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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-7, 10 and 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Lin et al. (2020/0158839).
Regarding claim 1, Lin discloses an apparatus comprising: an array of emitter elements (15); an array of phase shifter elements (14), each phase shifter element configured to apply an optical phase shift to an optical wave that propagates through the phase shifter element and propagates to a corresponding emitter element, where the optical phase shift is based on an electrical signal provided to the phase shifter element (note Fig. 2, 4, 5); an array of driver elements (35), each driver element configured to provide an electrical signal to at least one of the phase shifter elements based on a digital code value received at an input of the driver element (Fig. 5); and digital control circuitry (17) configured to compute one or more digital code values that are provided to respective inputs of driver elements in the array of driver elements based on processing optical phased array control information, the processing including: computing optical phase shift information based at least in part on the optical phased array control information, and computing a corresponding digital code value based at least in part on the optical phase shift information (note par. 29-33).
Regarding claim 2, Lin discloses the optical phased array control information comprises steering information associated with steering at least one optical beam formed by optical interference among optical waves emitted from the emitter elements in the array of emitter elements (note par. 17, 18, and 20).
Regarding claim 3, Lin discloses the steering information is based on a tilt angle of a propagation axis that is perpendicular to a wavefront of the optical beam with respect to a reference axis that is defined relative to a plane over which the array of emitter elements are distributed (note par. 24).
Regarding claim 4, Lin inherently discloses the steering information is computed by the digital control circuitry based on the tilt angle, a wavelength of the optical waves, and a distance between adjacent emitter elements in the array of emitter elements (note par. 17 and 20).
Regarding claim 5, Lin inherently discloses optical phase shift information associated with a particular emitter element is computed based at least in part on the steering information and a position of the particular emitter element in the array of emitter elements (note par. 17 and 20).
Regarding claim 6, Lin discloses a digital code value computed based at least in part on the optical phase shift information associated with the particular emitter element is computed based at least in part on calibration information associated with the particular emitter element (note par. 18 and 25).
Regarding claim 7, Lin discloses the digital control circuitry is clocked by a clock signal during a sequence of clocked time intervals that are interleaved with a sequence of digital silence time intervals in which no clock signal is being distributed to the digital control circuitry. That is, similar to all conventional clock signal, the clock signal in Lin inherently has positive amplitudes and negative amplitudes. The negative amplitudes meets the digital silence time intervals as claimed.
Regarding claim 10, Lin discloses the optical phased array control information comprises calibration information associated with calibrating at least one individual emitter element in the array of emitter elements (note par. 18 and 25).
Regarding claim 12, see rejection to claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8-9 and 11 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claims 13-23 are allowed.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: Prior art does not teach or suggest the computing functions by the digital control circuitry as recited in claims 13 and 21.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL LEE whose telephone number 571-272-7349. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday through Thursday from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner's supervisor, John Miller, can be reached on 571-272-7353. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MICHAEL LEE/ Primary Examiner,
Art Unit 2422
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