1. A piezoelectric crystal element for use in a sensor device for identifying at least one foreign material from environment, the crystal element comprising at least one crystal resonator in the form of an inverted mesa structure having a membrane-like region, which is substantially thinner as compared to end portion of the crystal resonator surrounding said membrane-like region and has a certain resonance frequency value, a surface region of said at least one crystal resonator being modified by reactive molecules of a kind capable of interacting with said at least one foreign material to yield a reaction product that effects a change in the resonance frequency of said membrane-like region from said certain resonance frequency value, said change being indicative of the identity and quantity of said at least one foreign material.
2. The element according to claim 1, wherein said at least one crystal resonator is a quartz crystal.
3. The element according to claim 1, wherein said at least one membrane-like region has a thickness of about several micrometers.
4. The element according to claim 1, wherein the membrane-like region of the at least one crystal resonator is coated with metal electrodes on opposite sides thereof, said electrodes being made of metal selected from Au, Pt and Al.
5. The element according to claim 4, wherein said electrodes are made of Au.
6. The element according to claim 4, wherein an Au-based glue is used for attaching the crystal element to a holder.
7. The element according claim 1, further comprising at least one additional crystal resonator in the form of an inverted mesa structure having a membrane-like region substantially thinner as compared to end portion of the additional crystal resonator surrounding said membrane-like region, and having a surface region modified by reactive molecules of a kind capable of interacting with a foreign material of the environment to yield a reaction product that effects a change in the resonance frequency of the additional membrane-like region.
8. The element according to claim 7, comprising an array of spaced-apart crystal resonators, each resonator being in the form of an inverted mesa structure formed with a pair of electrodes at opposite sides of the membrane-like region thereof and having the modified surface region, thereby defining an array of sensing regions excitable by the environment to produce the changes in the frequencies of crystal resonators.
9. The device according to claims 8, wherein a distance between each of the crystal resonators and its associated oscillator of the actuator utility is the same for all the crystal resonators.
10. The device according to claim 9, wherein the crystal resonators are arranged in spaced-apart relationship along a circular path, and are associated with the common oscillator located on a central axis of the circle.
11. The device according to claim 9, wherein the piezoelectric crystal element comprises a disc formed with a circular array of the piezoelectric quartz crystal resonators, and the actuator utility comprises the oscillator located in the center of the disc and associated with all the crystal resonators.
12. The device according to claim 9, wherein the piezoelectric crystal element comprises a disc formed with a circular array of the piezoelectric quartz crystal resonators, and the actuator utility comprises a plurality of oscillators located on said disc, each of the oscillators being associated with a corresponding one of the oscillators.
13. The element according to claim 7, wherein the surface regions of different crystal resonators are modified with different reactive molecules, thereby enabling detection of various foreign materials contained in the environment.
14. A piezoelectric sensor for use in a device for identifying at least one foreign material from environment, the piezoelectric sensor comprising the piezoelectric crystal element of any one of preceding claims with electrodes formed on opposite sides of said at least one membrane-like sensing region.
15. A piezoelectric sensor device for identifying at least one foreign material from environment, the device comprising the sensor of claim 14, and a control means operable for actuating said at least one crystal resonator, measuring the change in the resonance frequency of said at least one membrane-like region, and generating measured data indicative of the identity and quantity of said at least one foreign material.
16. The device according to claim 15, wherein the control means comprises an actuator utility for operating said at least one crystal resonator, and a detector utility for detecting the frequency of said at least one membrane-like region to enable the measurement of said change.
17. The piezoelectric crystal element according claim 1, wherein said reactive molecules form an organized, self-assembled monolayer (SAM), said monolayer consisting of receptor compounds comprising a linker that connects said compound to the surface of said substrate, an optional spacer, a structural element and an active head group.
18. The piezoelectric crystal element according claim 1, wherein said surface region of said at least one crystal resonator is modified by a polymeric layer.
19. The piezoelectric crystal element according to claim 18, wherein said polymeric layer comprises at least one polymeric material selected from the group consisting of: polypyrrole, polythiophene, polytriphenylene, poly(dimethylamino)pyrrole, polyaniline, poly(N-phenyl)aniline, poly(N-methyl)aniline, polyfluoroaniline, polypyrene, polyfluorene and polyfluoranthene.
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 method of early starting the operation of a descrambler, comprising the steps of:
receiving a synchronous byte of a transport packet in a group of m packets, where m is an integer;
generating an alignment index to indicate a location of said synchronous byte;
delivering said alignment index to said descrambler; and
loading an initialization sequence to said descrambler in accordance with said alignment index and starting an operation of said descrambler.
2. The method, as recited in claim 1, wherein said loading said initialization sequence step is to load said initialization sequence to a pseudo-random binary sequence (PRBS) register in said descrambler.
3. The method, as recited in claim 1, wherein said initialization sequences in accordance with said alignment indexes are from a look-up table.
4. The method, as recited in claim 2, wherein said initialization sequences in accordance with said alignment indexes are from a look-up table.
5. A method of communicating data from a transmitter to a receiver comprising coding an input signal with n-bit codewords, where n is an integer, converting the n-bit codewords to a serial bit-stream, generating a fixed length bit pseudo-random binary sequence with a pseudo-random binary sequence generator in the transmitter, generating a synchronization byte in response to a predetermined location in each repetition of the pseudo-random binary sequence in said pseudo-random binary sequence generator of said transmitter, synchronizing the coding of said input signal in accordance with said synchronization byte, scrambling said serial bit-stream with said pseudo-random binary sequence, transmitting said scrambled data to the receiver, generating a corresponding binary sequence with a pseudo-random binary sequence generator of said receiver, generating a corresponding alignment index in response to the predetermined location in each repetition of said corresponding binary sequence, descrambling the data at the receiver with said corresponding binary sequence and different initialization sequences in accordance with said alignment indexes.