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 § 102
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.
Claim(s) 1, 14, 20 and claims bellow are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by D1 US 20210116531 A1 .
20. (New) A lidar system for surroundings detection, comprising an emitter for radiation emission and a detector for radiation detection,
wherein the emitter comprises a plurality of separately controllable light sources[0003, 0038]+[0097](one or more transmit antennas) for emitting light radiation, [0003, 0038](transmit antennas can be light sources from lidar[0038])
wherein the lidar system is configured to operate the emitter in such a way that joint radiation operation is performed in each case successively by different light source groups comprising a plurality of light sources,[0111-0114]
wherein the joint radiation operation comprises a continuous operating mode [0112](FMCW
wherein in the continuous operating mode the light sources of the respective light source group emit differently modulated light radiations with different modulation frequencies, and(implicit definition of FMCW)
wherein the detector is realized in the form of a single detector comprising only one radiation- sensitive detector structure[0149](one receive antenna)
Claim 2, 3, 15 [0146]
Claims 4 [0124] (low pass filtering at least before phase information)
13. (Currently Amended) The lidar system according toclaim 1,wherein the lidar system is configured to operate the emitter in such a way that joint radiation operation is performed in each case successively by different light source groups comprising a plurality of light sources, wherein the joint radiation operation comprises a continuous operating mode frequencies, [0112](FMCW implicit definition of FMCW)
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) 5-9, 16-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 in view of D2 EP 3070494 A1.
Although D1 does not teach that FMCW was generated by the light source group (115) comprises a pulsed operating mode, in which the light sources of the light source group emit light radiations (130) in the form of at least one common pulse.
D2 teaches using two mode operation pulsed and continuous (fig. 4 P(WFD) and P(Phi))[0061-0067]
It will be obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art to modify teachings taught by D1 with teachings by D2 in order to obtain in measure short and long distances.
Claim 6, 17 D2[0062]
Claims 7, 8, 9, 18 D2[0062]
It will be obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art to modify teachings taught by D1 with teachings by D2 in order to obtain in measure short and long distances without saturation of the detector.
Claim(s) 10-12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1.
Although regarding claims 10-13-19 D1 does not explicitly teach
10. (Currently Amended) The lidar system according claim 1,wherein the light sources are configured in the form of surface emitters. (Obvious matter of design choice to use one of many well known source arrays)
11. (Currently Amended) The lidar system according toclaim 1,wherein the detector comprises one of the following: a single photodiode,or a single avalanche photodiode. . (Obvious matter of design choice to use one of many well known source detector types)
12. (Currently Amended) The lidar system according toclaim 1,wherein the modulation frequencies are in the MHz range. (obvious matter of choice of the operation ranges)
It will be obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art to modify teachings taught by D1as it is just matter either design choice or choosing operation range.
Claim(s) 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 in view of D3 US 20210048531 A1.
Regarding claim 19 D1 does not teach but D3 teaches
19. (New) The lidar system according to claim 13, wherein in the continuous operating mode the same different modulation frequencies are employed in each case for the different light source groups.[0050](fig. 4)
It will be obvious to one of ordinary skills in the art to modify teachings taught by D1 with teachings by D3 in order to perform spatial modulation and to collect the phase-synchronized signals I.sub.0, I.sub.90, I.sub.180 and I.sub.270, for the purpose of computing the depth coordinates.
Conclusion
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/HOVHANNES BAGHDASARYAN/Examiner, Art Unit 3645
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