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 § 103
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.
Claim(s) 1, 15, 17, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dietz et al. (US 2004/0208632 A1), in view of Gorokhov (US 20070281642 A1).
Regarding claim 15, Dietz et al. disclose a wireless communication device (fig. 2), the wireless communication device being configured to: using at least one light emitting diode, LED (fig. 2, LED 202), as a transmitter, send outgoing optical wireless communication signals to a further wireless communication device; using the at least one LED as a receiver (fig. 2, LED 202, paragraph 0018), receive incoming optical wireless communication signals from the further wireless communication device.
Dietz et al. diff er from the claimed invention in that Dietz et al. do not disclose that based on at least some of the received incoming optical wireless communication signals, estimate a channel characteristic for the outgoing optical wireless communication signals. Gorokhov discloses the use of the received signals to estimate the channel information and feed this information back to the transmitter (fig. 12, estimate channel characteristic in 1260; the estimated channel characteristic then be processed and transmitted back to transmitter system 1210; paragraph 0102). At the time when the invention is filed it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skilled in the art to apply the channel characteristics estimation taught by Gorokhov in the system of Dietz in order to determine data rates as well as coding and modulation schemes to be used for one or more data streams.
Claims 1, 17, and 18 are rejected for the same reasons as apply to claim 1.
Regarding claim 10, Gorokhov further discloses wherein the incoming optical communication signals include reference signals, and wherein the wireless communication device estimates the channel characteristic based on the reference signals (paragraphs 0079 and 0083).
Claim(s) 2, and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dietz et al. (US 2004/0208632 A1), in view of Gorokhov (US 20070281642 A1), and further in view of Linnartz (US 2020/0153506).
Regarding claims 2 and 16, the system of Dietz et al. and Gorokhov differs from the claimed invention in that Dietz et al. and Gorokhov do not explicitly disclose wherein the outgoing optical wireless communication signals and the incoming optical wireless communication signals are modulated based on a multicarrier modulation scheme. However using a multicarrier modulation scheme is well known in the art. For example, Linnartz disclose using a multicarrier modulation scheme (paragraph 0102). At the time when the invention is filed it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skilled in the art to apply the multicarrier modulation scheme taught by Linnartz in the system of Dietz et al. and Gorokhov in order to allow the transmission of symbols each in a narrowband narrower than the overall bandwidth of the signal.
Claim(s) 3-9, 11-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Dietz et al. (US 2004/0208632 A1), in view of Gorokhov (US 20070281642 A1), and further in view of Official Notice.
Regarding claims 3-9, 11-14, the system of Dietz et al. and Gorokhov differs from the claimed invention in that Dietz et al. and Gorokhov do not explicitly disclose the cite various modulation schemes and various networks. However, the examiner takes Official Notice that the cited various modulation schemes and various networks are well known in the art. At the time when the invention is filed it would have been obvious for a person of ordinary skilled in the art to apply the cited various modulation schemes and various networks in order to build a communication system based on various needs.
Conclusion
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/QUAN ZHEN WANG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2685