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 .
Response to Amendment
The Amendment filed 07/06/2026 has been entered. Claims 1-9 are pending in the application.
Applicant’s amendment fails to overcome the computer readable medium rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 from the previously filed Office Action.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to amendments to independent claim(s) 1, 8 and 9 are moot based on the new grounds of rejection.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 9 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim(s) does/do not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claim recites a computer readable recording medium storing a signal processing program and does not specify that the computer readable recording medium is non-transitory. According to the MPEP 2106.03, section II, "For example, the BRI of machine readable media can encompass non-statutory transitory forms of signal transmission, such as a propagating electrical or electromagnetic signal per se. See In re Nuijten, 500 F.3d 1346, 84 USPQ2d 1495 (Fed. Cir. 2007). When the BRI encompasses transitory forms of signal transmission, a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 101 as failing to claim statutory subject matter would be appropriate.".
Referring back to the specification disclosed by the applicant, the specification recites in paragraph 0161, “The auxiliary memory 14 is a non-transitory tangible storage medium. Examples of non-transitory tangible storage media include a magnetic disk, an optical disk, a CD-ROM (Compact Disk Read Only Memory), a DVD-ROM (Digital Versatile Disk Read Only Memory, and semiconductor memory.”. However, the specification does not disclose that the computer readable recording medium itself is non-transitory. Therefore, claim 9 is
rejected for failing to fall under at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject
matter. Applicant can re-write claim 9 to recite a "non-transitory computer readable recording
medium" to overcome the rejection.
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.
(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.
Claim(s) 1-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Pincus, Paul, and Mark Preiss. "3D SAR coherent change detection for monitoring the ground under a forest canopy." IET Radar, Sonar & Navigation 13.9 (2019): 1488-1500.
Regarding claim 1, Pincus discloses
A signal processing system (section 1 paragraph 8: Figure 2: SAR images acquired by multichannel radar system) comprising:
a memory storing software instructions (implicit in a system which generates SAR images, see Fig. 2), and
one or more processors configured to execute the software instructions to record received signals to generate observed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) images (implicit in a system which generates SAR images, see Fig. 2);
generate simulated SAR images, each of which is a complex image showing a steady state that matches an imaging condition of a SAR image to be analyzed (section 1 paragraph 5: using three-dimensional (3D) SAR beamforming, also known as SAR tomography…although an ordinary 2D SAR image has no vertical resolution, it retains information about the heights of scattering contributions in both the projection geometry of the layover and the pixel phase…given multiple co-registered 2D images acquired at slightly different grazing angles, they can be coherently weighted and summed to produce a new image that is 3D in the sense that it is steered to one height, with scattering contributions from other heights suppressed…the technique is typically used either to characterize the vertical structure of a scene by scanning beams in height and plotting the variation in scattering intensity, which is analogous to direction-of-arrival estimation, or to detect hidden targets by suppressing the canopy interference and searching for anomalous responses on the ground underneath, assuming that the ground height is known…the first goal, in particular, requires a wide but well-sampled angular aperture to support a useful level of vertical resolution and a useful unambiguous vertical extent. Such an aperture must be synthesized by many (usually ten or more) images acquired on separate passes, which is an impractical collection burden and leads to a difficult phase calibration problem, particularly cross-pass motion compensation for airborne platforms),
wherein the simulated SAR images are generated based on three-dimensional information and the imaging condition of the SAR image to be analyzed (section 9: the 3D SAR CCD concept shown in Fig. 2 was tested using RVOG clutter generated by the simulation demonstrated in Section 2 …the scene change is illustrated in Fig. 14, with the ground scatterers for the second pass in red overlaid on those for the first pass in blue…Fig. 15 shows the ordinary CCD obtained when the volume is absent… averaging window used to evaluate the coherence…the distortions in the letters are a direct consequence of the particular random shifts for this realization of scene change…for this coherence metric, this CCD is the best possible representation of the scene change…each raw radar dataset was first focused into a SAR image at ground height with ground-plane resolution…each resolution cell covered several scatterers, giving rise to fully developed speckle…the SAR intensity images from the first and second channels are shown in Fig. 16..the images of the RVOG scene appear to be nothing more than different realizations of some noise process, with no texture or structure, but in fact, each pixel is the net response due to the coherent superposition of the individual echoes from the ground and laid-over volume scattering elements at that location, and therefore each image exhibits the deterministic speckle pattern that results from its particular collection geometry… the resulting images are 3D in the sense that the input data are steered to ground height, so the complex ground clutter is preserved but the above-ground scattering from the volume is suppressed…the average coherence of the unchanged area in the middle of the scene, which agrees with the theoretical coherence for the RVOG model; Fig. 19 shows receiver operating characteristics for change detection using selected CCD images…each curve shows the locus of the probability of detection and the probability of false alarm as the coherence threshold used to classify the pixels as either changed or unchanged is varied between zero and one…the proposed 3D processing techniques significantly improve change detection performance for volume obscured scenes; Figure 9; Section 8 paragraph 3: high level of volume attenuation shown in Fig. 8 for one scene is, in fact, achievable over a wide range of scenes, as shown in Fig. 9…these curves were generated in the same way as in the previous figure, for a minimal three-channel system…the performance is determined by both the height of the volume's effective phase center and the effective width of the vertical structure: when there is little propagation loss, scattering contributions will be received from a wide range of heights, which the beamformer has a limited ability to suppress due to its small number of channels),
wherein the three-dimensional information comprises data with information on an intensity and a phase at a three dimensional position under the steady state reconstructed using the observed SAR images of an area taken by a SAR (section 1 paragraph 5: using three-dimensional (3D) SAR beamforming, also known as SAR tomography… given multiple co-registered 2D images acquired at slightly different grazing angles, they can be coherently weighted and summed to produce a new image that is 3D in the sense that it is steered to one height, with scattering contributions from other heights suppressed…the technique is typically used either to characterize the vertical structure of a scene by scanning beams in height and plotting the variation in scattering intensity, which is analogous to direction-of-arrival estimation, or to detect hidden targets by suppressing the canopy interference and searching for anomalous responses on the ground underneath, assuming that the ground height is known; section 2 paragraph 1: the complex speckle pattern in a SAR image is the pixel-to-pixel fluctuation in the net coherent response of many scattering elements in spatially distributed clutter…it arises because the elements are not individually resolved, i.e. each resolution cell contains many elements at slightly different propagation ranges, so their scattering responses have different phases and coherently interfere…although it is sometimes modelled as multiplicative noise, the speckle pattern is, in fact, a deterministic and repeatable signature of the landscape, given a particular wavelength and angular point of-view; section 7 paragraph 1: compare the performance of different radar designs and beamformers for different model scenes).
Regarding claim 2, Pincus further discloses
The signal processing system according to claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the software instructions to calculate the three-dimensional information using the observed SAR images (section 1 paragraph 5: using three-dimensional (3D) SAR beamforming, also known as SAR tomography… given multiple co-registered 2D images acquired at slightly different grazing angles, they can be coherently weighted and summed to produce a new image that is 3D in the sense that it is steered to one height, with scattering contributions from other heights suppressed…the technique is typically used either to characterize the vertical structure of a scene by scanning beams in height and plotting the variation in scattering intensity, which is analogous to direction-of-arrival estimation, or to detect hidden targets by suppressing the canopy interference and searching for anomalous responses on the ground underneath, assuming that the ground height is known; section 2 paragraph 1: the complex speckle pattern in a SAR image is the pixel-to-pixel fluctuation in the net coherent response of many scattering elements in spatially distributed clutter…it arises because the elements are not individually resolved, i.e. each resolution cell contains many elements at slightly different propagation ranges, so their scattering responses have different phases and coherently interfere…although it is sometimes modelled as multiplicative noise, the speckle pattern is, in fact, a deterministic and repeatable signature of the landscape, given a particular wavelength and angular point of-view; section 7 paragraph 1: compare the performance of different radar designs and beamformers for different model scenes).
Regarding claim 3, Pincus further discloses
The signal processing system according to claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the software instructions to detect a change occurring in an area in the SAR image to be analyzed by comparing the SAR image to be analyzed and the simulated SAR image (section 9: the 3D SAR CCD concept shown in Fig. 2 was tested using RVOG clutter generated by the simulation demonstrated in Section 2 …the scene change is illustrated in Fig. 14, with the ground scatterers for the second pass in red overlaid on those for the first pass in blue…Fig. 15 shows the ordinary CCD obtained when the volume is absent… averaging window used to evaluate the coherence…the distortions in the letters are a direct consequence of the particular random shifts for this realization of scene change…for this coherence metric, this CCD is the best possible representation of the scene change…each raw radar dataset was first focused into a SAR image at ground height with ground-plane resolution…each resolution cell covered several scatterers, giving rise to fully developed speckle…the SAR intensity images from the first and second channels are shown in Fig. 16..the images of the RVOG scene appear to be nothing more than different realizations of some noise process, with no texture or structure, but in fact, each pixel is the net response due to the coherent superposition of the individual echoes from the ground and laid-over volume scattering elements at that location, and therefore each image exhibits the deterministic speckle pattern that results from its particular collection geometry… the resulting images are 3D in the sense that the input data are steered to ground height, so the complex ground clutter is preserved but the above-ground scattering from the volume is suppressed…the average coherence of the unchanged area in the middle of the scene, which agrees with the theoretical coherence for the RVOG model; Fig. 19 shows receiver operating characteristics for change detection using selected CCD images…each curve shows the locus of the probability of detection and the probability of false alarm as the coherence threshold used to classify the pixels as either changed or unchanged is varied between zero and one…the proposed 3D processing techniques significantly improve change detection performance for volume obscured scenes; Figure 9; Section 8 paragraph 3: high level of volume attenuation shown in Fig. 8 for one scene is, in fact, achievable over a wide range of scenes, as shown in Fig. 9…these curves were generated in the same way as in the previous figure, for a minimal three-channel system…the performance is determined by both the height of the volume's effective phase center and the effective width of the vertical structure: when there is little propagation loss, scattering contributions will be received from a wide range of heights, which the beamformer has a limited ability to suppress due to its small number of channels).”).
Regarding claim 4, Pincus further discloses
The signal processing system according to claim 3, wherein the one or more processors are configured to execute the software instructions to detect the change by calculating a degree of similarity between the SAR image to be analyzed and the simulated SAR image (section 9 paragraph 8: Fig. 19 shows receiver operating characteristics for change detection using selected CCD images…each curve shows the locus of the probability of detection and the probability of false alarm as the coherence threshold used to classify the pixels as either changed or unchanged is varied between zero and one…the true change map is given by Fig. 14. In the ground-only reference case (blue), the characteristic is still not perfect ( certain detection with zero false alarms) because the resolution of the CCD is coarser than the size of the true scene changes - compare the line width of the letters in Figs. 14 and 15. For a false-alarm rate of, say, five per cent, the probability of detection is 0.86 for the ground-only reference case, 0.26 for the single-channel CCD (green), 0.69 for the 3D CCD obtained using the fixed RVOG beamformer (red), and 0.76 for the 3D CCD obtained using the adaptive MVDR beamformer (cyan)…the proposed 3D processing techniques significantly improve change detection performance for volume obscured scenes).”.
Regarding claim 5, Pincus further discloses
The signal processing system according to claim 4, wherein the one or more processors are configured to execute the software instructions to calculate the degree of similarity using phase information indicated by the SAR image to be analyzed and phase information indicated by the simulated SAR image (section 1 paragraph 5: the layover problem can be overcome using three-dimensional (3D) SAR beamforming, also known as SAR tomography…although an ordinary 2D SAR image has no vertical resolution, retains information about the heights of scattering contributions in both the projection geometry of the layover and the pixel phase…given multiple co-registered 2D images acquired at slightly different grazing angles, they can be coherently weighted and summed to produce a new image that is 3D in the sense that it is steered to one height, with scattering contributions from other heights suppressed.; Figures 10-13).
Regarding claim 6, Pincus further discloses
The signal processing system according to claim 5, wherein the degree of similarity is a coherence value (section 5: model the coherence for every pair of channels in (5) by the dual-layer expression in (17)…for all pairs within a pass, the ground coherence will be unity (assuming that the spatial frequency apertures of the SAR images have been trimmed to their common region…across passes, all pairs observe the same temporal decorrelation (i.e. scene change); let
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denote the common ground coherence, which is the indicator of change we seek. Given the assumption of constant component powers in (16), μ will be constant for all channels and
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constant for all pairs of distinct channels. Expressing the three sets of observed coherences in matrix form gives
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, where
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is a matrix of ground interferometric phasors,
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is a matrix of volume coherences,
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is a matrix whose leading diagonal is unity and all other elements are
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, 1 is an M x M matrix of ones and 0 indicates the Hadamard product).
Regarding claim 7, XXX discloses
The signal processing system according to claim 4, wherein the one or more processors are configured to execute the software instructions to generate the simulated SAR image for an imaging condition of each of a plurality of SAR images to be analyzed, and calculate the degree of similarity for each pair of the SAR image to be analyzed and the simulated SAR image over multiple pairs, and detects the change using the calculated multiple degrees of similarity (section 9 paragraphs 1: the 3D SAR CCD concept shown in Fig. 2 was tested using
RVOG clutter generated by the simulation demonstrated in Section 2…the 180 x 120 m scene consisted of 2.4-million-point scatterers arranged randomly in ground and volume layers; on average, there were ten per square meter on the ground and five per cubic meter in the volume…scatterer intensity was assigned according to height, accow1ting for propagation loss, such that the whole scene satisfied the RVOG model with h., = 20m, a~8 = 0. l dB/m and μ = 0dB. Six sets of raw radar echoes were synthesized to mimic the pulses acquired by two passes of a three-channel array fanned by two alternating L-band (2 = 22.7 cm) antennas with a 10 m across-track separation (recall Fig. 1)…the two flight-tracks were nominally at 35° grazing angle and 6200 ft altitude, with realistic offsets in ground-range and altitude of a few meters, giving a grazing angle separation of I/lb - ljr0 = 0.3°. The resulting channel spacing within each pass was t:,.1/f = 0.05°. For the interferometric pair formed across passes by the two middle channels, the resulting volume coherence according to (48), and the total RVOG coherence magnitude given by (18); Section 9 paragraph 9: Fig. 19 shows receiver operating characteristics for change detection using selected CCD images. Each curve shows the locus of the probability of detection and the probability of false alarm as the coherence threshold used to classify the pixels as either changed or unchanged is varied between zero and one…the true change map is given by Fig. 14…in the ground-only reference case (blue), the characteristic is still not perfect ( certain detection with zero false alarms) because the resolution of the CCD is coarser than the size of the true scene changes - compare the line width of the letters in Figs. 14 and 15. For a false-alarm rate of, say, five percent, the probability of detection is 0.86 for the ground-only reference case, 0.26 for the single-channel CCD (green), 0.69 for the 3D CCD obtained using the fixed RVOG beamformer (red), and 0.76 for the 3D CCD obtained using the adaptive MVDR beamformer(cyan). Hence, the proposed 3D processing techniques significantly improve change detection performance for volume obscured scenes).
Regarding claim 8, the same cited section and rationale as claim 1 is applied.
Regarding claim 9, the same cited section and rationale as claim 1 is applied.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Knaell Et al. (US 5,394,151) describes a method and apparatus capable of acquiring three-dimensional images without having to position an antenna at all element positions of a filled two-dimensional spatial array (column 2 lines 34-37); a frequency response may be obtained by stepped frequency measurements or by measurements with a linearly frequency modulated (chirp) pulse…the frequency response may be obtained in a time so short that the relative motion between target and radar during the measurement time can be neglected (but not during the time interval between frequency response measurements). Let the index i denote a particular frequency response. Let its samples be denoted by the index k and let its radar line-of-sight (LOS) direction as measured from the target center of coordinates to the radar phase center be denoted by the unit vector…a radar datum may be indicated (column 5 lines 19-40).
Calabrese (US 9,019,144 B2) describes a method for acquiring SAR images for interferometric processing (column 4 lines 19-21); acquiring SAR images for interferometric processing, a method for computing a height, a method for computing a digital elevation model, a method for computing an interferogram, a method for computing a coherence map, a SAR remote sensing system configured to implement said SAR image acquisition method, a software program product for implementing said method for computing a height, a software program product for implementing said method for computing a digital elevation model, a software program product for implementing said method for computing an interferogram, and a software program product for implementing said method for computing a coherence map (column 4 lines 28-40).
Benninghofen et al. (US 2012/0133550 A1) describes obtaining distance information from an SAR image proceeds as follows. In an SAR system, the range gate is set for the generation of images…this range gate determines the distance between the SAR sensor and the resolution cell on the ground that corresponds to the center of the SAR slant range image…this pixel is identified as the center pixel…once a pixel has been determined as the target, the distance to the resolution cell on the ground corresponding to the pixel can be calculated (paragraph 26).
Willey et al. (US 2008/0074313 A1) describes a method and apparatus for three dimensional sub-voxel position imaging, and more particularly, to a method and apparatus for determining three dimensional sub-voxel positions using synthetic aperture radar (paragraph 1); the at least four simultaneous SAR platforms in flight are replaced by four sequential flights of a single SAR platform such that the flight trajectories are distributed in range, cross-range, and height…the relative phases and relative positions between the SAR platforms between passes are estimated from--central reference points in the scene (paragraph 9).
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 NAZRA N. WAHEED whose telephone number is (571)272-6713. The examiner can normally be reached M-F (8 AM - 4:30 PM).
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/NAZRA NUR WAHEED/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3648
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