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
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. a202300885, filed on December 12, 2023.
Status of Claims
Amendments to claims 1 – 3, 5, 8 – 9, 13 – 15 and 17.
Claims 1 – 20 are currently pending.
Response to Remarks
In view of Applicant’s amendments and remarks, a new secondary reference has been found.
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 – 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Wu (US 20220171049 A1) published June 2, 2022 in view of Overdevest (US 20220187438 A1) published June 16, 2022 and Wu (US 20220334240 A1) published Oct. 20, 2022.
As to claims 1, 8 and 13, Wu discloses a radar system comprising:
a plurality of transmitter modules configured to transmit a plurality of transmitted radar signals in accordance with a Doppler Domain Multiplexing (DDM) scheme, wherein each transmitted radar signal is associated with a transmit channel of a plurality of transmit channels (Figure 1 shows several transmitters and DDM at step 26.);
a plurality of receiver modules configured to receive reflections of the plurality of transmitted radar signals reflected by at least one object and to generate signals based on the received reflections (Figure 1 shows many receivers coupled to RF frontend electronics coupled to MCU 20); and a signal processor (Fig. 1 MCU 20) configured to:
determine a range-Doppler map using the signals received by the plurality of receiver modules (Fig. 1 steps 23 & 23),
the range-Doppler map including values associated with a plurality of range bins and a plurality of Doppler bins (Id.),
determine a first subarray including values associated with a first range bin of the range-Doppler map, wherein the first range bin is associated with a first object (Subset is not taught.);
calculate a plurality of spectra using the first subarray, wherein each spectra in the plurality of spectra is associated with a transmit channel of the plurality of transmit channels (Para. 24 “FFT” see also Para. 17 “co-prime coded (CPC) Doppler Division Multiplexing (DDM) MIMO”);
calculate attributes of each spectrum in the plurality of spectra (Para. 65 “Doppler shift”);
determine, using the attributes of each spectra, a first spectrum in the plurality of spectra that includes local peaks that are not in the other spectra in the plurality of spectra (Para. 65 “To this end, the estimated Doppler shift or radial velocity may be determined by the bin position relative to the zero-radial velocity bin of each transmitter, and receiver outputs of the same radial velocity (i.e., the same relative bin numbers) are grouped to form MIMO array output following standard MIMO virtual array construction process.”;
modify values in the range-Doppler map associated with the transmit channel associated with the first spectrum to determine a corrected range-Doppler map (Para. 65 as cited and see also Para. 70 “All Doppler detections are correctly associated to the originating transmitters in this case.”); and
determine an estimated direction of arrival of the first object using the corrected range-Doppler map (Fig. 1 step 27 in the MCU 20).
Wu does not teach a subset of range-Doppler map.
In the same field of endeavor, Overdevest teaches “determine a subset of correction matrices comprising correction matrices with a velocity range encompassing one or more of the velocities of each of the one or more targets.”
In view of the teachings of Overdevest, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before filing to include subsets of range-Doppler maps RDMs for each transmitter based on velocity’s of objects corresponding the Doppler multiplexing in order to not have to process the entire RDMs thereby reducing processing time.
Wu in view of Overdevest does not teach the correction of Doppler smearing across respectively different transmit channels by reducing said smearing into the correct range-Doppler bin of a range-Doppler-Antenna(transmit-channel) map.
In the same field of endeavor, Wu ‘240 teaches “The true target radial velocity, if it falls within the unfolded extent, may show up in the same radial velocity across all transmitters' spectrums. In this case, the Doppler spectrums may have peaks aligning at the same position and in contrast, the peaks are misaligned for incorrectly unfolded velocity (Para. 23).” Wu ‘240 further teaches “In this instance, plot 300 depicting an unwrapped radial velocity of −45 [m/s] for an overlapping peak of each of three received sets of reflections from three transmitters, relative to the various other plots in which corresponding ambiguous velocities have peaks misaligned. Consequently, a target with −45 [m/s] resolved velocity is detected and the velocity is used for computing the correct phase error compensation (Aĩ) in the MIMO array vector of this range-Doppler cell. A similar approach may be carried out for additional targets (Para. 44).”
In view of the teachings of Wu’ 240, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before filing to correct the phase of the unwrapped (smeared) Doppler in order to reduce the Doppler to the correct bin thereby improving accuracy.
As to claim 2 and 14, Wu in view of Overdevest and Wu ‘240 teaches the radar system of claim 1 and 13, wherein, to calculate the attributes of each spectrum in the plurality of spectra, the signal processor is configured to determine a number of local peaks in each spectrum that is within a threshold value of a maximum value of the spectrum (Wu Figs. 9 – 11 determining false Doppler signals that are below target level signals and above a threshold.).
As to claim 3, 9 and 15, Wu in view of Overdevest and Wu ‘240 teaches the radar system of claim 2, 8 and 14, wherein to determine, using the attributes of each spectrum, a first spectrum in the plurality of spectra that includes local peaks that are not in the other spectra in the plurality of spectra, the signal processor is configured to determine that a number of peaks in the first spectrum is different from numbers of peaks in each of the other spectrum in the plurality of spectra (Wu Fig. 6 and Figs. 9 – 11 & Para. 61 “At step 713, CPC decoding is performed to disambiguate the Doppler spectrum signals from different transmitters by filtering the binary sequence (created at step 712) with binary FIR filter (created at step 711) for each transmitter to identify associations from filter outputs exceeding a predefined threshold, thereby recovering correct peak-to-transmitter associations.”).
As to claims 4, 10 and 16, Wu in view of Overdevest and Wu ‘240 teaches the radar system of claim 1, 8 and 13 wherein the plurality of receiver modules are arranged in a linear receive subarray and the first subarray is a uniform receive subarray (Wu Fig. 8).
As to claims 5 and 17, Wu in view of Overdevest and Wu ‘240 teaches the radar system of claim 1 and 13, wherein, to modify values in the range-Doppler map associated with the transmit channel associated with the first spectrum to determine a corrected range-Doppler map, the signal processor is configured to set values in the range-Doppler map associated with the transmit channel associated with the first spectrum to zero values (Wu Para. 73).
As to claims 6, 11 and 18, Wu in view of Overdevest and Wu ‘240 teaches the radar system of claim 1, 8 and 13 wherein, to calculate the plurality of spectra, the signal processor is configured to calculate a fast Fourier transform of values in the first subarray (Para. 24 “FFT” and Fig. 1 steps 22 – 23.
As to claim 7, 12 and 19, Wu in view of Overdevest and Wu ‘240 teaches the radar system of claim 1, 8 and 13 wherein, to calculate attributes of each spectrum in the plurality of spectra, the signal processor is configured to calculate cross-correlation values for pairs of the spectra in the plurality of spectra (Para. 62 and Fig. 7 step 713 discloses correlating among different transmitters thus indicating cross-correlation instead of auto-correlation.).
As to claim 20, Wu in view of Overdevest and Wu ‘240 teaches the method of claim 13, further comprising transmitting an output based on the estimated direction of arrival (Fig. 1 step 27) to an automated driving assistance system of a vehicle (Para. 18).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL W JUSTICE whose telephone number is (571)270-7029. The examiner can normally be reached 7:30 - 5:30 M-F.
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/MICHAEL W JUSTICE/Examiner, Art Unit 3648
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