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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of papers submitted under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d), which papers have been placed of record in the file.
Should applicant desire to obtain the benefit of foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d) prior to declaration of an interference, a certified English translation of the foreign application must be submitted in reply to this action. 37 CFR 41.154(b) and 41.202(e).
Failure to provide a certified translation may result in no benefit being accorded for the non-English application.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 12/18/2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 C.F. R 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Oath/Declaration
The Oath/Declaration filed on 12/18/2023 is hereby acknowledged.
Drawings
The drawings were received on 12/18/2023. These drawings are acceptable.
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.
Claim 3-9 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 3 recites the limitation "the basic subcarrier set" in line 2. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 3 recites the limitation "the valid subcarrier set" in line 4. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 5 recites the limitation "a target subcarrier set" in line 2. It is unclear if this “target subcarrier set” is the same or different from “a target subcarrier set” cited in claim 1, line 5 upon which claim 5 depends on.
Claim 6 recites the limitation "a target subcarrier set" in line 2. It is unclear if this “target subcarrier set” is the same or different from “a target subcarrier set” cited in claim 1, line 5 or claim 5, line 2 upon which claim 6 depends on.
Claims 4, 7-9 are rejected for at least its dependency on claims 3 and 5, respectively.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 1, 2, and 10-20 are allowed.
Claims 3-9 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the prior art of record, particularly Xia et al. (NPL titled "Sparse Repeated Preamble-Based Direct Current Offset and Frequency Offset Estimator in OFDM Direct Conversion Receivers," in IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 16043-16050, 2019), Fang et al. (NPL titled "A low-complexity null space-based method for blind CFO and DCO estimator in OFDM systems," 2012 2nd International Conference on Consumer Electronics, Communications and Networks (CECNet), Yichang, China, 2012, pp. 778-781), Lin et al. (US 8180004 B2) and HALEY et al. (EP 3231236 B1) either considered alone or in combination fails to fair teach or suggest the limitations of:
“a measurement circuit configured to determine a target subcarrier set based at least in part on a carrier frequency offset with respect to the second data signal, and measure noise and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the second data signal by using the target subcarrier set” when considered in view of the other limitations as recited in claim 1;
“a measurement circuit configured to perform a measurement operation on the second data signal using a valid subcarrier set of subcarriers represented by index values, among subcarriers included in the second data signal, when a carrier frequency offset with respect to the second data signal exceeds a threshold” when considered in view of the other limitations as recited in claim 15; and
“determining a target subcarrier set based on a carrier frequency offset with respect to the second data signal; and measuring a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and noise using the target subcarrier set” when considered in view of the other limitations as recited in claim 19.
Claims 3-9 would be allowable if rewritten to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Xia et al. (NPL titled "Sparse Repeated Preamble-Based Direct Current Offset and Frequency Offset Estimator in OFDM Direct Conversion Receivers," in IEEE Access, vol. 7, pp. 16043-16050, 2019) discloses (Abstract, Fig. 1) “a novel method to estimate DCO and CFO is presented in OFDM DCRs by exploring the sparse symbols embedded in the preamble. In the proposed method, CFO and DCO estimations can be easily decoupled. Next, a robust low-complexity DCO estimation method is proposed by using the sparse properties of the preamble in the frequency domain. Moreover, a novel CFO estimation scheme independent of the DCO is presented based on the repeated preamble structure in which the DCO component focuses on the DC subcarrier when the received preamble signal was not CFO compensated in the frequency domain. The simulation results show that the proposed CFO and DCO estimators can achieve better performance than any available methods.” However, Xia et al. does not teach or suggest “determine a target subcarrier set based at least in part on a carrier frequency offset with respect to the second data signal, and measure noise and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the second data signal by using the target subcarrier set.”
Fang et al. ("A low-complexity null space-based method for blind CFO and DCO estimator in OFDM systems," 2012 2nd International Conference on Consumer Electronics, Communications and Networks (CECNet), Yichang, China, 2012, pp. 778-781) discloses (Abstract, Conclusion, ) “a new null space-based method for joint CFO and DCO estimation in OFDM systems. This method carefully constructs a projection matrix that cancels both the CFO and the DCO terms in the received signal, thus showing the existence of such matrix and hence the fact that the null space-based approach to blind estimation of CFO in the presence of DCO can be simplified to the level of the same approach for estimating CFO alone. Simulation results confirm that the proposed method achieves the same best estimation accuracy and runs over 10 times faster than current state of the art methods.” However, Fang et al. does not teach or suggest “determine a target subcarrier set based at least in part on a carrier frequency offset with respect to the second data signal, and measure noise and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the second data signal by using the target subcarrier set.”
Lin et al. (US 8180004 B2) discloses (Abstract, Fig. 2) “A received signal delivered through a transmission line can be compensated for carrier frequency offset and direct-current offset to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of the received signal, eventually resulting in an effective improvement in the error rate. The received signal has convoluted influences through the transmission line, so that observation of continual symbols of periodic pilot signals on the frequency axis shows just a phase shift by the carrier frequency offset. Therefore, the carrier frequency offset can be analytically found from the continual symbols of periodic pilot signals, thereby allowing the direct-current offset to be estimated and both the carrier frequency offset and the direct-current offset to be compensated for.” However, Lin et al. does not teach or suggest “determine a target subcarrier set based at least in part on a carrier frequency offset with respect to the second data signal, and measure noise and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the second data signal by using the target subcarrier set.”
HALEY et al. (EP 3231236 B1) discloses (Fig., 1, 11, SECTION 5.2.7: SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO ESTIMATION, SECTION 7.2: UPLINK RECEIVER, SECTION 7.2.5: NOISE POWER ESTIMATION, SECTION 7.2.6: SIGNAL-TO-NOISE RATIO ESTIMATION) “the noise power estimation module 725 in the receiver uses an N point FFT, where N is greater than the maximum number of subcarriers that may be allocated for uplink transmission… the average power is measured over the duration of the frequency domain received packet, on one or more of the unallocated subcarriers. The noise power estimate is then calculated as the mean of the average power measurements.” “the uplink SNR estimate, γ̂u, is calculated using the estimated noise power and complex channel gain estimate by the SNR estimator 726 as follows [see equation on page 37, line 20].” However, • HALEY et al. does not teach or suggest “determine a target subcarrier set based at least in part on a carrier frequency offset with respect to the second data signal, and measure noise and a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the second data signal by using the target subcarrier set.”
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AMNEET SINGH whose telephone number is (571)272-2414. The examiner can normally be reached 9:30am to 5:30pm.
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/AMNEET SINGH/Examiner, Art Unit 2633
/SAM K AHN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2633
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