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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claims 8, 9, 17, and 18 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected subcombination, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 06/17/2026.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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.
Claims 1 and 13-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Lin ("Design and Implementation of a Wirelessly Powered and Controlled Gate Driver" IEEE JOURNAL OF RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION, VOL. 5, NO. 1, MARCH 2021).
Regarding claim 1, Lin teaches a power module (i.e., power system; see FIG. 1), comprising:
a power circuit comprising one or more power switches configured to provide power to a load (see FIG. 1 (a));
a first wireless interface configured to receive a first wireless signal (i.e., “one dedicated modulated radio wave (frequency f1 and duty cycle D1) is used to control the WPCGD. The dedicated modulated wave is then demodulated in the WPCGD chip as a pulse width modulation (PWM) gate control signal to drive the power switch”; see p. 40, col. 2, ¶ 2 and FIG. 1; see, also, RX Antenna 2 and Matching Circuit in FIG. 2);
a controller (i.e., WPCGD) configured to:
generate a drive signal based on the first wireless signal (i.e., “The dedicated modulated wave is then demodulated in the WPCGD chip as a pulse width modulation (PWM) gate control signal to drive the power switch”; see p. 40, col. 2, ¶ 2 and FIG. 1); and
drive the one or more power switches with the drive signal to provide the power to the load (see id.); and
a second wireless interface configured to receive and convert a second wireless signal into power for the controller and the first wireless interface (i.e., “One dedicated continuous wave (frequency f0) is thus used to power the WPCGD continuously”; see p. 40, col. 2, ¶ 2 and FIG. 1; see, also, RX Antenna 1 and Matching Circuit in FIG. 2).
Regarding claim 13, Lin further teaches:
a power converter circuit configured to at least one of step-up or step-down the power converted by the second wireless interface (i.e., “The main function of the voltage multiplier circuit is to convert the received RF signal into a DC voltage”; see p. 42, col. 1, ¶ 3).
Regarding claim 14, Lin further teaches:
wherein the first wireless signal received by the first wireless interface (i.e., RX Antenna 2 and Matching Circuit; see FIG. 2) and the drive signal are pulse-width modulated signals (i.e., “At the receiving end, a three-stage voltage multiplier and an RC filter are employed to demodulate the modulated PWM control signal”; see Abstract and FIG. 2).
Regarding claim 15, Lin teaches a system for providing power (see FIGs. 1 and 2), comprising:
a first transmitter (i.e., TX Antenna 2) configured to wirelessly transmit a first pulse-width modulated (PWM) signal (see FIG. 2); and
a power module (i.e., power system; see FIG. 1) comprising:
a power circuit comprising one or more power switches configured to provide power to a load (see FIG. 1 (a));
a first wireless interface configured to receive the first PWM signal from the first transmitter (i.e., “one dedicated modulated radio wave (frequency f1 and duty cycle D1) is used to control the WPCGD. The dedicated modulated wave is then demodulated in the WPCGD chip as a pulse width modulation (PWM) gate control signal to drive the power switch”; see p. 40, col. 2, ¶ 2 and FIG. 1; see, also, RX Antenna 2 and Matching Circuit in FIG. 2);
a controller (i.e., WPCGD) configured to:
generate a second PWM signal based on the first PWM signal (i.e., “The dedicated modulated wave is then demodulated in the WPCGD chip as a pulse width modulation (PWM) gate control signal to drive the power switch”; see p. 40, col. 2, ¶ 2 and FIG. 1); and
drive the one or more power switches with the second PWM signal to provide the power to the load (see id.); and
an inductive power transfer (IPT) circuit configured to receive and convert a wireless signal into power for the controller and the first wireless interface (i.e., “One dedicated continuous wave (frequency f0) is thus used to power the WPCGD continuously”; see p. 40, col. 2, ¶ 2 and FIG. 1; see, also, RX Antenna 1 and Matching Circuit in FIG. 2).
Regarding claim 16, Lin further teaches:
a second transmitter configured to wirelessly transmit the wireless signal to the IPT circuit (i.e., TX Antenna 1; see FIG. 2).
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.
Claims 10-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin.
Regarding claim 10, Lin further teaches:
wherein the one or more power switches comprise at least two power switches (i.e., see FIG. 1(b))
Lin does not explicitly disclose (see only the underlined):
wherein the one or more power switches comprise at least two power switches in a half-bridge configuration.
However, it is well-known to use a half-bridge configuration in a power switch.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to adapt the WPCGD such that the one or more power switches comprise at least two power switches in a half-bridge configuration, as claimed. The rationale would be to utilize the GPCGD technique in a known type of power switch.
Regarding claim 11, the prior art applied to the preceding linking claim(s) teaches the features of the linking claim(s).
Lin does not explicitly disclose:
wherein the first wireless interface comprises a Wi-Fi communication interface.
But Lin teaches:
using the WPCGD in a communication network environment (i.e., “can be employed in 5G and Internet-of-Things applications”; see Abstract).
Also, it is well-known to use Wi-Fi as a wireless communication technology.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to adapt the WPCGD, such that the first wireless interface comprises a Wi-Fi communication interface, as claimed. The rationale would be to use a known type of technology for network communication.
Regarding claim 12, the prior art applied to the preceding linking claim(s) teaches the features of the linking claim(s).
Lin does not explicitly disclose:
wherein the first wireless interface comprises an Ultra-Wideband (UWB) communication interface.
However, it is well-known to use UWB as a short-range wireless communication technology. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to adapt the WPCGD, such that the first wireless interface comprises an Ultra-Wideband (UWB) communication interface, as claimed. The rationale would be to use a known technology for the short-range data communications.
Claims 2-4, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin in view of Ren et al. ("Real-Time Aging Monitoring for Power MOSFETs Using Threshold Voltage" 2016 IEEE; hereinafter “Ren”).
Regarding claim 2, the prior art applied to the preceding linking claim(s) teaches the features of the linking claim(s).
Lin does not explicitly disclose:
a state of health (SOH) circuit coupled to the power circuit, wherein the controller is configured to generate SOH information about the power circuit based on output of the SOH circuit.
But Ren teaches:
a state of health (SOH) circuit coupled to the power circuit (see FIG. 3 and/or 4), wherein the controller is configured to generate SOH information (i.e., “Vth”) about the power circuit based on output (i.e., vg_gnd) of the SOH circuit (i.e., “It can be seen that an abrupt change in the slew rate of vg_gnd will be observed once vgs reaches Vth due to the second item of the equation (5). Therefore, the threshold voltage can be monitored by the capture of this turning point”; see P. 444, col. 2, ¶ 4).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Lin in view of Ren, by incorporating a state of health (SOH) circuit coupled to the power circuit, wherein the controller is configured to generate SOH information about the power circuit based on output of the SOH circuit, as claimed. The rationale would be to monitoring the aging of the power switch.
Regarding claim 3, the prior art applied to the preceding linking claim(s) teaches the features of the linking claim(s).
Lin does not explicitly disclose:
wherein the first wireless interface is configured to wirelessly transmit the SOH information to an external device.
But Lin teaches:
using the WPCGD in a communication network environment (i.e., “can be employed in 5G and Internet-of-Things applications”; see Abstract).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to adapt the WPCGD, such that the first wireless interface is configured to wirelessly transmit the SOH information to an external device, as claimed. The rationale would be to show the monitored result to a user.
Regarding claim 4, as a result of modification applied to claim 2 above, Lin in view of Ren further teaches:
wherein the SOH information comprises aging information about the one or more power switches (i.e., “This paper proposes a threshold voltage-based real-time aging monitoring method for power MOSFETs in Buck converters”; see Ren, Abstract).
Regarding claim 19, the claim recites the same substantive further limitations as claim 2 and is rejected by applying the same teachings.
Regarding claim 20, the claim recites the same substantive limitations as claims 1-3 and is rejected by applying the same teachings.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-7 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding claims 5-7, the closest prior art of record fails to teach the feature of claim 5: “wherein the SOH circuit comprises a comparator circuit configured to compare an aging signal to a reference signal and generate a pulse when the reference signal reaches a peak of the aging signal,” in combination with the rest of the claim limitations as claimed and defined by the Applicant.
Ren is determining the voltage threshold Vth (an aging indicator) by detecting a turning point in vg_gnd, by comparing vg_gnd(n) - vg_gnd(n-1) with a threshold (see FIG. 8). It is different from the feature at issue.
Dusmez et al. ("Aging Precursor Identification and Lifetime Estimation for Thermally Aged Discrete Package Silicon Power Switches" IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 53, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2017) teaches a method of lifetime estimation for a power switch, involving empirically modeling gate threshold voltage variation to estimate the remaining useful lifetime of the switches experiencing gate oxide degradation.
Erturk et al. ("Real-Time Aging Detection of SiC MOSFETs" IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 55, NO. 1, 2019) teaches a method of aging detection for SiC MOSFETs, involving comparing a gate leakage current with a leakage current limit.
None of the prior art of record, singly or in combination, teaches or suggest the feature at issue.
Prior Art
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Korn et al. (US 20120207138 A1) teaches a method for controlling a plurality of power converters connected to a power supply network, using a control signal which is wireless communicated through a wireless node of the power converters.
WANG et al. (CN 107395001 B) teaches a high-voltage power electronic transformer drive system based on wireless energy transmission, involving controlling a PWM pulse signal by photoelectric conversion to optical signal in transmission through optical fiber transmission.
Bishtein et al. (US 20180309316 A1) teaches a method of wireless power transmission, involving a wireless power receiver configured to receive a wireless power signal from a power transmitting unit; a wireless radio unit configured to communicate with the power transmitting unit; and a controllable rectifier circuit configured to rectify the wireless power signal.
Somayajulaet al. (US 20230194593 A1) teaches a method of estimating the useful life of a transistor, involving monitoring an on-state resistance or an on-state voltage of the transistors.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JOHN C KUAN whose telephone number is (571)270-7066. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 9:00AM-5:30PM.
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/JOHN C KUAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2857
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