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 Objections
Claims 1 and 16 are objected to because of the following informalities: The acronyms “LMS, NLMS” should be spelled out for the first time usage in independent claims. The examiner suggests change to “Least Mean Square (LSM)” and “Normalized Least Mean Square (NLMS)”, respectively. Appropriate correction is required.
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 5, 6, 9-11 and 19 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 applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 5 recites the limitation "the norm" in page 2 line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Since claim 6 is depending on claim 5, therefore, claim 6 is rejected for the same reason set forth in claim 5.
Claim 9 recites the limitation "the real part" in page 2 line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 9 recites the limitation "the direction" in page 3 line1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 9 recites the limitation "the sign" in page 3 line1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 9 recites the limitation "the error function" in page 3 line1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Since claims 10 and 11 are directly/indirectly depending on claim 9, therefore, claims 10 and 11 are rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim 9.
Claim 19 recites the limitation "the real part" in page 4 line 2. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 19 recites the limitation "the direction" in page 4 line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 19 recites the limitation "the sign" in page 4 line 3. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 19 recites the limitation "the imaginary part" in page 5 line 1. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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) 16 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the applicant’s cited references NPL "A Compact Noise Covariance Matrix Model for MVDR Beamforming" (Moore et al hereinafter Moore) and in view of NPL “Blind Acoustic Beamforming Based on Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition” (Warsitz et al hereinafter Warsitz).
Regarding claim 16, Moore discloses a hearing aid adapted to be worn by a user (abstract), the hearing aid comprising: a microphone system comprising two or three microphones adapted for picking up sound from an environment of the user and to provide corresponding electric input signals (abstract with section I: microphone array implicit to the beamformer providing frequency-cells in the frequency domain for each microphone signal), a directional noise reduction system connected to said microphone system and implemented as a generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) (section I: three closely related beamformer topologies of MVDR, MPDR, and GSC types, which are exchangeable and which seek to maximize the SNR for a look direction to a target sound source, for which noise co-variance matrix or signal co-variance matrix need to calculated. A VAD estimates probability of presence of speech to identify non-speech frequency cells for which the noise level is estimated to compute the noise covariance matrix which is used to determine the optimum weight vector of the beamformer),
Moore does not explicitly disclose a Generalized Eigenvector beamformer (GEV) or an approximation thereof, the directional noise reduction system being configured to provide a noise reduced signal determined as a function of an adaptive parameter pi, the Generalized Eigenvector beamformer (GEV) comprising at least two fixed beamformers, each being configured to generate a beamformed signal in dependence of associated beamformer weights, wherein an update rule for estimating said adaptive parameter (3) is based on at least one of: a direct determination based on estimation values of said beamformed signals of said two fixed beamformers, and an update of previous values to present values according to a complex sign-LMS algorithm.
However, these claimed limitations are notorious old and well known.
For instance, in the related field of the invention, Warsitz teaches these limitations that a GSC update scheme which shows beamforming with SNR maximization in the look direction applying generalized eigenvalue decomposition, MVDR, and GSC beamformers being an implementation alternative to each other, wherein tracking of an eigenvector is used for coefficient adaptations. Further, a normalized step size is temporally smoothed input power (see abstract with sections I and V. B).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to use the teaching by Warsitz in Moore in order to remove unwanted interference and noises for a desired signal.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-15 are allowed if overcome the claim object and 112 2nd rejections above. The prior art of record fails to teaches the limitations “at least three fixed beamformers, at least M-1 target cancelling beamformers each for generating a target cancelling signal for attenuating sound from said specified position of the target sound source in dependence of beamformer weights configured to be applied to at least two of said M electric input signals, o wherein the beamformer weights of the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) beamformer are determined as a function of an adaptive parameter vector β, and wherein the adaptive parameter vector β is determined:- a) by using an adaptive update algorithm constituted by or comprising an LMS or NLMS update algorithm, or a sign LMS algorithm, or b) by solving the equation ∇ β = 0, wherein ∇ β refers the gradient with respect to the adaptive parameter vector β.” of claim 1 and combined with all other limitations of claim 1.
Claims 17-19 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, because the prior art of record fails to teach the limitation of claim 17 “wherein the microphone system comprises two microphones, wherein the direct determination comprises solving a cost function with respect to the adaptive parameter.“ and the limitation of claim 18 “wherein the update of previous values to present values according to the complex sign-LMS algorithm comprises determining the adaptive parameter based on a previous determined adaptive parameter and an update term comprising a gradient update, wherein the gradient update is indicative of a gradient of an error function with respect to the adaptive parameter.”. Therefore, the prior art teachings are neither anticipate nor render obvious the allowable subject matter in combination with the other claimed limitations.
Conclusion
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/TUAN D NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2699