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
Claims 1 – 20 are currently pending.
New prior art reference has been found based on further search.
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 13, 16 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Christi (US 20260211108 A1) having an effective file date of Dec. 19, 2023.
As to claims 1, 8 and 13, Chritie 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 (Figs. 10 – 11);
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 (Id.) configured to:
determine a range-Doppler map using the signals received by the plurality of receiver modules (Fig. 12),
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 (Fig. 11 shows subsets.);
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 (Figs. 11);
calculate attributes of each spectrum in the plurality of spectra (Para. 60 “where S.sub.nsub(i, j) is the signal in the i.sup.th range-bin and j.sup.th Doppler sub-bin in sub-band n.sub.sub. In order to find the correct hypothesis, a circular sum is carried out, where the range-doppler sub-bins for each sub-band are added, with the summed hypothesis that gives the largest value indicating the correct hypothesis.”);
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. 60 “This in turn allows the N.sub.TX doppler peaks to each be mapped to their corresponding TX channel. The doppler bin corresponding to the correct velocity is given by the Doppler bin corresponding to TX1, because it has no Doppler phase coding applied.)”;
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. 60 as already cited. See also Figs. 16 – 18.); and
determine an estimated direction of arrival of the first object using the corrected range-Doppler map (Id.).
As to claims 4, 10 and 16, Christie discloses 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 (Figs. 11).
As to claims 6, 11 and 18, Christie discloses 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 (Fig. 12 wherein Range-Doppler matrix is derived from FFT’s.)
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 2 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Christie in view of Garraat (US 5546085 A).
As to claim 2 and 14, Christie does not teach 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.
In the same field of endeavor, Garnaat teaches “The thresholding process 15 finds interference peaks in the synthetic aperture radar data 11 so that they can be filtered out of the data 11 (col. 3 ll. 47 – 58).”
In view of the teachings of Garraat, it would have been obvious to the artisan before filing to apply an interference filter to remove peaks that are much larger that target peaks thereby improving accuracy.
Claims 7, 12 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Christie in view of Wu (US 20220171049 A1).
As to claim 20, Christie does not the method of claim 13, further comprising transmitting an output based on the estimated direction of arrival to an automated driving assistance system of a vehicle.
Wu teaches “it will be appreciated that radar systems may be used as sensors in a variety of different applications, including but not limited to automotive radar sensors for road safety systems, such as advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving (AD) systems. In such applications, the radar systems are used to measure the radial distance to a reflecting object, its relative radial velocity, and angle information, and are characterized by performance criteria, such as the angular resolution (the minimum distance between two targets of given sizes at the same range and range rate (or radial velocity) resolution cell which a radar is able to distinguish and separate to each other), sensitivity, false detection rate, and the like (Para. 18).”
In view of Wu, it would be obvious to artisan before filing to combine a radar with particular advantages/improvements such as Christie with an ADAS system because of the given market demand wherein the motivation is marketability and profit.
As to claim 7, 12 and 19, Christie does not teache 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.
Wu teaches correlating among different transmitters thus indicating cross-correlation instead of auto-correlation. See Wu Para. 62 and Fig. 7 step 713.
In view of Wu, it would be obvious to the artisan before filing to use correlation in order to determine matching peaks as well as reducing noise thus improving accuracy.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 5, 9, 15 and 17 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 prior art does not teach the feature of 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 or the feature of 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.
Conclusion
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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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, William Kelleher can be reached at 571-272-7753. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MICHAEL W JUSTICE/Examiner, Art Unit 3648
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