ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 17 -- United States Patent no. 12,416,520, issued on Sept. 16, was assigned to NEC Corp. (Tokyo).
"Specifying system, specifying apparatus, and specifying method" was invented by Yukihide Yoda (Tokyo), Koyo Mori (Tokyo) and Tadayuki Iwano (Tokyo).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A specifying system according to the present disclosure includes an optical fiber (30) laid along a levee (20) of a river (10), a communication unit (41) configured to receive, from the optical fiber (30), an optical signal containing a pattern that changes according to a state of the levee (20), and a specifying unit (51) configured to specify a water level of the river (10) based on the pattern t...