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 .
Claims 1-25 are pending.
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.
Claims 1, 10, 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Orchard (US 11,635,499 B2, Patented April 24, 2023) in view of Viswanatha (US 11169246 B1, Patented November 9, 2021).
As to claim 1, Orchard discloses a light detection and ranging (LiDAR) system, comprising:
an optical arrangement configured to emit an outgoing optical beam towards a target and collect light returned from the target in a target optical beam (Orchard at Fig. 1, laser 1);
an optical splitter to redirect a portion of the outgoing optical beam to an optical delay device to generate a reference optical beam (Orchard at Fig. 1, splitter 2 and delay 15);
a first optical receiver to detect a first beat frequency from the target optical beam to generate a target signal (Orchard at Fig. 1, mixer and detector 10).1
a second optical receiver to detect a second beat frequency from the reference optical beam to generate a reference signal (Orchard at Fig. 1, mixer and detector 14; ¶ [0024]); and
a signal processing system to process the target signal and the reference signal to eliminate phase noise in the target signal (Orchard at Fig. 1, processor 12; Claim 3 including claim 1; ¶ [0017]),
the signal processing system to: process the reference signal to generate a phase noise estimate and combine the phase noise estimate with the target signal… to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal (Orchard at Fig. 1; ¶ [0019]-[0020])…; and
determine a range of the target from the phase corrected target signal (Orchard at ¶ [0003]).
Orchard does not expressly state: in a digital time-domain computation to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal.
However, Viswanatha does disclose in a digital time-domain computation to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal (Viswanatha at Figs. 7, 9-12, time domain filters)..
Orchard discloses a base Lidar device upon which the claimed invention is an improvement. Viswanatha discloses a comparable Lidar device which has been improved in the same way as the claimed invention. Hence, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify or add to Orchard the teachings of Viswanatha for the predictable result of correcting phase impairments (Viswanatha at col. 1, ll. 44-46).
As to claim 10, Orchard discloses a method of light detection and ranging (LiDAR), comprising:
emitting an outgoing optical beam towards a target and collecting light returned from the target in a target optical beam (Orchard at Fig. 1, laser 1);
redirecting a portion of the outgoing optical beam to an optical delay device to generate a reference optical beam (Orchard at Fig. 1, splitter 2 and delay 15);
detecting a first beat frequency from the target optical beam to generate a target signal (Orchard at Fig. 1, mixer and detector 10), 2 and
detecting a second beat frequency from the reference optical beam to generate a reference signal (Orchard at Fig. 1, mixer and detector 14; ¶ [0024]);
processing the reference signal to generate a phase noise estimate; combining the phase noise estimate with the target signal… to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal (Orchard at Fig. 1; ¶ [0019]-[0020]); and
determining a range of the target from the phase corrected target signal (Orchard at ¶ [0003]).
Orchard does not expressly state: in a digital time-domain computation to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal.
However, Viswanatha does disclose in a digital time-domain computation to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal (Viswanatha at Figs. 7, 9-12, time domain filters).
Orchard discloses a base Lidar device upon which the claimed invention is an improvement. Viswanatha discloses a comparable Lidar device which has been improved in the same way as the claimed invention. Hence, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify or add to Orchard the teachings of Viswanatha for the predictable result of correcting phase impairments (Viswanatha at col. 1, ll. 44-46).
As to claim 19, Orchard discloses a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system, comprising: a processing device; and a memory to store instructions that, when executed by the processing device, cause the LIDAR system (Orchard at Fig. 1) to:
emit an outgoing optical beam towards a target and collect light returned from the target in a target optical beam (Orchard at Fig. 1, laser 1);
redirect a portion of the outgoing optical beam to an optical delay device to generate a reference optical beam (Orchard at Fig. 1, splitter 2 and delay 15);
detect a first beat frequency from the target optical beam to generate a target signal (Orchard at Fig. 1, processor 12; Claim 3 including claim 1; ¶ [0017]), 3 and
detect a second beat frequency from the reference optical beam to generate a reference signal (Orchard at Fig. 1, mixer and detector 14; ¶ [0024]);
process the reference signal to generate a phase noise estimate; combine the phase noise estimate with the target signal… to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal (Orchard at Fig. 1; ¶ [0019]-[0020]); and
determine a range of the target from the phase corrected target signal (Orchard at ¶ [0003]).
Orchard does not expressly state: in a digital time-domain computation to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal.
However, Viswanatha does disclose in a digital time-domain computation to eliminate noise in the target signal to generate a phase corrected target signal (Viswanatha at Figs. 7, 9-12, time domain filters).
Orchard discloses a base Lidar device upon which the claimed invention is an improvement. Viswanatha discloses a comparable Lidar device which has been improved in the same way as the claimed invention. Hence, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify or add to Orchard the teachings of Viswanatha for the predictable result of correcting phase impairments (Viswanatha at col. 1, ll. 44-46).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-9, 11-18, 20-25 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all elements of the objected to claim and all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Going (US 11,662,444 B1, Patented May 30, 2023) is made of reference for its relevance to claims 1, 10, 19 by its disclosure of the following:
Col. 1, ll. 13-19 discloses “(2) Frequency-Modulated Continuous-Wave (FMCW) LiDAR systems may use a reference optical path with a delay of known length to create a reference beat frequency. A linear representation of the phase noise of an optical source may be extracted from the reference beat frequency in order to remove the peak spreading effects of the phase noise for a target.”
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Sanjiv D Patel whose telephone number is (571)270-5731. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm.
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/Sanjiv D. Patel/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2625
07/11/2026
1 See also Going in Conclusion Section below.
2 See also Going in Conclusion Section below.
3 See also Going in Conclusion Section below.
Prosecution Insights