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 .
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 and 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by United States Patent Application Publication 2013/0108276 A1 to Kikuchi.
Regarding Claim 1, Kikuchi discloses a coherent optical receiver (Fig. 3, receiver (1220)) that reproduces a complex time-series signal from an optical signal received via an optical transmission line (Fig. 3, receiver (1220) receives signal from transmission line (1214) to reproduce transmitted complex time-series signal (¶ 29; 1203) at output (1230)), the complex time-series signal having been used to generate the optical signal,
the coherent optical receiver comprising:
an optical convolution circuit that performs optical signal processing on the received optical signal (Fig. 3, optical front end (1222, 1223-1, 1223-2));
a photodetector that converts the optical signal subjected to the optical signal processing into an electrical signal having an intensity waveform of the optical signal subjected to the optical signal processing (Fig’s 3 and 6A, photodetector (1226-2) outputs optically processed signal into intensity waveform shown in Fig. 6A); and
a demodulation algorithm that estimates the complex time-series signal by performing digital signal processing on the electrical signal, and sets the estimated complex time-series signal as a result of reproduction of the complex time-series signal used in generating the optical signal (Fig. 3, ADs (1226) convert the signal to digital for processing by judgment circuit (1221; ¶ 36) using maximum likelihood sequency estimation (¶ 99) reproduce the complex time-series signal (1230)).
Regarding Claim 2, Kikuchi discloses the optical convolution circuit includes:
a branching unit that branches the received optical signal (Fig. 3, delay interferometer (1223-2) has a splitter on input);
an optical delay line that gives different delay differences between the branched optical signals (¶ 33, delay is set so the phase difference between the paths is π/2);
a phase shifter that is disposed on the optical delay line, and gives a phase to the branched optical signal (Fig. 3, upper arm has π/2 delay); and
a merging unit connected to the optical delay line (Fig. 3, the two branched optical signals are merged.)
attenuation to the branched optical signal.
Conclusion
Claims 3-7 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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DANIEL G DOBSON whose telephone number is (571)272-9781. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8-5 EST.
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/DANIEL G DOBSON/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2634 10/10/2025
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