Patent Publication Number: US-2022229869-A1

Title: System and method for tokenization of data

Description:
FIELD 
     The disclosure relates generally to tokenization of data and particularly to advanced methods of tokenization of data. 
     BACKGROUND 
     Tokenization is a popular technique for protecting sensitive data in a way that makes compliance with industry regulations cheaper and easier. The simplest form of tokenization comprises a lookup table which is used to convert a plaintext value P into a token T via T=R (P) in some table R. To do this, a distinct table R is needed for each possible token type, as determined by a radix and a string length. For example, for a radix of 10 for a six-digit string, a table of all possible six-digit values is needed to tokenize the strings (a table size of 10 6 ). For even larger strings, the table sizes can be very large. For example, for a 16-digit number, if all possible combinations were used, a table size of 10 16  would be needed. 
     SUMMARY 
     These and other needs are addressed by the various embodiments and configurations of the present disclosure. A non-tokenized string is received. For example, a non-tokenized string could be a credit card number. The non-tokenized string is partitioned into a plurality of non-tokenized substrings. For example, if the credit card number is 16 digits long, it may be partitioned into non-tokenized substrings that are three, six, and seven digits in length. The non-tokenized substrings are used as an index into a plurality of lookup tables. As a result of the indexing, a plurality of tokenized substrings are retrieved. The plurality of tokenized substrings are combined into a tokenized string. The tokenized string is used as a token that represents the credit card number without disclosing the actual credit card number. 
     The reverse of the above process can also occur. The tokenized string is portioned into a plurality of tokenized substrings. The plurality of tokenized substrings are used as an index into a plurality of tokenization tables. In response to using the plurality of tokenized substrings to index into the plurality of tokenization tables, a plurality of non-tokenized substrings are retrieved. The plurality of non-tokenized substrings combined into a non-tokenized string. 
     The present disclosure provides a number of advantages over the prior art. As discussed above, traditional tokenization can result in extremely large database tables if the length of the string (e.g., a number) is long. In addition, if there are a large number of strings that need to be tokenized, the amount of storage required can be extremely large and cost prohibitive. If a vendor, such as a cloud service provider, has to support multiple customers who need tokenized data, the hardware storage costs can be enormous. By portioning the non-tokenized strings into smaller pieces, the size of the lookup tables are dramatically reduced in comparison to the prior art. This results in a much more efficient database that can support a much larger number/length of tokenized strings than was previously possible using the same hardware. 
     Because the system can support a larger number of tokenized strings using the same hardware, it allows the system to support a higher number of transactions more efficiently and at a lower cost. The described embodiments make the existing hardware more efficient while reducing the overall cost to implement a tokenization system on a large scale which was impossible previously. These and other advantages will be apparent from the disclosure contained herein. 
     In addition, the tokenization processes described herein are designed to support transactions (e.g., credit card transactions) in real-time. Being able to support transactions in real-time is clearly something that cannot be done practically using a mental process. Instead, the tokenization processes described herein will only work practically in a computerized environment. 
     The phrases “at least one”, “one or more”, “or”, and “and/or” are open-ended expressions that are both conjunctive and disjunctive in operation. For example, each of the expressions “at least one of A, B and C”, “at least one of A, B, or C”, “one or more of A, B, and C”, “one or more of A, B, or C”, “A, B, and/or C”, and “A, B, or C” means A alone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and C together, or A, B and C together. 
     The term “a” or “an” entity refers to one or more of that entity. As such, the terms “a” (or “an”), “one or more” and “at least one” can be used interchangeably herein. It is also to be noted that the terms “comprising”, “including”, and “having” can be used interchangeably. 
     The term “automatic” and variations thereof, as used herein, refers to any process or operation, which is typically continuous or semi-continuous, done without material human input when the process or operation is performed. However, a process or operation can be automatic, even though performance of the process or operation uses material or immaterial human input, if the input is received before performance of the process or operation. Human input is deemed to be material if such input influences how the process or operation will be performed. Human input that consents to the performance of the process or operation is not deemed to be “material”. 
     Aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, an entirely software embodiment (including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or an embodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may all generally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module” or “system.” Any combination of one or more computer readable medium(s) may be utilized. The computer readable medium may be a computer readable signal medium or a computer readable storage medium. 
     A computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but not limited to, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, or semiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of the computer readable storage medium would include the following: an electrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flash memory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or any suitable combination of the foregoing. In the context of this document, a computer readable storage medium may be any tangible medium that can contain, or store a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. 
     A computer readable signal medium may include a propagated data signal with computer readable program code embodied therein, for example, in baseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal may take any of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to, electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. A computer readable signal medium may be any computer readable medium that is not a computer readable storage medium and that can communicate, propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with an instruction execution system, apparatus, or device. Program code embodied on a computer readable medium may be transmitted using any appropriate medium, including but not limited to wireless, wireline, optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination of the foregoing. 
     The terms “determine”, “calculate” and “compute,” and variations thereof, as used herein, are used interchangeably and include any type of methodology, process, mathematical operation or technique. 
     The term “means” as used herein shall be given its broadest possible interpretation in accordance with 35 U.S.C., Section 112(f) and/or Section 112, Paragraph 6. Accordingly, a claim incorporating the term “means” shall cover all structures, materials, or acts set forth herein, and all of the equivalents thereof. Further, the structures, materials or acts and the equivalents thereof shall include all those described in the summary, brief description of the drawings, detailed description, abstract, and claims themselves. 
     The preceding is a simplified summary to provide an understanding of some aspects of the disclosure. This summary is neither an extensive nor exhaustive overview of the disclosure and its various embodiments. It is intended neither to identify key or critical elements of the disclosure nor to delineate the scope of the disclosure but to present selected concepts of the disclosure in a simplified form as an introduction to the more detailed description presented below. As will be appreciated, other embodiments of the disclosure are possible utilizing, alone or in combination, one or more of the features set forth above or described in detail below. Also, while the disclosure is presented in terms of exemplary embodiments, it should be appreciated that individual aspects of the disclosure can be separately claimed. 
    
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         FIG. 1  is a block diagram of a first illustrative system for tokenizing data. 
         FIG. 2  is a flow/block diagram of a system for taking a non-tokenized string and converting it to a tokenized string. 
         FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of a process for taking a non-tokenized string and converting it to a tokenized string. 
         FIG. 4  is a flow/block diagram of a system for taking a tokenized string and converting it to non-tokenized string. 
         FIG. 5  is a flow diagram of a process for taking a tokenized string and converting it to non-tokenized string. 
     
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       FIG. 1  is a block diagram of a first illustrative system  100  for tokenizing data. The first illustrative system  100  comprises communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N, a network  110 , and a communication system  120 . 
     The communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N can be or may include any communication endpoint device that can communicate on the network  110 , such as a Personal Computer (PC), a telephone, a video system, a cellular telephone, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA), a tablet device, a notebook device, a server, a smart phone, a point-of sales terminal, a credit card reader, and/or the like. The communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N are devices where a communication sessions ends. The communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N are not network elements that facilitate and/or relay a communication session in the network, such as a communication manager or router. As shown in  FIG. 1 , any number of communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N may be connected to the network  110 . 
     The network  110  can be or may include any collection of communication equipment that can send and receive electronic communications, such as the Internet, a Wide Area Network (WAN), a Local Area Network (LAN), a Voice over IP Network (VoIP), the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), a packet switched network, a circuit switched network, a cellular network, a combination of these, and the like. The network  110  can use a variety of electronic protocols, such as Ethernet, Internet Protocol (IP), Hypertext Markup Language, JavaScript, Web Real-Time Protocol (Web RTC), and/or the like. Thus, the network  110  is an electronic communication network configured to carry messages via packets and/or circuit switched communications. 
     The communication system  120  can be or may include any type of device that can communicate with the communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N, such as database server, a transaction server, a credit card management server, a web server, and/or the like. The communication system  120  further comprises a tokenization module  121  and a database  122 . 
     The tokenization module  121  can be or may include any hardware/software that manages tokenization/encryption of data. Although not shown in  FIG. 1 , the tokenization module  121  may distributed between the communication system  120  and the communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N. For example, the communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N may be credit card readers that also have a tokenization module  121 . The tokenization module  121  performs the tokenization processes described herein. 
     The database  122  can be or may include any hardware/software that can store information, such as, a relational database, an objected oriented database, a file system, a SQL database, a document store, a graph database, and/or the like. Although not shown, the database  122  may be a distributed database that is distributed on different devices on the network  110 . The database  122  contains lookup tables that are described below in  FIGS. 2-5 . 
       FIG. 2  is a flow/block diagram of a system  200  for taking a non-tokenized string  201  and converting it to a tokenized string  206 . Illustratively, the communication endpoints  101 A- 101 N, the network  110 , the communication system  120 , the tokenization module  121 , and the database  122  are stored-program-controlled entities, such as a computer or microprocessor, which performs the method of  FIGS. 2-5  and the processes described herein by executing program instructions stored in a computer readable storage medium, such as a memory (i.e., a computer memory, a hard disk, and/or the like). Although the methods described in  FIGS. 2-5  are shown in a specific order, one of skill in the art would recognize that the steps in  FIGS. 2-5  may be implemented in different orders and/or be implemented in a multi-threaded environment. Moreover, various steps may be omitted or added based on implementation. 
       FIG. 2  comprises a non-tokenized string  201 , non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N, lookup tables  203 A- 203 N, hash processes  204 A- 204 N, tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N, and tokenized string  206 . The non-tokenized string  201  can be a text string (e.g., a user name), a number (e.g., a social security number), a number of bytes, a number of words, a number of long words, an integer, a floating point number, an array, or any type of parameter/value. The non-tokenized string  201  may be any length. 
     In the discussion below, the symbol “∥” denotes a concatenation (combining the strings), so that “a∥b” represents the string formed by the concatenation of the two strings a and b. As described herein, concatenation/combining may also mean the strings are concatenated/combined in reverse order or different orders. The partition process begins by partitioning the non-tokenized string  201  (P) into P=P 1 ∥P 2 ∥ . . . ∥ P n , wherein the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N are P 1  to P n . Each of the individual non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N (P i ) have a property that is min_length≤|P i |≤max_length. 
     The partitioning of the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N may be done pseudo-randomly based on the values s and Q where s is a secret value (e.g., an initial key) and Q is an encoding of a security policy. The security policy may include information, such as, which application a token works with, which customer the token is designed to be used by, and/or the like. The value s is secret wherein the value Q may not necessarily be kept secret. 
     In one embodiment, the value s∥Q are used to initialize a Pseudorandom Number Generator (PRNG). For example, subsequent output values from the PRNG could be used to determine the length of P i  for each of the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N. Other ways to choose the lengths of the substrings are also possible. For example, the length of P i  may be user administrable and/or may be based on a different algorithm. 
     The non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N are used as an index into the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N. In order to do this, the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N (R i ) for i need to be in the range (min_length . . . max_length) for the size of the length of P i . For illustrative purposes, consider the following example. To tokenize strings of decimal digits, the process may use five tables of length 10 2 , 10 3 , 10 4 , 10 5 , 10 6 . These tables are randomly generated and contain all possible n-digit values for each value of n. Depending on the length of the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N, the appropriate lookup table  203  is selected. For example, if the length of the non-tokenized substring  202 A is three, then the indexed lookup table  203 A would be the lookup table  203  with a length of 10 3 . The lookup tables  203 A- 202 N may be pre-generated and dynamically selected based on the pseudo-random generation of the non-tokenized substring lengths. 
     Once the non-tokenized string  201  (P) is partitioned into P=P 1 ∥P 2 ∥ . . . ∥P n , the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N are tokenized into the tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N T=T 1 ∥T 2 ∥ . . . ∥T n  based on the indexing and the hash processes  204 A- 204 N as shown in  FIG. 2 . In  FIG. 2 , T 0 =H(s∥Q)  204 A where H is a suitable cryptographic hash function (e.g., Secure Hashing Algorithm-256 (SHA-256), Hash based Message Authentication Code (HMAC), Message Digest (MD) 5, etc.). It is not necessary to use the same values of s and Q in this step versus the partitioning step. 
     The output of the hash process  204 A (the tokenized substring  205 A) is used as an input into the next stage (e.g.,  204 B if N=three or more). For i=1 . . . n, calculate T i =T i-1 +R |Pi| (P i +H(s∥Q∥i)). In other words, the cryptographic hash function H used in step  204 N may be different that the one used in the previous step (e.g.,  204 A), but the same notation is used herein to keep things simpler and more understandable. This process implements an approach that similar to the cipher-block chaining method used in the CBC mode of the AES encryption algorithm; however the key difference of novelty is that the application of the AES algorithm is replaced by an appropriate lookup table  203  in which the lookup table  203  being used is determined by the length of the substring P i . 
     The output of the hashing algorithms  204 A- 204 N may produce tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N that are a different lengths than the corresponding non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N. For example, if the length of the non-tokenized substring  202 A is five digits long, the tokenized substring  205 A may be longer, equal to, or shorter than five digits long based on the particular hashing process  204 A that is being used. 
     Assuming that both the server secret value s and the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N (R i ) contain elements that were randomly generated, this method of tokenization is secure, in that recovering the non-tokenized string  201  (P) from the tokenized string  206  (T) is no easier than guessing the output of the PRNG and the values of the tokenization tables R i . 
     This method of tokenization requires a relatively small amount of storage for the tables R i  of random values versus the prior art. Existing approaches require a much larger amount of storage for similar strings. This approach can attain similar levels of security with a much smaller amount of database storage, greatly expanding the situations where it is practical to use. 
       FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of a process for taking a non-tokenized string  201  and converting it to a tokenized string  206 .  FIG. 3  is a flow diagram of  FIG. 2 . 
     The process starts in step  300 . The process waits, in step  302 , to determine if a non-tokenized string  201  has been received. If a non-tokenized string  201  has not been received in step  302 , the process of step  302  repeats. 
     If the non-tokenized string  201  has been received in step  302 , the process partitions the non-tokenized string  201  into non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N in step  304 . The partitioning process of step  304  may work in the manner described in  FIG. 2 . The process uses the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N as an index into the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N in step  306 . The tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N are retrieved from the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N in step  308 . 
     If hashing is to be used in step  310 , the tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N are hashed according to rules as described previously in  FIG. 2 . The tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N are combined into the tokenized sting  206  in step  312 . The process then goes back to step  302 . The tokenized substring is now a secure tokenized string. 
       FIG. 4  is a flow diagram of a process  400  for taking a tokenized string  206  and converting it to non-tokenized string  201 .  FIG. 2  comprises the non-tokenized string  201 , the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N, the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N, inverse tokenization processes  404 A- 404 N, the tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N, and the tokenized string  206 . 
     The tokenized string  206  is partitioned into the plurality of substrings  205 A- 205 N. The partitioning uses the same lengths as described in  FIGS. 2-3 . To detokenize a tokenized substring  205 , the process needs to find the index in the lookup table  203 . For example, say the tokenized substring  205  “abc” is element  100  in the lookup table  204 . The value  100  is the sum of two things: the index to get the non-tokenized substring  202  and the hash that was used to originally tokenize the tokenized substring  205 . The detokenization process has everything that it needs to do an inverse tokenization to determine the non-tokenized substring  202 . Let&#39;s assume that that the inverse tokenization of the value “abc” happens to be 10. That tells the system that value 100 is really the sum of the inverse tokenization (10) plus 90. The value of 90 is used to index into the lookup table  203  to get the non-tokenized substring  202 . The tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N are then combined to produce the non-tokenized substring  201 . 
       FIG. 5  is a flow diagram of a process for taking a tokenized string  206  and converting it to non-tokenized string  201 .  FIG. 5  is a flow diagram of  FIG. 4 . 
     The process starts in step  500 . The process determines, in step  502 , if a tokenized string  206  has been received. If the tokenized string  206  has not been received in step  502 , the process repeats step  502 . If the tokenized string  206  has been received in step  502 , the process portions the tokenized sting  206  into a plurality of tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N in step  504 . 
     The tokenized substrings  205 A- 205 N are used as an index into the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N in step  506 . In response to indexing into the lookup tables  203 A- 203 N, the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N are retrieved in step  508 . If a hashing process is used in step  510 , an inverse tokenization of the non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N is performed according to hashing rules. The non-tokenized substrings  202 A- 202 N are then combined into the non-tokenized substring  202  in step  512 . The process then goes to step  502 . 
     The above processes may be used for multiple non-tokenized strings  201 . In addition, the above processes may work where there are multiple user/entities using the same lookup tables  203 A- 203 N or where there are separate lookup tables for multiple users/entities. 
     The above processes may be performed in different orders as one of skill in the art would recognize. For example, the inverse tokenization step  510  may be performed before the indexing step  506 . Likewise, the hashing step  310  may be performed before the indexing step  306 . 
     Examples of the processors as described herein may include, but are not limited to, at least one of Qualcomm® Snapdragon® 800 and 801, Qualcomm® Snapdragon® 610 and 615 with 4G LTE Integration and 64-bit computing, Apple® A7 processor with 64-bit architecture, Apple® M7 motion coprocessors, Samsung® Exynos® series, the Intel® Core™ family of processors, the Intel® Xeon® family of processors, the Intel® Atom™ family of processors, the Intel Itanium® family of processors, Intel® Core® i5-4670K and i7-4770K 22nm Haswell, Intel® Core® i5-3570K 22nm Ivy Bridge, the AMD® FX™ family of processors, AMD® FX-4300, FX-6300, and FX-8350 32nm Vishera, AMD® Kaveri processors, Texas Instruments® Jacinto C6000™ automotive infotainment processors, Texas Instruments® OMAP™ automotive-grade mobile processors, ARM®  Cortex™-M  processors, ARM® Cortex-A and ARIV1926EJS™ processors, other industry-equivalent processors, and may perform computational functions using any known or future-developed standard, instruction set, libraries, and/or architecture. 
     Any of the steps, functions, and operations discussed herein can be performed continuously and automatically. 
     However, to avoid unnecessarily obscuring the present disclosure, the preceding description omits a number of known structures and devices. This omission is not to be construed as a limitation of the scope of the claimed disclosure. Specific details are set forth to provide an understanding of the present disclosure. It should however be appreciated that the present disclosure may be practiced in a variety of ways beyond the specific detail set forth herein. 
     Furthermore, while the exemplary embodiments illustrated herein show the various components of the system collocated, certain components of the system can be located remotely, at distant portions of a distributed network, such as a LAN and/or the Internet, or within a dedicated system. Thus, it should be appreciated, that the components of the system can be combined in to one or more devices or collocated on a particular node of a distributed network, such as an analog and/or digital telecommunications network, a packet-switch network, or a circuit-switched network. It will be appreciated from the preceding description, and for reasons of computational efficiency, that the components of the system can be arranged at any location within a distributed network of components without affecting the operation of the system. For example, the various components can be located in a switch such as a PBX and media server, gateway, in one or more communications devices, at one or more users&#39; premises, or some combination thereof. Similarly, one or more functional portions of the system could be distributed between a telecommunications device(s) and an associated computing device. 
     Furthermore, it should be appreciated that the various links connecting the elements can be wired or wireless links, or any combination thereof, or any other known or later developed element(s) that is capable of supplying and/or communicating data to and from the connected elements. These wired or wireless links can also be secure links and may be capable of communicating encrypted information. Transmission media used as links, for example, can be any suitable carrier for electrical signals, including coaxial cables, copper wire and fiber optics, and may take the form of acoustic or light waves, such as those generated during radio-wave and infra-red data communications. 
     Also, while the flowcharts have been discussed and illustrated in relation to a particular sequence of events, it should be appreciated that changes, additions, and omissions to this sequence can occur without materially affecting the operation of the disclosure. 
     A number of variations and modifications of the disclosure can be used. It would be possible to provide for some features of the disclosure without providing others. 
     In yet another embodiment, the systems and methods of this disclosure can be implemented in conjunction with a special purpose computer, a programmed microprocessor or microcontroller and peripheral integrated circuit element(s), an ASIC or other integrated circuit, a digital signal processor, a hard-wired electronic or logic circuit such as discrete element circuit, a programmable logic device or gate array such as PLD, PLA, FPGA, PAL, special purpose computer, any comparable means, or the like. In general, any device(s) or means capable of implementing the methodology illustrated herein can be used to implement the various aspects of this disclosure. Exemplary hardware that can be used for the present disclosure includes computers, handheld devices, telephones (e.g., cellular, Internet enabled, digital, analog, hybrids, and others), and other hardware known in the art. Some of these devices include processors (e.g., a single or multiple microprocessors), memory, nonvolatile storage, input devices, and output devices. Furthermore, alternative software implementations including, but not limited to, distributed processing or component/object distributed processing, parallel processing, or virtual machine processing can also be constructed to implement the methods described herein. 
     In yet another embodiment, the disclosed methods may be readily implemented in conjunction with software using object or object-oriented software development environments that provide portable source code that can be used on a variety of computer or workstation platforms. Alternatively, the disclosed system may be implemented partially or fully in hardware using standard logic circuits or VLSI design. Whether software or hardware is used to implement the systems in accordance with this disclosure is dependent on the speed and/or efficiency requirements of the system, the particular function, and the particular software or hardware systems or microprocessor or microcomputer systems being utilized. 
     In yet another embodiment, the disclosed methods may be partially implemented in software that can be stored on a storage medium, executed on programmed general-purpose computer with the cooperation of a controller and memory, a special purpose computer, a microprocessor, or the like. In these instances, the systems and methods of this disclosure can be implemented as program embedded on personal computer such as an applet, JAVA® or CGI script, as a resource residing on a server or computer workstation, as a routine embedded in a dedicated measurement system, system component, or the like. The system can also be implemented by physically incorporating the system and/or method into a software and/or hardware system. 
     Although the present disclosure describes components and functions implemented in the embodiments with reference to particular standards and protocols, the disclosure is not limited to such standards and protocols. Other similar standards and protocols not mentioned herein are in existence and are considered to be included in the present disclosure. Moreover, the standards and protocols mentioned herein and other similar standards and protocols not mentioned herein are periodically superseded by faster or more effective equivalents having essentially the same functions. Such replacement standards and protocols having the same functions are considered equivalents included in the present disclosure. 
     The present disclosure, in various embodiments, configurations, and aspects, includes components, methods, processes, systems and/or apparatus substantially as depicted and described herein, including various embodiments, subcombinations, and subsets thereof. Those of skill in the art will understand how to make and use the systems and methods disclosed herein after understanding the present disclosure. The present disclosure, in various embodiments, configurations, and aspects, includes providing devices and processes in the absence of items not depicted and/or described herein or in various embodiments , configurations, or aspects hereof, including in the absence of such items as may have been used in previous devices or processes, e.g., for improving performance, achieving ease and\or reducing cost of implementation. 
     The foregoing discussion of the disclosure has been presented for purposes of illustration and description. The foregoing is not intended to limit the disclosure to the form or forms disclosed herein. In the foregoing Detailed Description for example, various features of the disclosure are grouped together in one or more embodiments, configurations, or aspects for the purpose of streamlining the disclosure. The features of the embodiments, configurations, or aspects of the disclosure may be combined in alternate embodiments, configurations, or aspects other than those discussed above. This method of disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention that the claimed disclosure requires more features than are expressly recited in each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventive aspects lie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosed embodiment, configuration, or aspect. Thus, the following claims are hereby incorporated into this Detailed Description, with each claim standing on its own as a separate preferred embodiment of the disclosure. 
     Moreover, though the description of the disclosure has included description of one or more embodiments, configurations, or aspects and certain variations and modifications, other variations, combinations, and modifications are within the scope of the disclosure, e.g., as may be within the skill and knowledge of those in the art, after understanding the present disclosure. It is intended to obtain rights which include alternative embodiments, configurations, or aspects to the extent permitted, including alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps to those claimed, whether or not such alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions, ranges or steps are disclosed herein, and without intending to publicly dedicate any patentable subject matter.