DETAILED ACTION
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 Amendment
The amendment filed on 12/11/2025 has been entered. Claims 1, 7, 11 and 17 are amended. Claims 6, 8, 16 and 18 are canceled. Claims 1-4, 7, 9-14, 17, 19-20 remain pending.
Response to Arguments
In Remarks, Pages 10-12, Applicant argues that, with regard to the amended Claims 1 and 11, the present application defines “partition time point” as a time point at about 300 ns to 500 ns after signal transmission, to separate reflected signal into two portions for determining two information (SD1 and SD2), and that the RF pulse width as cited from the reference McMahon by the previous office action has nothing to do with the partition time point of the present application. Examiner respectfully disagrees. The reference McMahon focuses on a same topic of using multiple radio frequency pulses for measuring multiple physiologic parameters, with emphasis on how to mitigate interference between the different reflected pulses. McMahon discloses in Para 0028 and Claim 34, “at least one of the first radio frequency (RF) signal and second RF signal has an RF pulse width of about 0.5 μs”, and further in Para 0076, “as shown in FIG. 11A, the read signals (white lines/indicated as “RL” on the Figure) of the first sensor occur only during the time periods during which the second sensor is not transmitting a RF signal”. Based on these disclosures, the time point of 0.5 μs should be the time point for clearly separating the receiving of two read signals (i.e. without interference between the two), and therefore is the same as the claimed “partition time point” of the present application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claims 1, 3-4, 7, 9, 11, 13-14, 17 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sharpe et al (US 4958638 A; hereafter Sharpe), in view of Mohamadi et al (US 20150241552 A1; hereafter Mohamadi) and McMahon et al (US 20180081030 A1; hereafter McMahon).
With regard to Claim 1, Sharpe discloses a detection device for detecting an object, comprising:
a transmitter module, transmitting a radio frequency (RF) signal to the object (Sharpe, Column 13, Lines 66-68; “… transmitting means for directing a beam of frequency modulated, continuous wave radio frequency energy towards a body portion of said subject …”);
a receiver module, receiving a reflective signal from the object (Sharpe, Column 14, Lines 1-3; “… receiving means for receiving said frequency modulated beam as a motion-related, phase modulated reflected signal from said body portion …”), wherein the reflective signal comprises a feature signal and a sense signal (Sharpe, Column 14, Lines 4-6; “… extracting the heart and respiration rates from said phase modulated reflected signal …”);
a processing module (Fig. 1, DB mixer (24), receiver/demodulator (30), and digital sampling and processing (80)), converting the reflective signal into an integrated digital signal (Sharpe, Column 15, Lines 29-32; “… a plurality of sampling means for measuring the filtered outputs of each of said synchronous detectors at a specified rate and producing a plurality of digital sampled outputs …”); and
a computing module (Fig. 1, component 82), determining the integrated digital signal into first digital information (the peak at around 0.21 Hz in Fig. 6A) and second digital information (the peak at around 1.18 Hz in Fig. 6A);
wherein the first digital information corresponds to the feature signal (respiration rate), and the second digital information corresponds to the sense signal (heart rate) (Sharpe, Column 11, Lines 21-33; “FIG. 6A shows a power spectrum for a composite VSM return signal obtained with a laboratory signal analyzer. … The respiratory component occurs at 0.21 Hz corresponding to a respiratory rate of approximately 12 to 13 breaths per minute. The smaller cardiac spectral component occurs at 1.18 Hz corresponding to the subject's heart rate of approximately 70-71 beats per minute.”);
wherein the processing module comprises:
a demodulator, converting the reflective signal into a demodulation signal (Sharpe, Abstract; “The reflected phase modulated energy is received and demodulated by the apparatus using synchronous quadrature detection.”);
wherein the transmitter module comprises a transmission antenna (Sharpe, Column 6, Line 54; “… an antenna 20 for transmitting the interrogating field …”) and a signal generator (Sharpe, Column 6, Lines 49-50; “… a voltage controllable microwave oscillator 12 to produce a frequency modulated RF signal …”);
wherein the receiver module comprises a reception antenna (Sharpe, Column 6, Lines 54-55; “… an antenna 20 for … receiving the target return signal …”) and a reception circuit (Sharpe, Column 8, Lines 44-46; “a low noise preamplifier 26 that provides needed gain and filtering at the carrier frequency”. The preamplifier is also shown in Fig. 1);
wherein the computing module comprises a timer unit and a division unit (Sharpe, Column 13, Lines 20-23; “Four hundred samples of the filtered VSM output are used to compute each of the 8 autocorrelation segments. As a result, four seconds of data are required to compute each heart estimate shown in FIG. 7D.”. In this disclosure, signal data in a time period are divided into 8 segments for correlation analysis), and
wherein the computing module determines the integrated digital signal into the first digital information and the second digital information (Sharpe, Columns 11 and 12, describes both time and frequency domain methods for extracting two information from the acquired signal (i. e. heart rate and respiratory rate that correspond to two peaks in Fig. 6A)).
Sharpe does not clearly and explicitly disclose detecting an object with a sensor, or converting the demodulation signal into the integrated digital signal by using a technology of continuous time binary value (CTBV), or using a partition time point for determining two information from the received signal, with the partition time point being 300 ns to 500 ns after the transmitter module transmits the RF signal.
Mohamadi in the same field of endeavor discloses detecting an object with a sensor (Mohamadi discloses using a UWB sensor for detecting and imaging tissue; Para 0021; “One or more embodiments, employ a version of an ultrawide band (UWB) sensor”; Para 0043; “… subject 105 (person's wrist) may be scanned at a range of a few inches from panel 200 comprising antenna arrays 300 … ”), and converting the demodulation signal into the integrated digital signal by using a technology of continuous time binary value (CTBV) (Mohamadi, Para 0037; “The receivers may use a sampling on a continuous time binary value ...”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, as suggested by Mohamadi, in order to detect an object with a sensor and use a technology of continuous time binary value for sampling received signals. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of acquiring physiologic or detailed morphologic information of the target subject or object with the assistance of a sensor, and achieving a high sampling rate and thus high efficiency for acquiring wide-band RF pulses with a high amount of data (Mohamadi, Para 0037; “The receivers may use a sampling on a continuous time binary value to achieve a sampling rate of 40 giga-samples per second (GS/s)”).
Sharpe and Mohamadi do not explicitly and clearly disclose using a partition time point for determining two information from the received signal, with the partition time point being 300ns to 500ns after the transmitter module transmits the RF signal.
McMahon in the field of endeavor discloses using a partition time point for determining two information from the received signal (McMahon, Para 0076; “… as shown in FIG. 11A, the read signals (white lines/indicated as “RL” on the Figure) of the first sensor occur only during the time periods during which the second sensor is not transmitting a RF signal. Similarly, the second sensor only reads signals when the first sensor is not transmitting.”. This disclosure indicates that, to reduce interference, the readings of two information are performed at two separate time periods, i.e. with a partition time point), with the partition time point being 300ns to 500ns after the transmitter module transmits the RF signal (McMahon, Page 17, left column; “… at least one of the first radio frequency (RF) signal and second RF signal has an RF pulse width of about 0.5 μs.” Combined with the above cited disclosure in Para 0076 or Fig. 11A, the partition time point disclosed by McMahon is about 0.5 μs or 500 ns). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe and Mohamadi, as suggested by McMahon, in order to use a partition time point of 500 ns after signal transmission to separate signal collection. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of avoiding interference between reflected signals from two different sensors (McMahon, Para 0076; “For two sensors to coexist without producing RF interference the first sensor should transmit its RF pulse in the quiet period of the second sensor and vice versa.”) and allowing adequate time for the first RF pulse to transmit to target object and then reflect to detector.
With regard to Claim 3, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection device as claimed in Claim 1 above. Sharpe further discloses wherein the computing module performs a first signal processing procedure (power spectrum) on the integrated digital signal so as to determine the first digital information (the peak at around 0.21 Hz in Fig. 6A) (Sharpe, Column 11, Lines 21-23; “FIG. 6A shows a power spectrum for a composite VSM return signal obtained with a laboratory signal analyzer.”; Lines 65-66; “… build filters to extract the desired respiratory component …”) and the computing module further performs a second signal processing procedure (the Autocorrelation block 82) on the integrated digital signal so as to determine the second digital information (the real part of the complex autocorrelation shown in Fig. 7D) (Sharpe, Column 12, Lines 28-33; “The complex autocorrelation to the two filtered signals is then computed, as shown in FIG. 1 by the Autocorrelation block 82. Periodicities in the signal due to cardiac related motions appear as relative maxima in the real part of the autocorrelation function”).
With regard to Claim 4, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection device as claimed in Claim 1 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein after the receiver module receives the feature signal, the receiver module receives the sense signal.
McMahon further discloses wherein after the receiver module receives the feature signal, the receiver module receives the sense signal (McMahon, Fig. 11A, shows that the receiver timing (the RL line on the left-most side) for the 1st sensor pulse occurs first, followed by the receiver timing (the second RL line from the left side) for the 2nd sensor pulse). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as further suggested by McMahon, in order to receive the sense signal after receiving the feature signal. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of enabling acquisition of multiple measurements and at the same time avoiding interference (McMahon, Para 0017; “… the signal pulsing from each sensor may be adapted to reduce probability of interference by various means described herein, such as for example, by pulse width reduction, timing dithering and/or frequency dithering.”).
With regard to Claim 7, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection device as claimed in Claim 1 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the first digital information is before the partition time point, and the second digital information is after the partition time point.
McMahon further discloses wherein the first digital information is before the partition time point, and the second digital information is after the partition time point (McMahon, Para 0076; “… as shown in FIG. 11A, the read signals (white lines/indicated as “RL” on the Figure) of the first sensor occur only during the time periods during which the second sensor is not transmitting a RF signal. Similarly, the second sensor only reads signals when the first sensor is not transmitting.”. This disclosure indicates that, to reduce interference, two different information are included in two separate time periods of read signal, one after the other). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as further suggested by McMahon, in order to acquire a signal before a time point and acquire the other signal after the time point. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of enabling acquisition of multiple measurements and at the same time avoiding interference (McMahon, Para 0017; “… the signal pulsing from each sensor may be adapted to reduce probability of interference by various means described herein, such as for example, by pulse width reduction, timing dithering and/or frequency dithering.”).
With regard to Claim 9, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection device as claimed in Claim 1 above. Sharpe further discloses wherein the first digital information comprises information related to breath and/or heartbeat (Sharpe, Column 11, Lines 28-30; “The respiratory component occurs at 0.21 Hz corresponding to a respiratory rate of approximately 12 to 13 breaths per minute.”).
With regard to Claim 11, Sharpe discloses a detection method, comprising the steps of:
transmitting an RF signal to an object via a transmitter module (Sharpe, Column 13, Lines 66-68; “… transmitting means for directing a beam of frequency modulated, continuous wave radio frequency energy towards a body portion of said subject …”);
receiving a reflective signal from the object via a receiver module (Sharpe, Column 14, Lines 1-3; “… receiving means for receiving said frequency modulated beam as a motion-related, phase modulated reflected signal from said body portion …”), wherein the reflective signal comprises a feature signal and a sense signal (Sharpe, Column 14, Lines 4-6; “… extracting the heart and respiration rates from said phase modulated reflected signal”);
converting the reflective signal into an integrated digital signal (Sharpe, Column 15, Lines 29-32; “… a plurality of sampling means for measuring the filtered outputs of each of said synchronous detectors at a specified rate and producing a plurality of digital sampled outputs …”); and
determining the integrated digital signal into first digital information (the peak at around 0.21 Hz in Fig. 6A) and second digital information (the peak at around 1.18 Hz in Fig. 6A) via a computing module (Fig. 1, component (82)), wherein the first digital information corresponds to the feature signal (respiration rate), and the second digital information corresponds to the sense signal (heart rate)( Sharpe, Column 11, Lines 21-33; “FIG. 6A shows a power spectrum for a composite VSM return signal obtained with a laboratory signal analyzer. … The respiratory component occurs at 0.21 Hz corresponding to a respiratory rate of approximately 12 to 13 breaths per minute. The smaller cardiac spectral component occurs at 1.18 Hz corresponding to the subject's heart rate of approximately 70-71 beats per minute.”);
converting the reflective signal into a demodulation signal (Sharpe, Abstract; “The reflected phase modulated energy is received and demodulated by the apparatus using synchronous quadrature detection.”);
determining the integrated digital signal into the first digital information and the second digital information (Sharpe, Columns 11 and 12, describes both time and frequency domain methods for extracting two information from the acquired signal (i. e. heart rate and respiratory rate that correspond to two peaks in Fig. 6A));
wherein the transmitter module comprises a transmission antenna (Sharpe, Column 6, Line 54; “… an antenna 20 for transmitting the interrogating field …”) and a signal generator (Sharpe, Column 6, Lines 49-50; “… a voltage controllable microwave oscillator 12 to produce a frequency modulated RF signal …”);
wherein the receiver module comprises a reception antenna (Sharpe, Column 6, Lines 54-55; “… an antenna 20 for … receiving the target return signal …”) and a reception circuit (Sharpe, Column 8, Lines 44-46; “a low noise preamplifier 26 that provides needed gain and filtering at the carrier frequency”. The preamplifier is also shown in Fig. 1);
wherein the computing module comprises a timer unit and a division unit (Sharpe, Column 13, Lines 20-23; “Four hundred samples of the filtered VSM output are used to compute each of the 8 autocorrelation segments. As a result, four seconds of data are required to compute each heart estimate shown in FIG. 7D.”. In this disclosure, signal data in a time period are divided into 8 segments for correlation analysis).
Sharpe does not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the object has a sensor, or converting the demodulation signal into the integrated digital signal by using a technology of continuous time binary value (CTBV), or using a partition time point for determining two information from the received signal, with the partition time point being 300 ns to 500 ns after the transmitter module transmits the RF signal.
Mohamadi in the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the object has a sensor (Mohamadi discloses using a UWB sensor for detecting and imaging tissue; Para 0021; “One or more embodiments, employ a version of an ultrawide band (UWB) sensor”; Para 0043; “… subject 105 (person's wrist) may be scanned at a range of a few inches from panel 200 comprising antenna arrays 300 … ”), and converting the demodulation signal into the integrated digital signal by using a technology of continuous time binary value (CTBV) (Mohamadi, Para 0037; “The receivers may use a sampling on a continuous time binary value ...”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, as suggested by Mohamadi, in order to detect an object with a sensor and use a technology of continuous time binary value for sampling received signals. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of acquiring physiologic or detailed morphologic information of the target subject or object with the assistance of a sensor, and achieving a high sampling rate and thus high efficiency for acquiring wide-band RF pulses with a high amount of data (Mohamadi, Para 0037; “The receivers may use a sampling on a continuous time binary value to achieve a sampling rate of 40 giga-samples per second (GS/s)”).
Sharpe and Mohamadi do not explicitly and clearly disclose using a partition time point for determining two information from the received signal, with the partition time point being 300ns to 500ns after the transmitter module transmits the RF signal.
McMahon in the field of endeavor discloses using a partition time point for determining two information from the received signal (McMahon, Para 0076; “… as shown in FIG. 11A, the read signals (white lines/indicated as “RL” on the Figure) of the first sensor occur only during the time periods during which the second sensor is not transmitting a RF signal. Similarly, the second sensor only reads signals when the first sensor is not transmitting.”. This disclosure indicates that, to reduce interference, the readings of two information are performed at two separate time periods, i.e. with a partition time point), with the partition time point being 300ns to 500ns after the transmitter module transmits the RF signal (McMahon, Page 17, left column; “… at least one of the first radio frequency (RF) signal and second RF signal has an RF pulse width of about 0.5 μs.” Combined with the above cited disclosure in Para 0076 or Fig. 11A, the partition time point disclosed by McMahon is about 0.5 μs or 500 ns). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe and Mohamadi, as suggested by McMahon, in order to use a partition time point of 500 ns after signal transmission to separate signal collection. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of avoiding interference between reflected signals from two different sensors (McMahon, Para 0076; “For two sensors to coexist without producing RF interference the first sensor should transmit its RF pulse in the quiet period of the second sensor and vice versa.”) and allowing adequate time for the first RF pulse to transmit to target object and then reflect to detector.
With regard to Claim 13, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection method as claimed in Claim 11 above. Sharpe further discloses comprising:
performing a first signal processing procedure (power spectrum) on the integrated digital signal so as to determine the first digital information (the peak at around 0.21 Hz in Fig. 6A) (Sharpe, Column 11, Lines 21-23; “FIG. 6A shows a power spectrum for a composite VSM return signal obtained with a laboratory signal analyzer.”; Lines 65-66; “… build filters to extract the desired respiratory component …”), and
performing a second signal processing procedure (the Autocorrelation block 82) on the integrated digital signal so as to determine the second digital information (the real part of the complex autocorrelation shown in Fig. 7D) (Sharpe, Column 12, Lines 28-33; “The complex autocorrelation to the two filtered signals is then computed, as shown in FIG. 1 by the Autocorrelation block 82. Periodicities in the signal due to cardiac related motions appear as relative maxima in the real part of the autocorrelation function”).
With regard to Claim 14, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection method as claimed in Claim 11 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose comprising: after the feature signal is received, receiving the sense signal.
McMahon further discloses comprising: after the feature signal is received, receiving the sense signal (McMahon, Fig. 11A, shows that the receiver timing (the RL line on the left-most side) for the 1st sensor pulse occurs first, followed by the receiver timing (the second RL line from the left side) for the 2nd sensor pulse). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as further suggested by McMahon, in order to receive the sense signal after receiving the feature signal. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of enabling acquisition of multiple measurements and at the same time avoiding interference (McMahon, Para 0017; “… the signal pulsing from each sensor may be adapted to reduce probability of interference by various means described herein, such as for example, by pulse width reduction, timing dithering and/or frequency dithering.”).
With regard to Claim 17, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection method as claimed in Claim 11 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the first digital information is before the partition time point, and the second digital information is after the partition time point.
McMahon further discloses wherein the first digital information is before the partition time point, and the second digital information is after the partition time point (McMahon, Para 0076; “… as shown in FIG. 11A, the read signals (white lines/indicated as “RL” on the Figure) of the first sensor occur only during the time periods during which the second sensor is not transmitting a RF signal. Similarly, the second sensor only reads signals when the first sensor is not transmitting.”. This disclosure indicates that, to reduce interference, two different information are included in two separate time periods of read signal, one after the other). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as further suggested by McMahon, in order to acquire a signal before a time point and acquire the other signal after the time point. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of enabling acquisition of multiple measurements and at the same time avoiding interference (McMahon, Para 0017; “… the signal pulsing from each sensor may be adapted to reduce probability of interference by various means described herein, such as for example, by pulse width reduction, timing dithering and/or frequency dithering.”).
With regard to Claim 19, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection method as claimed in Claim 11 above. Sharpe further discloses wherein the first digital information comprises information related to breath and/or heartbeat (Sharpe, Column 11, Lines 21-33; “FIG. 6A shows a power spectrum for a composite VSM return signal obtained with a laboratory signal analyzer. … The respiratory component occurs at 0.21 Hz corresponding to a respiratory rate of approximately 12 to 13 breaths per minute.”).
Claims 2, 10, 12 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, in view of Solie et al (US 20090121847 A1; hereafter Solie).
With regard to Claim 2, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection device as claimed in Claim 1 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the sensor is a surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor.
Solie in the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the sensor is a surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensor (Solie, Para 0028; “The transducers 60 and 80 detect the SAWs, converting the acoustic waves to a summed RF signal”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as suggested by Solie, in order to detect or measure information of an object with an SAW sensor. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of measuring multiple parameters (Solie, Para 0042; “They have a characteristic impedance which changes in magnitude when exposed to a change in the condition to be sensed, e.g., temperature, gas, pressure, etc.”).
With regard to Claim 10, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection device as claimed in Claim 1 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the second digital information comprises information related to temperature, humidity, pressure, and/or chemical composition.
Solie in the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the second digital information comprises information related to temperature, humidity, pressure, and/or chemical composition (Solie, Para 0027; “this ratio, in turn, can be used as a measurand to indicate some property to be sensed, such as temperature or pressure, as an example look to sensor 24 as shown in FIG. 2a”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as suggested by Solie, in order to measure the various parameters. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of making use of the capable wireless approach for measuring a variety of important parameters (Solie, Para 0042; “They have a characteristic impedance which changes in magnitude when exposed to a change in the condition to be sensed, e.g., temperature, gas, pressure, etc. It is possible to use a surface acoustic wave device as a wireless interface between these sensors and the power spectral density interrogation system …”).
With regard to Claim 12, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection method as claimed in Claim 11 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the sensor is an SAW sensor.
Solie in the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the sensor is an SAW sensor (Solie, Para 0028; “The transducers 60 and 80 detect the SAWs, converting the acoustic waves to a summed RF signal”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as suggested by Solie, in order to detect or measure information of an object with an SAW sensor. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of measuring multiple parameters (Solie, Para 0042; “They have a characteristic impedance which changes in magnitude when exposed to a change in the condition to be sensed, e.g., temperature, gas, pressure, etc.”).
With regard to Claim 20, Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon disclose the detection method as claimed in Claim 11 above, but do not clearly and explicitly disclose wherein the second digital information comprises information related to temperature, humidity, pressure, and/or chemical composition.
Solie in the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the second digital information comprises information related to temperature, humidity, pressure, and/or chemical composition (Solie, Para 0027; “this ratio, in turn, can be used as a measurand to indicate some property to be sensed, such as temperature or pressure, as an example look to sensor 24 as shown in FIG. 2a”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Sharpe, Mohamadi and McMahon, as suggested by Solie, in order to measure the various parameters. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of making use of the capable wireless approach for measuring a variety of important parameters (Solie, Para 0042; “They have a characteristic impedance which changes in magnitude when exposed to a change in the condition to be sensed, e.g., temperature, gas, pressure, etc. It is possible to use a surface acoustic wave device as a wireless interface between these sensors and the power spectral density interrogation system …”).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/L.Z./Examiner, Art Unit 3798
/PASCAL M BUI PHO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3798