bottom reflector comprising a plurality of phase-modifying structures, each being configured to modify a phase of said transmitted electromagnetic signal and to reflect phase-modified electromagnetic signals,
wherein the plurality of phase-modifying structures are arranged in such a way that phase-modified electromagnetic signals being reflected by different phase-modifying structures have different phases such as to interact to provide destructive interference towards said propagating device.
2. The radar level gauge system according to claim 1, comprising a substantially vertical tube arranged to guide the transmitted electromagnetic signal towards said surface of the product contained in the tank, and to guide the surface echo signal back from said surface,
said substantially vertical tube having an inner diameter and being arranged such that an open end of said substantially vertical tube is provided above said bottom reflector and distanced from said bottom reflector by a minimum distance.
3. The radar level gauge system according to claim 2, wherein said phase-modifying structures of the bottom reflector are arranged and configured in such a way that less power is reflected back into said open end of the substantially vertical tube than is reflected back outside said substantially vertical tube.
4. The radar level gauge system according to claim 1, wherein the bottom reflector is a substantially planar structure.
5. The radar level gauge system according to claim 4, wherein the bottom reflector is arranged in a plane substantially parallel with the bottom of said tank.
6. The radar level gauge system according to claim 3, wherein the bottom reflector is arranged in a plane being substantially perpendicular to said substantially vertical tube.
7. The radar level gauge system according to claim 4, wherein each of said phase-modifying structures comprises a first electrically floating conducting element, said first electrically floating conducting elements being mutually spaced apart in a first element plane.
8. The radar level gauge system according to claim 7, wherein said bottom reflector further comprises a conducting layer arranged in parallel with said first element plane and conductively insulated from said first element plane, said bottom reflector being arranged such that said first element plane is closer than said conducting layer to said propagating device.
9. The radar level gauge system according to claim 8, wherein said bottom reflector further comprises a layer of a dielectric material being arranged between said conducting layer and said first element plane.
10. The radar level gauge system according to claim 7, wherein each of said phase-modifying structures further comprises a second electrically floating conducting element, said second electrically floating conducting elements being mutually spaced apart in a second element plane,
the second element plane being arranged in parallel with said first element plane and conductively insulated from said first element plane.
11. The radar level gauge system according to claim 1, wherein said bottom reflector is configured to provide for a reference reflection signal being detectable by said radar level gauge system.
12. The radar level gauge system according to claim 11, wherein said bottom reflector is configured to allow a portion of said transmitted electromagnetic signal to be reflected directly by said bottom of the tank.
13. The radar level gauge system according to claim 12, wherein said bottom reflector has an opening formed therein to allow said portion of the transmitted electromagnetic signal to be reflected directly by said bottom of the tank.
14. A bottom reflector for use in a radar level gauge system, for determining a filling level of a product contained in a tank, said radar level gauge system comprising:
a transceiver for generating, transmitting and receiving electromagnetic signals;
a propagating device electrically connected to said transceiver and arranged to propagate a transmitted electromagnetic signal towards a surface of the product contained in the tank, and to return echo signals resulting from reflections at impedance transitions encountered by the transmitted electromagnetic signal, including a surface echo signal resulting from reflection at said surface, back to said transceiver;
processing circuitry connected to said transceiver and configured to determine said filling level based on said surface echo signal,
said bottom reflector comprising a plurality of phase-modifying structures, each being configured to modify a phase of said transmitted electromagnetic signal and to reflect phase-modified electromagnetic signals,
wherein the plurality of phase-modifying structures are arranged in such a way that phase-modified electromagnetic signals being reflected by different phase-modifying structures have different phases such as to interact to provide destructive interference in a direction perpendicular to said bottom reflector.
15. The bottom reflector according to claim 14, wherein said plurality of phase-modifying structures are arranged and configured to distribute the power reflected by the bottom reflector in a plurality of directions.
16. The bottom reflector according to claim 15, wherein said plurality of phase-modifying structures are arranged and configured to provide a reflection pattern being substantially rotationally symmetric in respect of a normal to said bottom reflector.
The claims below are in addition to those above.
All refrences to claim(s) which appear below refer to the numbering after this setence.
1. A computer-implemented method of generating a media editing project comprising:
providing a matrix switch and one or more adjacent objects;
establishing an initial rendering of the media editing project; and
negotiating buffer size and attribute characteristics between an inputoutput of the matrix switch and an inputoutput of adjacent objects, wherein negotiated buffers are utilized to communicate media content between the matrix switch and adjacent buffers by sharing a common buffer between inputs and outputs,
wherein the media editing project is established by a render engine, exposed from an operating system executing on a computing system implementing the media editing project,
wherein the matrix switch negotiates to be an allocator of buffers between the matrix switch and objects coupled to it to facilitate communication between the matrix switch and said objects, without the need for memory copy operation, and
wherein if the matrix switch is not able to be an allocator of a buffer, a memory copy operation is used to communicate media content with an associated object.
2. The method according to claim 1, further comprising
modifying inputoutput associations between objects in the initial rendering of the media editing project based at least in part on the negotiation.
3. The method according to claim 2, wherein inputoutput associations are communicative connections through one or more buffers.
4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the initial rendering of the media editing project included a separate buffer for each input and output of each object within the project, some of which are replaced with a single buffer shared between select input(s) and output(s) based, at least in part, on the negotiation.
5. The method according to claim 1, wherein memory copy operations are utilized to communicate information tofrom input(s) andor output(s) of the matrix switch for which the switch is not the allocator.
6. A storage medium comprising a plurality of executable instructions which, when executed, implement a method of claim 1.
7. A computing system comprising:
a storage medium having stored therein a plurality of executable instructions; and
an execution unit, coupled to the storage medium, to execute at least a subset of the plurality of executable instructions to implement a method according to claim 1.
8. A computer-implemented development system comprising:
computer-readable storage media;
instructions in the computer-readable storage media which, when executed, implement:
one or more processing chains; and
a matrix switch, coupled to the one or more processing chains, to recursively pass media content received from the one or more processing chains through one or more processing objects to implement a media editing project, wherein the matrix switch negotiates buffer size and attributes between the matrix switch and adjacent objects, wherein the negotiated buffers are utilized to communicate the media content between the matrix switch and adjacent buffers without requiring a buffer copy operation,
wherein the media editing project is established by a render engine, exposed from an operating system executing on a computing system implementing the development system,
wherein the matrix switch negotiates to be an allocator of buffers between the matrix switch and objects coupled to it to facilitate communication between the matrix switch and said objects, without the need for memory copy operation, and
wherein if the matrix switch is not able to be an allocator of a buffer, a memory copy operation is used to communicate media content with an associated object.
9. The development system according to claim 8, wherein each of the objects comprising the one or more processing chains attempt to negotiate buffer size and attribute characteristics in order to facilitate a shared buffer for communicating information between the objects of the processing chain.
10. The development system according to claim 9, wherein the objects establish shared buffers between an input of one object and the output of an upstream object upon negotiating mutually acceptable buffer size and attribute characteristics.
11. A matrix switch object embodied on a computer-readable media, the matrix switch object comprising:
a dynamically determined number of inputs to receive media content for a media editing project from one or more processing chains; and
a dynamically determined number of outputs, selectively coupling one or more of the dynamically determined inputs to one or more of the dynamically determined outputs, wherein a matrix switch object negotiates with objects coupled to each of the dynamically determined inputs and outputs to be an allocator for buffer size and attribute requirements to facilitate communication between objects and within the matrix switch object using a shared buffer of agreed upon size and attribute characteristics,
wherein the media editing project is established by a render engine, exposed from an operating system executing on a computing system implementing the matrix switch object, and
wherein if the matrix switch object is not able to be an allocator of a buffer, a memory copy operation is used to communicate media content with an associated object.
12. The matrix switch object according to claim 11, wherein an inputoutput coupling the object to the inputoutput of the matrix switch object each have an independent buffer, wherein communication occurs between the object and the matrix switch object by copying content from one buffer to another buffer.
13. The matrix switch object according to claim 11, wherein communication between the inputoutput of the matrix switch object and any other inputoutput, internal or external to the matrix switch object is performed using a memory copy operation.
14. The matrix switch object according to claim 1, wherein matrix switch object identifies buffer size and attribute requirements of all objects coupled to an inputoutput of the matrix switch object, and attempts to negotiate a common buffer size and attribute requirement for all switch input(s) and output(s).
15. The matrix switch object according to claim 1, further comprising a plurality of buffers, shared between the dynamically determined inputs and the dynamically determined outputs to buffer processed media content for subsequent use by objects coupled to the matrix switch object.