DETAILED ACTION
The instant application having Application No. 18/685061 filed on 02/20/2024 is presented for examination by the examiner.
Claims 1-2, 12-30 and 32 are pending. Claims 3-11 and 31 were cancelled.
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 . 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 for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 12 and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claims 12 and 24 each recites the limitation “the signal Error Vector Magnitude (EVM)”. However, there is insufficient antecedent base for this limitation in the claim. Applicant should replace “the signal Error Vector Magnitude (EVM)” with “an Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) of the signal”.
Allowable Subject Matters
Claims 1-2, 13-23, 25-30 and 32 are allowed. The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance.
Claims 1, 13, 25 and 29 are allowed over the prior art of record because the Examiner found neither prior art cited in its entirety, nor based on the prior art found any motivation to combine any of the said prior art reference which teach the limitation “filtering each signal output by the time domain beamformer by a band stop filter, the band stop filter including a stop band overlapping a pass band of the signal output by the time domain beamformer; filtering each signal output by the time domain beamformer by a group delay filter in electrical parallel with a band stop filter, the group delay filter providing a group delay to the signal output by the time domain beamformer; and subtracting an output of each band stop filter from an output of a corresponding group delay filter” with respect to the additional claimed subject matter and in particular the specific boundaries as recited in the claim. It is noted that the closest prior art, Jelonnek et al. (US 2020/0212975 A1) discloses “(fig. 1 and par. 0011-0013), FIG. 1 illustrates architecture of analogue/hybrid beamforming system for a multi-antenna system. The architecture comprises a beamforming unit (BF) 106 capable of determining beamforming factors for controlling transmission beams of antennas 112a, 112b, 112c in an analogue/hybrid beamforming system; parallel power amplifiers 104a, 104b, 104c controllable by the beamforming factors; phase and magnitude shifters 109 prior to the parallel power amplifiers; a power amplifier control unit (PACNTL) 105 capable of determining operating parameters for the power amplifiers on the basis of beamforming factors; a digital predistortion unit (DPD) 108 controllable by a single predistortion model for feeding a predistorted signal to the parallel power amplifiers for linearizing the power amplifiers' outputs. The phase and magnitude shifters are arranged to adjust the phase and magnitude of the radio signals fed to the parallel power amplifiers. The PA CNTL may be connected to the DPD, the BF and the power amplifiers' outputs to cause one or more functionalities described in various embodiments described herein. In this way predistortion performed by the digital predistortion unit may be adjusted on the basis of the power amplifiers' outputs. In an example, the architecture may comprise a digital signal processing (DSP) section 102 and an analogue signal processing (ASP) section 110. The DSP may provide baseband signal processing of transmissions and the ASP may provide signal processing in one or more higher frequency bands that may comprise an intermediate frequency and a radio frequency for communications by the antennas 104a, 104b, 104c. The DSP may comprise a digital beamforming unit 106 and a digital predistortion (DPD) unit 108, and the ASP may comprise analogue PAs. PA outputs from the ASP may be converted to digital signals by one or more Digital-to-Analogue Converters (DACs)”.
However, Jelonnek fails to disclose at least the claim limitations “filtering each signal output by the time domain beamformer by a band stop filter, the band stop filter including a stop band overlapping a pass band of the signal output by the time domain beamformer; filtering each signal output by the time domain beamformer by a group delay filter in electrical parallel with a band stop filter, the group delay filter providing a group delay to the signal output by the time domain beamformer; and subtracting an output of each band stop filter from an output of a corresponding group delay filter”. Thus, Jelonnek does not disclose or render obvious the above underlined limitations as claimed. Claims 2, 14-23, 26-28, 30 and 32 are also allowed since they depend on claims 1, 13, 25 and 29 respectively.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US Patent Publications:
Baldemair (US 2017/0359109 A1)
Retnasothie et al. (US 20090170444 A1)
Smith (US 20020131580 A1)
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MANG HANG YEUNG whose telephone number is (571)270-7319. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rebecca Song can be reached on (571) 270-3667. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MANG HANG YEUNG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2417