Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 10/02/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
The Examiner notes the amendments to independent claim 1 were not incorporated into previously rejected independent claims 10 and 15. Further, there are no separate arguments associated with independent claims 10 and 15.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 10-12, 14-16 and 18-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sun et al. (US 8817643 B1) in view of Froelich et al. (US 2020/0249275 A1).
Sun teaches a PHY for autonomously measuring signal degradation to indicate if link loss is expected based on a baseline measurement of parameters and one or more subsequent measurement of parameters (Figures 1 and 3). Further, Sun teaches monitoring of TDM symbols in the 3GPP LTE standard (i.e. radio frequency system) in column 4, lines 15-37, where the communication channel quality are affected by conditions such as interference I column 1, lines 29-40. Sun does not teach a serial-deserializer device or failure associated with inter symbol interference data. In the same field of monitoring communication links, Froelich teaches that Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) can cause a high-speed I/O link to fail (paragraph 0042) where the device’s PHY includes a Serializer/Deserializer (paragraph 0049) and includes DFE tap Information (paragraph 0075). Further, Froelich teaches that the communication media can be Radio Frequency in paragraph 0081. Therefore, it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains to modify Sun’s system to adopt Froelich’s teachings in order to monitor for Inter Symbol Interference for the reason that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to monitor channel quality parameters associated with radio frequency systems as suggested by Sun.
With respect to the claims, references to the prior art appear in parenthesis.
Claims
10. At least one non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising instructions stored thereon, that if executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors (Sun’s Figure 1) to:
configure circuitry configured to autonomously measure for signal degradation (Sun’s PHY processing unit for radio link monitoring in column 3, lines 50-60) at a physical layer interface (PHY) (Sun’s Figure 1, UE with PHY 29) and to indicate if link loss is expected to occur based on a baseline measurement of parameters and one or more subsequent measurements of parameters (Sun’s Radio link failure expected based on threshold (i.e. baseline measurement) compared to measured long term radio link quality in column 6, lines 17-27) , wherein the parameters comprise inter symbol interference (ISI) data comprising DFE tap Information from the SerDes device and pulse response data (Froelich teaches a SerDes in paragraph 0049, where it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains to modify Sun’s system to adopt Froelich’s teachings in order to monitor for Inter Symbol Interference for the reason that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to monitor channel quality parameters associated with radio frequency systems as suggested by Sun. Further, Froelich teaches that the device tests for ISI using a DFE in paragraph 0065 and that DFE tap Information (i.e. number of DFE taps) is used where pulse response data corresponds to the responses at each of the specific number of DFE tap which includes zero tap in paragraph 0075).
11. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, wherein the parameters comprise one or more of: eye height, signal to noise ratio (SNR), phase lock loop (PLL) lock range, phase alignment values, equalizer coefficients, bias currents measured by an on-die analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, offset cancellation parameters, raw bit error rate (BER) error dependence statistics, and/or counter values of corrected and uncorrected Forward Error Correction (FEC) values (Sun’s Signal to noise ratio is the SINR in column 3, lines 2-20 and Froelich teaches that the channel quality parameter is presented as an eye pattern in paragraph 0026) .
12. The computer-readable medium of claim 10, comprising instructions stored thereon, that if executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to: configure the circuitry to adjust an interval of parameter measurements based on the link loss being expected (Sun’s “adjust an interval of parameter measurements based on link loss being expected” reads broadly on the interval of parameter measurements being “short term radio link quality values” and “long term radio link quality values” in Figure 3 where the interval is short term versus the long term).
14. The computer-readable medium of claim 13, wherein to indicate a potential connector dislocation based on changes to the ISI data, the circuitry is configured to: store a baseline ISI data for connector reflections; measure ISI data for connector reflections; and indicate a potential connector dislocation based on measured ISI data and baseline ISI data (The modification of Sun to monitor for ISI would have been to base the changes from SINR to ISI, such that Sun’s baseline threshold would have been a baseline ISI data for comparing measured ISI parameters where the ISI parameter readings in Froelich are reflection readings in paragraphs 0042 and 0065) .
15. A method (Sun’s Figure 1) comprising:
autonomously measuring, by circuitry of a physical layer interface (PHY), for signal degradation by measurement of baseline parameters (Sun’s PHY processing unit for radio link monitoring in column 3, lines 50-60) and
indicating, by the circuitry of the PHY, if link loss is expected to occur based on the baseline parameters and one or more subsequent measurements of parameters (Sun’s Radio link failure expected based on threshold (i.e. baseline measurement) compared to measured long term radio link quality in column 6, lines 17-27) , wherein the parameters comprise inter symbol interference (ISI) data comprising DFE tap Information from the SerDes device and pulse response data (Froelich teaches a SerDes in paragraph 0049, where it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains to modify Sun’s system to adopt Froelich’s teachings in order to monitor for Inter Symbol Interference for the reason that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to monitor channel quality parameters associated with radio frequency systems as suggested by Sun. Further, Froelich teaches that the device tests for ISI using a DFE in paragraph 0065 and that DFE tap Information (i.e. number of DFE taps) is used where pulse response data corresponds to the responses at each of the specific number of DFE tap which includes zero tap in paragraph 0075).
16. The method of claim 15, wherein the parameters comprise one or more of: eye height, signal to noise ratio (SNR), phase lock loop (PLL) lock range, phase alignment values, equalizer coefficients, bias currents measured by an on-die analog-to-digital (A/D) converter, offset cancellation parameters, raw bit error rate (BER) error dependence statistics, and/or counter values of corrected and uncorrected Forward Error Correction (FEC) values (Sun’s Signal to noise ratio is the SINR in column 3, lines 2-20 and Froelich teaches that the channel quality parameter is presented as an eye pattern in paragraph 0026).
18. The method of claim 15, comprising: adjusting an interval of parameter measurements based on link loss being expected (Sun’s “adjust an interval of parameter measurements based on link loss being expected” reads broadly on the interval of parameter measurements being “short term radio link quality values” and “long term radio link quality values” in Figure 3 where the interval is short term versus the long term).
19. The method of claim 15, comprising: indicating a potential connector dislocation based on changes to ISI data (Froelich teaches the monitoring of ISI failure in paragraph 0042, where it would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains to modify Sun’s system to adopt Froelich’s teachings in order to monitor for Inter Symbol Interference for the reason that a skilled artisan would have been motivated to monitor channel quality parameters associated with radio frequency systems as suggested by Sun).
20. The method of claim 19, wherein indicating a potential connector dislocation based on changes to ISI data comprises: storing a baseline ISI data for connector reflections; measuring ISI data for connector reflections; and indicating a potential connector dislocation based on measured ISI data and baseline ISI data (The modification of Sun to monitor for ISI would have been to base the changes from SINR to ISI, such that Sun’s baseline threshold would have been a baseline ISI data for comparing measured ISI parameters where the ISI parameter readings in Froelich are reflection readings in paragraphs 0042 and 0065).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-3, 5-9 and 22-25 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the prior art of record such as Zhong et al. (US 2010/0046598 A1) and Agazzi (US 2002/0122503 A1) teach various DFEs in a SerDes device, but not the particular arrangement for summing the ISI data for a tap.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MELVIN C MARCELO whose telephone number is (571)272-3125. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9:30-6:00.
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MELVIN C. MARCELO
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2463
/MELVIN C MARCELO/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2463 October 16, 2025