Monitoring system for voltage tunable receivers and converters utilizing voltage comparison techniques

Abstract

A system for remotely monitoring or determining the channel to which a voltage tunable receiver (or CATV converter) has been tuned includes an encoder for measuring the magnitude of the tuning voltage applied to the tuning section of the receiver and for generating a channel representative digital code in response to the tuning voltage. The digital code thus generated is compatible with remotely located monitoring equipment, and represents the number of the channel to which the receiver is tuned. Since the tuning voltage is not linearly related to the channel number of the station being received, the encoder utilizes a read-only memory or the like for storing a coded representation relating the channel number to the tuning voltage. In a preferred embodiment, the coded representations are sequentially stored as tuning voltage representations in address locations of the memory corresponding to the respective channel numbers. The read-only memory locations are sequentially addressed, and the tuning voltage representations are compared with the amplitude of the tuning voltage currently being applied to the receiver. When the value of the tuning voltage representation equals or exceeds the amplitude of the tuning voltage, the sequential addressing is terminated and the address of the last accessed memory location is stored to provide a coded indication of the channel number of the station being received.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.