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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 02/05/2026 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The amendment filed on 02/05/2026 has been entered. Claims 1, 28, 32, 34-36 and 38 have been amended. Claims 1, 21, 27-28, 32-36 and 38 remain pending.
Previously issued 101 rejection for Claims 36 and 38 has been overcome.
Response to Arguments
Regarding Claims 1, 28 and 36, in Remarks, Pages 7-8, Applicant argues that, a) reference McMahon uses “an external microphone of a smartphone”, so it would not have been obvious for a PHOSITA to apply the breathing rate technique to detect heart rate “using an internal microphone of a headphone and by detecting a change in a resonance over time of a transfer function from the speaker to the internal microphone as the output ultrasonic wave reflects off the surface of the ear of the user”, and b) the PHOSITA would “not contemplate that the McMahon drawings showing a person sleeping on a bed whose breathing is being detected by virtue of detecting movement of their chest due to breathing, also suggest detecting heart rate that causes surface movements of the skin in their ear due to their beating heart”.
With regard to Applicant’s argument a) above, Examiner respectfully disagrees. First, the limitations of “internal and external microphones” (Claim 1, Line 4) and of “a change, over time, of …” (Claim 1, Lines 13-15) were newly added in recent amendment, which as shown in the section of Claim Rejections below, can be taught by references Margalit and McMahon respectively. Second, the claimed “internal microphone” in the amended claims can be interpreted as a microphone that faces a surface of a user, because as long as the microphone faces the surface, it would be able to receive waves reflected from the surface. The microphone of McMahon obviously fits such requirement.
With regard to Applicant’s argument b) above, Examiner respectfully disagrees. The reference McMahon discloses in the section of “Field of the Technology”: “The present technology relates to detecting bio-motion associated with living subjects. More particularly, the present technology relates to using acoustic sensing to detect physiological movement such as breathing movement, cardiac movement and/or other less cyclical body movement of a living subject”. Monitoring breathing rate is just one example application of the disclosed technology of McMahon. Terms containing “heart rate” or “cardiac activity/motion” are recited about 20 times, and measurement of heart rate is explicitly disclosed multiple times in McMahon. Hence, it would not be difficult for a PHOSITA to consider incorporating the same technique into a headphone for measuring heart rate from ear.
Claim Objections
Claims 28 and 36 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 28, Line 22, recites “compute a heart rate”, which should be changed to “compute the heart rate”.
Claim 36, Line 4, recites “headphone that also has …”, which should be changed to “a headphone that has …”.
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1, 21, 27-28, 32-36 and 38 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 Lines 13 and 22, Claim 28 Lines 19 and 23, and Claim 36 Lines 19 and 23, recite “resonance”. It is unclear what the recited “resonance” refers to.
Claim 1 Lines 13-14, Claim 28 Lines 19-20, and Claim 36 Lines 19-20, recite “a resonance of a transfer function”. It is unclear what the recited phrase, particularly the recited “resonance”, refers to. Para 0038 of Specification discloses “… a change in resonance (e.g., transfer function) of the ultrasonic wave from the speaker to the microphone as it reflects off of the ear of the user”, which seems indicate that “resonance” is a general parameter or variable with “transfer function” being one of its sub-type or example. For present purposes of examination, the recited “a resonance of a transfer function” is interpreted to refer to “a transfer function”, and the claimed “the resonance of the transfer function” in the claims to accordingly refer to “the transfer function”.
Claims 21, 27, 32-35 and 38 are also rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) because they inherit the indefiniteness of the claim(s) they respectively depend upon.
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, 21, 27-28, 32-36 and 38 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over McMahon et al (US 20210275056 A1; hereafter McMahon), in view of Margalit et al (US 20220183659 A1; hereafter Margalit).
With regard to Claim 1, McMahon discloses a method for measuring a heart rate of a user (McMahon, Para 0301; “… the sound generation and reflection analysis of the various technology versions previously described, may be implemented for other periodic information as well such as cardiac information detection or heart rate, from the produced motion-related signal.”), the method comprising:
causing an output ultrasonic wave to be output from a speaker (McMahon, Para 0022; “The method may include transmitting, via a speaker on the mobile electronic device, a sound signal towards a user. … the sound signal may be a modulated low frequency ultrasonic sound signal.”) of a device having a microphone (McMahon, Para 0057; “Mobile device 100 may comprise, among other components, a speaker and a microphone”), by combining i) a sequence of frames (McMahon, Para 0090; “Graph 602 is a time domain representation of five 32 ms frames …”), each frame includes an ultrasonic probe tone whose frequency varies within the frame (McMahon, Para 0085; “An adaptive frequency hopping range gating (AFHRG) system keeps changing frequency of the tone frequency sequence over time …”; Para 0090; “The slots that form a frame shown in FIG. 6A may be considered in more detail in the graph 604 of FIG. 6B. Graph 604 shows a frequency domain representation of a single 32 ms frame from FIG. 6A. It shows four slots 606-S1, 606-S2, 606-S3, 606-S4 where each slot contains two tones 608T1, 608T2 (a tone pair).” Fig. 6B shows that each of the 4 slots contain 2 tones with frequency (x axis) different from that of other slots.), with ii) other audio content, resulting in an audio signal and driving the speaker with the audio signal (McMahon, Para 0166; “these tone pairs can be hidden in other transmitted (or detected ambient) audio content …”), wherein the output ultrasonic wave includes the sequence of frames (McMahon, Fig. 6A shows that the wave signal contains a sequence of frames.);
obtaining a microphone signal of the microphone, wherein the microphone signal comprises a reflected ultrasonic wave responsive to the output ultrasonic wave and the reflected ultrasonic wave was reflected off a surface of the user (McMahon, Para 0022; “The method may include sensing, via a microphone on the mobile electronic device, a reflected sound signal, the reflected sound signal being reflected from the user.”);
processing the microphone signal to detect a change, over time (McMahon, Para 0221; “… a Fourier transform (such as an fast Fourier transform or FFT) at 2016 is carried out to estimate and produce a “2D” matrix 2018. Each row is the FFT of a sweep and each column is an FFT bin. It is these FFT bins that translate into range, and are therefore referred to as “range bins.”” Para 0225; “This may be implemented with a range bin selection algorithm that processes the resulting two dimensional (2D) matrix 2018 to yield a 1D matrix (or matrices) at the bin(s) of interest.”; Para 0235; “With respect to the calculator processing at 2108, various metrics, such as for respiration estimation, may be determine.” The disclosed “column” or “range bin” is the axis of time, and various metrics can be calculated at bins of interest, i.e. along time axis but at specific frequency range), in a resonance of a transfer function from the speaker to the microphone (McMahon, Paras 0208-0209; “As an aside, correlating a standard chirp with the response at the receiver, provides an estimate of the echo impulse response. In FMCW, the system effectively considers the ensemble of all responses across the frequency range …”. The disclosed “ensemble of all responses across the frequency range” is calculated and presented as the disclosed “FFT 2D matrix” (as termed in Fig. 20) as in Para 0221; “… estimate and produce a “2D” matrix 2018. Each row is the FFT of a sweep and each column is an FFT bin. It is these FFT bins that translate into range, and are therefore referred to as “range bins.”” Hence, each row of the disclosed FFT 2D matrix can be interpreted as a transfer function of the system at a time when a specific sweep is transmitted, so that different rows would be transfer function estimated by sweeps transmitted at different time points) as the output ultrasonic wave reflects off the surface of the user; and
determining the heart rate of the user (McMahon, Para 0301; “… in addition to respiration information, the sound generation and reflection analysis of the various technology versions previously described, may be implemented for other periodic information as well such as cardiac information detection or heart rate, from the produced motion-related signal.”), based on correlating the detected change in the resonance of the transfer function (McMahon, Para 0248; ““Fda” (Frequency domain analysis) can be performed; such statistics can be calculated using 64 second overlapping data windows, with 1 second step length.” As discussed above, calculation of the disclosed “such statistics” or other metrics in Para 0236-0246 is along range bin or column of interest of the FFT 2D matrix, or along the axis of time) to the heart rate (McMahon, Para 0248; “… breathing rates may be detected within a rate window that amounts to 6 to 40 breaths per minute (bpm), corresponding to 0.1-0.67 Hz. This frequency band corresponds to realistic human breathing rates.”; Para 0250; “An alternative frequency band can also be considered for typical heart rate (e.g., where a HR of 45 beats per minute to 180 beats per minute corresponds to 0.75-3 Hz).”).
McMahon does not explicitly and clearly disclose a headphone having an internal microphone and an external microphone, outputting ultrasonic wave when headphone is worn on or in an ear of a user, obtaining a microphone signal of the internal microphone of the headphone, wherein the signal was reflected off a surface of the ear of the user.
Margalit in the same field of endeavor discloses a headphone having an internal microphone and an external microphone (Margalit, Para 0033; “An earphone system may include … US transceiver (703); microphone (705) …”. The disclosed “US transceiver” corresponds to internal microphone of Application, and “microphone” for an earphone corresponds to external microphone of Application), outputting ultrasonic wave when headphone is worn on or in an ear of a user (Margalit, Para 0028; “… an earphone comprising a modulated ultrasound speaker and located near the ear canal. In one example the modulated ultrasound speaker generates ultrasound …”), obtaining a microphone signal of the internal microphone of the headphone (Margalit, Para 0032; “In one example an ultrasound modulated speaker generates residual ultrasound in the ear which is used for backscattering measurement. An ultrasound receiver for example as described in FIG. 3 and FIG. 4 detects the ultrasound backscatter signal.”), wherein the signal was reflected off a surface of the ear of the user (Margalit, Para 0028; “… the attenuation of the ultrasound is low and the signal back reflection from the ear canal and tympanic membrane is large enough to detect, measure and extract from the ultrasound back reflections various physical characteristics and their physiological manifestation.”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify McMahon, as suggested by Margalit, in order to include two microphones or receivers, and use the internal US receiver to collect ultrasonic wave reflected from a surface of the ear. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of using the external or regular receiver to perform necessary function of conventional microphone of an earphone, and enhancing the precision of estimated heart rate by using an internal-oriented US receiver to collect signals from a surface of the ear which is very close to earphone (Margalit, Para 0002; “The ultrasound used in the speaker device is typically above 100 KHz and hence has significant attenuation in air. However, in earphone or headset applications the speaker device is located within a few cm from the ear including the ear canal and tympanic membrane.”).
With regard to Claim 21, McMahon and Margalit disclose the method of Claim 1 as discussed above. McMahon further discloses wherein the sequence of frames in the output ultrasonic wave has an instantaneous frequency that varies like a triangle, a sawtooth or a sinusoid (McMahon, Para 0011; “the sound signal may include a repeated waveform with changing frequencies … The repeated waveform with changing frequencies may include one of a ramp sawtooth, triangular and a sinusoidal waveform.”).
With regard to Claim 27, McMahon and Margalit disclose the method of Claim 1 as discussed above. McMahon further discloses wherein the other audio content is music, a telephone conversation, active noise cancellation audio content, or transparency audio content (McMahon, Para 0166; “Where the system is operating at, for example, about over 18 kHz, then any generated music source may be low pass filtered below about 18 kHz ;”; also in Para 0167; “An alternate approach when generating or playing an acoustic signal (e.g., music) to using (A)FHRG, FMCW, UWB etc. (with or without masking) is to directly modulate the carrier”).
With regard to Claim 28, McMahon discloses a device for measuring a heart rate of a user (McMahon, Abstract; “Methods and devices provide physiological movement detection with active sound generation.”), the device comprising a signal processor configured to:
cause an output ultrasonic wave to be output from a speaker (McMahon, Para 0022; “The method may include transmitting, via a speaker on the mobile electronic device, a sound signal towards a user. … the sound signal may be a modulated low frequency ultrasonic sound signal.”) of a device having a microphone (McMahon, Para 0057; “Mobile device 100 may comprise, among other components, a speaker and a microphone”), by i) combining a sequence of frames (McMahon, Para 0090; “Graph 602 is a time domain representation of five 32 ms frames …”), each frame includes an ultrasonic probe tone whose frequency varies within each frame (McMahon, Para 0085; “An adaptive frequency hopping range gating (AFHRG) system keeps changing frequency of the tone frequency sequence over time …”; Para 0090; “The slots that form a frame shown in FIG. 6A may be considered in more detail in the graph 604 of FIG. 6B. Graph 604 shows a frequency domain representation of a single 32 ms frame from FIG. 6A. It shows four slots 606-S1, 606-S2, 606-S3, 606-S4 where each slot contains two tones 608T1, 608T2 (a tone pair).” Fig. 6B shows that each of the 4 slots contain 2 tones with frequency (x axis) different from that of other slots.), with other audio content, resulting in an audio signal, and ii) driving the speaker with the audio signal (McMahon, Para 0166; “these tone pairs can be hidden in other transmitted (or detected ambient) audio content …”);
obtain a microphone signal of the microphone, wherein the microphone signal comprises a reflected ultrasonic wave responsive to the output ultrasonic wave, wherein the reflected ultrasonic wave was reflected off a surface of the user (McMahon, Para 0022; “The method may include sensing, via a microphone on the mobile electronic device, a reflected sound signal, the reflected sound signal being reflected from the user.”);
process the microphone signal to detect a change, over time (McMahon, Para 0221; “… a Fourier transform (such as an fast Fourier transform or FFT) at 2016 is carried out to estimate and produce a “2D” matrix 2018. Each row is the FFT of a sweep and each column is an FFT bin. It is these FFT bins that translate into range, and are therefore referred to as “range bins.”” Para 0225; “This may be implemented with a range bin selection algorithm that processes the resulting two dimensional (2D) matrix 2018 to yield a 1D matrix (or matrices) at the bin(s) of interest.”; Para 0235; “With respect to the calculator processing at 2108, various metrics, such as for respiration estimation, may be determine.” The disclosed “column” or “range bin” is the axis of time, and various metrics can be calculated at bins of interest, i.e. along time axis but at specific frequency range), in a resonance of a transfer function from the speaker to the microphone (McMahon, Paras 0208-0209; “As an aside, correlating a standard chirp with the response at the receiver, provides an estimate of the echo impulse response. In FMCW, the system effectively considers the ensemble of all responses across the frequency range …”. The disclosed “ensemble of all responses across the frequency range” is calculated and presented as the disclosed “FFT 2D matrix” (as termed in Fig. 20) as in Para 0221; “… estimate and produce a “2D” matrix 2018. Each row is the FFT of a sweep and each column is an FFT bin. It is these FFT bins that translate into range, and are therefore referred to as “range bins.”” Hence, each row of the disclosed FFT 2D matrix can be interpreted as a transfer function of the system at a time when a specific sweep is transmitted, so that different rows would be transfer function estimated by sweeps transmitted at different time points) as the output ultrasonic wave reflects off the surface of the user; and
compute a heart rate of the user (McMahon, Para 0301; “… in addition to respiration information, the sound generation and reflection analysis of the various technology versions previously described, may be implemented for other periodic information as well such as cardiac information detection or heart rate, from the produced motion-related signal.”), based on correlating the detected change in the resonance of the transfer function (McMahon, Para 0248; ““Fda” (Frequency domain analysis) can be performed; such statistics can be calculated using 64 second overlapping data windows, with 1 second step length.” As discussed above, calculation of the disclosed “such statistics” or other metrics in Para 0236-0246 is along range bin or column of interest of the FFT 2D matrix, or along the axis of time) to the heart rate (McMahon, Para 0248; “… breathing rates may be detected within a rate window that amounts to 6 to 40 breaths per minute (bpm), corresponding to 0.1-0.67 Hz. This frequency band corresponds to realistic human breathing rates.”; Para 0250; “An alternative frequency band can also be considered for typical heart rate (e.g., where a HR of 45 beats per minute to 180 beats per minute corresponds to 0.75-3 Hz).”).
McMahon does not explicitly and clearly disclose a headphone worn on or in the ear of the user and having an internal microphone and an external microphone, obtaining a microphone signal of the internal microphone of the headphone, wherein the signal was reflected off a surface of the ear of the user.
Margalit in the same field of endeavor discloses a headphone worn on or in the ear of the user (Margalit, Para 0028; “FIG. 3 is an example of an earphone comprising a modulated ultrasound speaker and located near the ear canal.”) and having an internal microphone and an external microphone (Margalit, Para 0033; “An earphone system may include … US transceiver (703); microphone (705) …”. The disclosed “US transceiver” corresponds to internal microphone of Application, and “microphone” for an earphone corresponds to external microphone of Application), obtaining a microphone signal of the internal microphone of the headphone (Margalit, Para 0032; “In one example an ultrasound modulated speaker generates residual ultrasound in the ear which is used for backscattering measurement. An ultrasound receiver for example as described in FIG. 3 and FIG. 4 detects the ultrasound backscatter signal.”), wherein the signal was reflected off a surface of the ear of the user (Margalit, Para 0028; “… the attenuation of the ultrasound is low and the signal back reflection from the ear canal and tympanic membrane is large enough to detect, measure and extract from the ultrasound back reflections various physical characteristics and their physiological manifestation.”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify McMahon, as suggested by Margalit, in order to include two microphones or receivers, and use the internal US receiver to collect ultrasonic wave reflected from a surface of the ear. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of using the external or regular receiver to perform necessary function of conventional microphone of an earphone, and enhancing the precision of estimated heart rate by using an internal-oriented US receiver to collect signals from a surface of the ear which is very close to earphone (Margalit, Para 0002; “The ultrasound used in the speaker device is typically above 100 KHz and hence has significant attenuation in air. However, in earphone or headset applications the speaker device is located within a few cm from the ear including the ear canal and tympanic membrane.”).
With regard to Claim 32, McMahon and Margalit disclose the device of Claim 28 as discussed above, but do not explicitly and clearly disclose wherein the headphone is an earbud.
Margalit further discloses wherein the headphone is an earbud (Margalit, Para 0027; “Earphones are designated as receiver in canal for devices located within the ear canal (201), ear buds, in ear monitors, true wireless or speakers, or similar names for devices located in or near the entrance to the ear canal (201) and headphones or headsets for devices located on, or around the pinna (209)”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify McMahon and Margalit, as further suggested by Margalit, in order to use earphone such as earbud for measuring heart rate. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of enhancing the precision of estimated heart rate by using earphone which is very close to a surface of the ear (Margalit, Para 0002; “The ultrasound used in the speaker device is typically above 100 KHz and hence has significant attenuation in air. However, in earphone or headset applications the speaker device is located within a few cm from the ear including the ear canal and tympanic membrane.”).
With regard to Claim 33, McMahon and Margalit disclose the device of Claim 32 as discussed above. McMahon further discloses wherein the signal processor is integrated into a smartphone or a tablet computer (McMahon, Para 0024; “The methods, systems, devices and apparatus described herein can provide improved functioning in a processor, such as of a processor of a general or specific purpose computer, portable computer processing device (e.g., mobile phone, tablet computer etc.)”).
With regard to Claim 34, McMahon and Margalit disclose the device of Claim 28 as discussed above, but do not explicitly and clearly disclose wherein the signal processor is integrated into the headphone.
Margalit further discloses wherein the signal processor is integrated into the headphone (Margalit, Para 0033; “An earphone system may include any of but is not limited to; a processing unit (709); speaker (701); …”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify McMahon and Margalit, as further suggested by Margalit, in order to integrate the signal processor into the headphone. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of simultaneously acquiring and processing the collected data so as to achieve real-time measurement of heart rate.
With regard to Claim 35, McMahon and Margalit disclose the device of Claim 34 as discussed above. McMahon further discloses wherein the other audio content is music, a telephone conversation, active noise cancellation audio content, or transparency audio content (McMahon, Para 0166; “Where the system is operating at, for example, about over 18 kHz, then any generated music source may be low pass filtered below about 18 kHz ;”; also in Para 0167; “An alternate approach when generating or playing an acoustic signal (e.g., music) to using (A)FHRG, FMCW, UWB etc. (with or without masking) is to directly modulate the carrier …”).
With regard to Claim 36, McMahon discloses a machine-readable medium comprising a non-transitory medium having stored instructions that configure a processor (McMahon, Para 0301; “Some versions of the present technology may include a processor-readable medium, having stored thereon processor-executable instructions which, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to detect physiological movement of a user”) to:
cause an output ultrasonic wave to be output from a speaker (McMahon, Para 0022; “The method may include transmitting, via a speaker on the mobile electronic device, a sound signal towards a user. … the sound signal may be a modulated low frequency ultrasonic sound signal.”) of a device having a microphone (McMahon, Para 0057; “Mobile device 100 may comprise, among other components, a speaker and a microphone”), by i) combining a sequence of frames (McMahon, Para 0090; “Graph 602 is a time domain representation of five 32 ms frames …”), each frame includes an ultrasonic probe tone whose frequency varies within the frame (McMahon, Para 0085; “An adaptive frequency hopping range gating (AFHRG) system keeps changing frequency of the tone frequency sequence over time …”; Para 0090; “The slots that form a frame shown in FIG. 6A may be considered in more detail in the graph 604 of FIG. 6B. Graph 604 shows a frequency domain representation of a single 32 ms frame from FIG. 6A. It shows four slots 606-S1, 606-S2, 606-S3, 606-S4 where each slot contains two tones 608T1, 608T2 (a tone pair).” Fig. 6B shows that each of the 4 slots contain 2 tones with frequency (x axis) different from that of other slots.), with other audio content, resulting in an audio signal, and ii) driving the speaker with the audio signal (McMahon, Para 0166; “these tone pairs can be hidden in other transmitted (or detected ambient) audio content …”);
obtain a microphone signal of the microphone, wherein the microphone signal comprises a reflected ultrasonic wave responsive to the output ultrasonic wave, wherein the reflected ultrasonic wave was reflected off a surface of the user (McMahon, Para 0022; “The method may include sensing, via a microphone on the mobile electronic device, a reflected sound signal, the reflected sound signal being reflected from the user.”);
process the microphone signal to detect a change, over time (McMahon, Para 0221; “… a Fourier transform (such as an fast Fourier transform or FFT) at 2016 is carried out to estimate and produce a “2D” matrix 2018. Each row is the FFT of a sweep and each column is an FFT bin. It is these FFT bins that translate into range, and are therefore referred to as “range bins.”” Para 0225; “This may be implemented with a range bin selection algorithm that processes the resulting two dimensional (2D) matrix 2018 to yield a 1D matrix (or matrices) at the bin(s) of interest.”; Para 0235; “With respect to the calculator processing at 2108, various metrics, such as for respiration estimation, may be determine.” The disclosed “column” or “range bin” is the axis of time, and various metrics can be calculated at bins of interest, i.e. along time axis but at specific frequency range), in a resonance of a transfer function from the speaker to the microphone (McMahon, Paras 0208-0209; “As an aside, correlating a standard chirp with the response at the receiver, provides an estimate of the echo impulse response. In FMCW, the system effectively considers the ensemble of all responses across the frequency range …”. The disclosed “ensemble of all responses across the frequency range” is calculated and presented as the disclosed “FFT 2D matrix” (as termed in Fig. 20) as in Para 0221; “… estimate and produce a “2D” matrix 2018. Each row is the FFT of a sweep and each column is an FFT bin. It is these FFT bins that translate into range, and are therefore referred to as “range bins.”” Hence, each row of the disclosed FFT 2D matrix can be interpreted as a transfer function of the system at a time when a specific sweep is transmitted, so that different rows would be transfer function estimated by sweeps transmitted at different time points) as the output ultrasonic wave reflects off the surface of the user; and
compute a heart rate of the user (McMahon, Para 0301; “… in addition to respiration information, the sound generation and reflection analysis of the various technology versions previously described, may be implemented for other periodic information as well such as cardiac information detection or heart rate, from the produced motion-related signal.”), based on correlating the detected change in the resonance of the transfer function (McMahon, Para 0248; ““Fda” (Frequency domain analysis) can be performed; such statistics can be calculated using 64 second overlapping data windows, with 1 second step length.” As discussed above, calculation of the disclosed “such statistics” or other metrics in Para 0236-0246 is along range bin or column of interest of the FFT 2D matrix, or along the axis of time) to the heart rate (McMahon, Para 0248; “… breathing rates may be detected within a rate window that amounts to 6 to 40 breaths per minute (bpm), corresponding to 0.1-0.67 Hz. This frequency band corresponds to realistic human breathing rates.”; Para 0250; “An alternative frequency band can also be considered for typical heart rate (e.g., where a HR of 45 beats per minute to 180 beats per minute corresponds to 0.75-3 Hz).”).
McMahon does not explicitly and clearly disclose a headphone having an internal microphone and an external microphone, outputting ultrasonic wave when headphone is worn on or in an ear of a user, obtaining a microphone signal of the internal microphone of the headphone, wherein the signal was reflected off a surface of the ear of the user.
Margalit in the same field of endeavor discloses a headphone having an internal microphone and an external microphone (Margalit, Para 0033; “An earphone system may include … US transceiver (703); microphone (705) …”. The disclosed “US transceiver” corresponds to internal microphone of Application, and “microphone” for an earphone corresponds to external microphone of Application), outputting ultrasonic wave when headphone is worn on or in an ear of a user (Margalit, Para 0028; “… an earphone comprising a modulated ultrasound speaker and located near the ear canal. In one example the modulated ultrasound speaker generates ultrasound …”), obtaining a microphone signal of the internal microphone of the headphone (Margalit, Para 0032; “In one example an ultrasound modulated speaker generates residual ultrasound in the ear which is used for backscattering measurement. An ultrasound receiver for example as described in FIG. 3 and FIG. 4 detects the ultrasound backscatter signal.”), wherein the signal was reflected off a surface of the ear of the user (Margalit, Para 0028; “… the attenuation of the ultrasound is low and the signal back reflection from the ear canal and tympanic membrane is large enough to detect, measure and extract from the ultrasound back reflections various physical characteristics and their physiological manifestation.”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify McMahon, as suggested by Margalit, in order to include two microphones or receivers, and use the internal US receiver to collect ultrasonic wave reflected from a surface of the ear. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make the modification for the benefit of using the external or regular receiver to perform necessary function of conventional microphone of an earphone, and enhancing the precision of estimated heart rate by using an internal-oriented US receiver to collect signals from a surface of the ear which is very close to earphone (Margalit, Para 0002; “The ultrasound used in the speaker device is typically above 100 KHz and hence has significant attenuation in air. However, in earphone or headset applications the speaker device is located within a few cm from the ear including the ear canal and tympanic membrane.”).
With regard to Claim 38, McMahon and Margalit disclose the machine-readable medium of Claim 36 as discussed above. McMahon further discloses wherein the processor is integrated in a smartphone (McMahon, Para 0024; “The methods, systems, devices and apparatus described herein can provide improved functioning in a processor, such as of a processor of a general or specific purpose computer, portable computer processing device (e.g., mobile phone, tablet computer etc.)”) or in the headphone, and the other audio content is music, a telephone conversation, active noise cancellation audio content, or transparency audio content (McMahon, Para 0166; “Where the system is operating at, for example, about over 18 kHz, then any generated music source may be low pass filtered below about 18 kHz ;”; also in Para 0167; “An alternate approach when generating or playing an acoustic signal (e.g., music) to using (A)FHRG, FMCW, UWB etc. (with or without masking) is to directly modulate the carrier”).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LEI ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)272-7172. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8am-5pm E.T..
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Pascal Bui-Pho can be reached at (571) 272-2714. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/L.Z./ Examiner, Art Unit 3798
/PASCAL M BUI PHO/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3798
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