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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/14/2025 and
01/07/2026 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the IDS is being considered by the examiner.
Examiner’s Note
To help the reader, examiner notes in this detailed action claim language is in bold, strikethrough limitations are not explicitly taught and language added to explain a reference mapping are isolated from quotations via square brackets.
Election/Restriction
Restriction to one of the following inventions is required under 35 U.S.C. 121:
I. Claim(s) 1-7, 15-20, drawn to A sensing method/communication device, classified in G01S 7/006.
II. Claim(s) 5-7, drawn to A sensing configuration method, classified in G01S 7/4026.
The inventions are independent or distinct, each from the other because:
Inventions I. and II. are related as subcombinations disclosed as usable together in a single combination. The subcombinations are distinct if they do not overlap in scope and are not obvious variants, and if it is shown that at least one subcombination is separately usable.
The examiner has required restriction between subcombinations usable together. Where applicant elects a subcombination and claims thereto are subsequently found allowable, any claim(s) depending from or otherwise requiring all the limitations of the allowable subcombination will be examined for patentability in accordance with 37 CFR 1.104. See MPEP § 821.04(a). Applicant is advised that if any claim presented in a continuation or divisional application is anticipated by, or includes all the limitations of, a claim that is allowable in the present application, such claim may be subject to provisional statutory and/or nonstatutory double patenting rejections over the claims of the instant application.
Restriction for examination purposes as indicated is proper because all the inventions listed in this action are independent or distinct for the reasons given above and there would be a serious search and/or examination burden if restriction were not required because one or more of the following reasons apply:
The inventions have acquired a separate status in the art in view of their different classification and thus employ different search strategies or search queries.
Applicant is advised that the reply to this requirement to be complete must include (i) an election of an invention to be examined even though the requirement may be traversed (37 CFR 1.143) and (ii) identification of the claims encompassing the elected invention.
The election of an invention may be made with or without traverse. To reserve a right to petition, the election must be made with traverse. If the reply does not distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement, the election shall be treated as an election without traverse. Traversal must be presented at the time of election in order to be considered timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are added after the election, applicant must indicate which of these claims are readable upon the elected invention.
Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103 or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a) of the other invention.
A telephone call was made to David Golub on 04/28/2026 to request an oral election to the above restriction requirement where an election was made for Group I. Claims 1-7, 15-20.
Applicant is reminded that upon the cancellation of claims to a non-elected invention, the inventorship must be corrected in compliance with 37 CFR 1.48(a) if one or more of the currently named inventors is no longer an inventor of at least one claim remaining in the application. A request to correct inventorship under 37 CFR 1.48(a) must be accompanied by an application data sheet in accordance with 37 CFR 1.76 that identifies each inventor by his or her legal name and by the processing fee required under 37 CFR 1.17(i).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ISMAAEEL A. SIDDIQUEE whose telephone number is (571)272-3896. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8am-5pm.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-6, 18-20 is/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.
Regarding claim(s) 4-6, 18-20, Applicant's claim(s) encompass an invention that the prior art does not disclose, teach, or otherwise render obvious. For instance, Davis in vie of Wu and Chang fail to disclose the specific antenna aperture configuration taken in the overall context of the claims.
As best understood within the context of Applicant' s claimed invention as a whole, these limitations do not appear to be disclosed, taught, nor otherwise rendered obvious by the prior art.
Accordingly, claim(s) 4-6, 18-20 is/are deemed allowable over the prior art.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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, would be the same under either status.
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) 1 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Davis et al. (US 20180252809 hereinafter Davis) in view of Wu (US PAT 11092683) and further in view of Chang et al. (US 20160291144 hereinafter Chang).
Regarding claim 1, Davis teaches A sensing method, comprising:
receiving, by a first device (0005 “at least one receiver is configured for installation and use on the vehicle and is operable to or configured to receive reflected radio signals.”), a first echo signal of a first signal at a first moment based on first antenna aperture configuration information (0005 “at least one receiver is configured for installation and use on the vehicle and is operable to or configured to receive reflected radio signals.”),
obtaining, by the first device, second antenna aperture configuration information based on a second echo signal at a second moment (0103 “After each of the transmitters has been used once and coarse knowledge of range is available, then the system switches to MIMO mode in which all transmitters are used simultaneously”; 0102 “The recovered signal is processed to determine a coarse range estimate and possibly a Doppler estimate for each target”),
receiving, by the first device, a third echo signal of the first signal at a third moment based on the second antenna aperture configuration information (0103 “After each of the transmitters has been used once and coarse knowledge of range is available, then the system switches to MIMO mode in which all transmitters are used simultaneously”),
wherein the second moment is the same as the first moment or after the first moment (0102 “the radar will use one antenna at a time (SIMO mode)”; Abstract “In another mode, the radar operates as a multi-input, multiple-output (MIMO) radar system utilizing all the antennas at a time.”); and
the third moment is a moment after the second moment (0103 “After each of the transmitters has been used once and coarse knowledge of range is available, then the system switches to MIMO mode in which all transmitters are used simultaneously”).
Davis does not explicitly teach the strikethrough limitations. However, in a related field of endeavor, Wu teaches
wherein the first echo signal is sent by a second device (Wu para 10 “distributed apertures can also be combined in systems, such as bi-static radar systems, that form a single large aperture by having each radar receive the other radars' transmissions and then cross-correlate the target returns with the received transmissions from the other radars for estimating target parameters”)
wherein the third echo signal is sent by the second device (para 37 “receiver antennas RX.sub.2,1 to RX.sub.2,4 of the slave radar device 20 receive and process the mono-static and bi-static target returns, as shown. Subsequently, the second transmit antenna (TX.sub.1,2) and third transmit antenna (TX.sub.1,3) of the selected master radar device 10 are sequentially selected to transmit or radiate radar signals that are received and processed as target returns at the receiver antennas”)
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of filing of the instant application, to include the teachings of Wu with the teachings of Davis. One would have been motivated to do so in order to advantageously radar performance (Wu para. 7). Further still, the Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (KSR), 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007) provides that combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results may render a claimed invention obvious over such combination. Here, Wu merely teaches that it is well-known to incorporate the particular antenna configuration. Since both Wu and Davis disclose similar radars, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the combination of elements here has previously been executed according to known methods, thereby evidencing that such combination would yield predictable results.
The cited prior art does not explicitly teach the remaining strikethrough limitations. However, in a related field of endeavor, Chang teaches
obtaining, by the first device, second antenna aperture configuration information based on a second echo signal at a second moment in a case of determining based on the first echo signal that a sensing object is found (0037 “When a target is detected, the search operation may transition to a track operation to track the detected target. This transition is indicated by line 48 in FIG. 4. During the track operation, a single three receive beam triad, (e.g., triad 50) may be used to track the location of the target”).
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of filing of the instant application, to include the teachings of Chang with the teachings of the cited prior art. One would have been motivated to do so in order to advantageously radar performance (Chang 0012). Further still, the Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (KSR), 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007) provides that combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results may render a claimed invention obvious over such combination. Here, Chang merely teaches that it is well-known to incorporate the particular antenna configuration. Since both the cited prior art and Chang disclose similar radars, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the combination of elements here has previously been executed according to known methods, thereby evidencing that such combination would yield predictable results.
Regarding claim 15, claim 15 recites substantially the same limitations as claim 1. Therefore, claim 15 is rejected for substantially the same reasons as claim 1.
Claim(s) 2-3, 7, 16-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Davis et al. (US 20180252809 hereinafter Davis) in view of Wu (US PAT 11092683) and further in view of Chang et al. (US 20160291144 hereinafter Chang) as applied to claim 1, and further in view of Ebling (US 20160252608).
Regarding claim 2, the cited prior art teaches The method according to claim 1, wherein the first antenna aperture configuration information and the second antenna aperture configuration information comprise: an aperture setting method (Wu para. 47 “FIG. 2C, the i-th MIMO virtual array antenna element's position may be denoted as x.sub.i=n.sub.i*d, where d is the unit element spacing in meters and n.sub.i is an integer. Ideally, d should be half wavelength for sampling the entire 180-degree field of view without ambiguity. In practice, the antenna's field of view is smaller than 180 degrees, so a larger spacing than half wavelength may be used.”) (Davis 0021 “By comparing the transmitted signal and the received signal, estimates of the range to different objects, the velocity of different objects and the angle (azimuth and/or elevation) can be estimated.”).
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of filing of the instant application, to include the teachings of Wu with the teachings of Davis. One would have been motivated to do so in order to advantageously radar performance (Wu para. 7). Further still, the Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (KSR), 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007) provides that combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results may render a claimed invention obvious over such combination. Here, Wu merely teaches that it is well-known to incorporate the particular antenna configuration. Since both Wu and Davis disclose similar radars, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the combination of elements here has previously been executed according to known methods, thereby evidencing that such combination would yield predictable results.
The cited prior art does not explicitly teach the remaining strikethrough limitations. However, in a related field of endeavor, Ebling teaches
and an aperture offset value for a target direction (0022 “The detected grating lobe target, being off center from the direction of interest (the main beam pointing angle), will have a phase difference that is proportional to the offset of the phase centers of the two sub-apertures,”).
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of filing of the instant application, to include the teachings of Ebling with the teachings of the cited prior art. One would have been motivated to do so in order to advantageously radar performance (Ebling 0012). Further still, the Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (KSR), 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007) provides that combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results may render a claimed invention obvious over such combination. Here, Ebling merely teaches that it is well-known to incorporate the particular antenna configuration. Since both the cited prior art and Ebling disclose similar radars, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the combination of elements here has previously been executed according to known methods, thereby evidencing that such combination would yield predictable results.
Regarding claim 3, the cited prior art teaches The method according to claim 2, wherein the first antenna aperture configuration information is obtained in at least one of the following ways:
the first device determines the first antenna aperture configuration information based on first information and antenna array hardware configuration information of the first device (Davis 0030 “A set of angles for which a radar can detect an object is called the field of view. Generally, with a fixed number of antennas, a large field of view would result is less angular resolution while a narrow field of view can provide better angular resolution. With certain antenna configurations, the elevation angle of an object can be determined.”), wherein the first information comprises at least one of the following: an angle resolution requirement in a sensing request, a lateral resolution requirement for radar imaging, and an operational distance requirement for radar imaging; the first device determines the first antenna aperture configuration information based on an antenna aperture recommendation value sent by the second device and the antenna array hardware configuration information of the first device; and the first device receives the first antenna aperture configuration information sent by a sensing function network element (Chang 0040 “The second stage 74 of the beamformer system 70 combines the beams associated with the various subarray groups of the first stage 72 to generate four overlapping offset beams of a four beam cluster (e.g., four beam cluster 30 of FIG. 3). As shown, the second stage 74 may include four combiners 76, 78, 80, 82 to combine the signals of the first stage”).
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of filing of the instant application, to include the teachings of Chang with the teachings of the cited prior art. One would have been motivated to do so in order to advantageously radar performance (Chang 0012). Further still, the Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (KSR), 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007) provides that combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results may render a claimed invention obvious over such combination. Here, Chang merely teaches that it is well-known to incorporate the particular antenna configuration. Since both the cited prior art and Chang disclose similar radars, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the combination of elements here has previously been executed according to known methods, thereby evidencing that such combination would yield predictable results.
Regarding claim 7, the cited prior art teaches The method according to claim 1, wherein the obtaining second antenna aperture configuration information based on a second echo signal at a second moment comprises: executing, by the first device, a first operation (Chang 0035 “The outputs of the beamformer may be coupled after further signal processing to a maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) algorithm to estimate the location (i.e., range and angle) of the target, if any, based on signals received through the corresponding receive beams.”); and
receiving, by the first device, second antenna aperture configuration information fed back by a sensing function network element (Chang 0034 “When a target is detected, a track mode may be initiated to track the detected target. During track mode, only three of the four beams may be used in some implementations.”);
wherein the first operation comprises one of the following:
performing radar signal processing on the second echo signal received at the second moment to determine measurement quantities and sending the measurement quantities to the sensing function network element (Chang 0045 “The detection processor 130 processes the output signal of the beam space processor 126 to generate information about targets therein.”); sending the second echo signal received at the second moment to the sensing function network element; and performing part of calculations in radar signal processing on the second echo signal received at the second moment to obtain a first part of measurement quantities and sends the first part to the sensing function network element, wherein the first part is a part that belongs to a first level among parts of different levels contained in the measurement quantities.
Furthermore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, at the time of filing of the instant application, to include the teachings of Chang with the teachings of the cited prior art. One would have been motivated to do so in order to advantageously radar performance (Chang 0012). Further still, the Supreme Court in KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (KSR), 550 U.S. 398, 82 USPQ2d 1385 (2007) provides that combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results may render a claimed invention obvious over such combination. Here, Chang merely teaches that it is well-known to incorporate the particular antenna configuration. Since both the cited prior art and Chang disclose similar radars, one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the combination of elements here has previously been executed according to known methods, thereby evidencing that such combination would yield predictable results.
Regarding claim 16, claim 16 recites substantially the same limitations as claim 2. Therefore, claim 16 is rejected for substantially the same reasons as claim 2.
Regarding claim 17, claim 17 recites substantially the same limitations as claim 3. Therefore, claim 17 is rejected for substantially the same reasons as claim 3.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to application’s disclosure:
BRAUNet al. (US 20150185317) discloses “A system and a method of generating a three-dimensional terrain model using one-dimensional interferometry of a rotating radar unit is provided herein. Height information is evaluated from phase differences between two echoes by applying a Kalman filter in relation to a phase confidence map that is generated from phase forward projections relating to formerly analyzed phase data. The radar system starts from a flat earth model and gathers height information of the actual terrain as the platform approaches it. Height ambiguities are corrected by removing redundant 2.pi. multiples from the unwrapped phase difference between the echoes. (See abstract)”
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ISMAAEEL A. SIDDIQUEE whose telephone number is (571) 272-3896. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 8am-5pm.
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/ISMAAEEL A. SIDDIQUEE/
Examiner, Art Unit 3648
/William Kelleher/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3648
Prosecution Insights