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 .
This Office Action is responsive to the Preliminary Amendment filed on 07/08/24. Accordingly, claims 13-29 are currently pending; and claims 1-12 are canceled.
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.
Claims 13-19, 21, 22 and 25-28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Pacourek (6,329,883).
-Regarding claim 13, Pacourek teaches an electronic control device (300) (see figure 3), comprising:
a first input (being an input of (324)) configured to receive a control voltage (310) of a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) (comprising (312, 316, 320));
a second input (being another input of (324)) configured to receive a reference control voltage (322) of the VCO; and
an output (being an output of (332));
wherein the electronic control device is configured to adjust a bias current (318) of the VCO by providing a signal (334) at the output in response to non-idealities (referred to “non-idealities”, col. 6, lines 14, 17) (including a change of temperature (referred to “temperature”, col. 1, line 29) in order to maintain a level of the control voltage at an optimum value (“optimum VREF 322”, col. 6, line 48) that must inherently be inside a specified range between 2 boundary values (referred to “boundary values”, col. 2, line 24) of a PLL (301) for operation, (see col. 1, lines 28-35, col. 2, lines 21-27, col. 5, line 4 to col. 6, line 65).
-Regarding claim 14, at for claim 3, Pacourek teaches that the electronic control device is configured to minimize a difference between the control voltage and the reference control voltage (as the optimum value (“optimum VREF 322”, col. 6, line 48) is the value of the reference control voltage).
-Regarding claim 15, Pacourek teaches that the control voltage is adjusted in a first control loop (303, 308, 312, 316, 320, 303) of the VCO, wherein the electronic control device forms part of an additional control loop (324, 328, 332, 316, 320, 303, 308, 324) of the VCO (see figure 3).
-Regarding claim 16, Pacourek teaches that the control loops have different time constants (referred to “τ1” and “τ2”, (see col. 5, lines 28-34)), wherein the first control loop has a fast behavior to track changes affecting a frequency synthesizer (being the VCO), wherein the additional control loop has a slow behavior in order to follow temperature variations causing the non-idealities (see col. 1, lines 28-35 and col. col. 5, lines 28-34).
-Regarding claim 17, Pacourek teaches that the electronic control device is configured to correct/compensate non-idealities (including a temperature drift/change) of the voltage controlled oscillator by adapting the control voltage (see col. 1, lines 28-35, col. 5, line 4 to col. 6, line 65).
-Regarding claim 18, Pacourek teaches that the electronic control device is configured to maintain the control voltage in a dependency of an electric supply voltage (being a voltage outputted from (308) provided by the PLL (301)) as the control voltage (see figure 3).
-Regarding claim 19, as for claim 18, Pacourek teaches that the electronic control device is configured to maintain the control voltage inside the specified range with respect to the electric supply voltage being the control voltage.
-Regarding claim 21, Pacourek teaches that the electronic control device comprises the following components, connected in series: a difference amplifier (being a subtractor (324)); a low pass filter (328) connected to an output of the difference amplifier; and a Voltage-to-Current (V2l) converter (322) connected to an output of the low pass filter (see figure 3 and col. 5, line 4-16).
(Note that in light of figure 4 of the instant application, such a difference amplifier is a subtractor (210)).
-Regarding claim 22, Pacourek teaches that the control device is configured to resultedly/artificially generate an additional VCO-gain by measuring, via (324), a tuning voltage shift (326), converting, via (328, 332), the voltage shift into a current and feeding the resulting bias current change (334) to the VCO (see figure 3, and col. 5, line 4 to col. 6, line 65), (as in consistence and in the same manner of artificially generating an additional VCO-gain as shown in (200) of figure 4 of the instant application).
-Regarding claim 25, Pacourek teaches method for operating an electronic control device (300) (see figure 3), the method comprising:
receiving, via (324), a control voltage (310) and a reference control voltage (322) of a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) (comprising (312, 316, 320)); and
providing a temperature-induced bias current change (represented by a signal (334)) to the voltage controlled oscillator such that a level of the control voltage is kept at an optimum value (“optimum VREF 322”, col. 6, line 48) that must inherently be inside a specified range between 2 boundary values (referred to “boundary values”, col. 2, line 24) of a PLL (301) for operation, (see col. 1, lines 28-35, col. 2, lines 21-27, col. 5, line 4 to col. 6, line 65).
-Claim 26 is rejected with similar reasons set forth for claim 14.
-Regarding claim 27, Pacourek teaches that the method comprises using a first control loop (303, 308, 312, 316, 320, 303) having a fast behavior to track changes affecting a frequency synthesizer (being the VCO), and using an additional control loop (324, 328, 332, 316, 320, 303, 308, 324) having a slow behavior to follow temperature variations (see col. 1, lines 28-35 and col. col. 5, lines 28-34).
-Claim 28 is rejected with similar reasons set forth for claim 17.
Claims 13-15, 17-20, 24, 25, 26, 28 and 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Shanan et al (9,413,366).
-Regarding claim 13, Shanan et al teaches an electronic control device (63, 101) (see figure 6) , comprising:
a first input (being an input of (78)) configured to receive a control voltage (VTUNE) of a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) (104);
a second input (being an input of (76)) configured to receive a reference control voltage (VHD) of the VCO; and
an output (being an output of (78));
wherein the electronic control device is configured to adjust a bias current (referred to “bias current”, col. 10, line 52) of a current source (109) of the VCO by providing a signal (BIAS) at the output in response to a temperature change (referred to “temperature and supply variations”, col. 16, lines 43-44) in order to maintain a level of the control voltage inside a specified range (VHD, VLD),
(see figures 4A , 4B and 6, and col. 11, line 50 to col. 13, line 35, col. 15, line 44 to col. 16, line 44).
-Regarding claim 14, Shanan et al teaches that the electronic control device is configured to minimize a difference between the control voltage and the reference control voltage (see col. 16, lines 8-37).
-Regarding claim 15, Shanan et al teaches that the control voltage is adjusted in a first control loop (1, 2, 7a, 4, 5, 1) of the VCO (see figure 1A and col. 6, lines 7-20) , wherein the electronic control device forms part of an additional control loop of the VCO comprising a partial path ((1, 2, 7a, VTUNE, CLKOUT, 5, 1), figure 1A) of the loop and another partial path ((VTUNE,63, 101, 104, VOSC), figure 6) of the loop, wherein (VOSC), figure 6) corresponds to ( CLKOUT of figure 1A), (see col. 4, lines 60-65, col. 6, lines 7-20, col. 10, lines 59-65, col. 11, lines 31-38, col. 12, lines 47-64).
-Regarding claim 17, Shanan et al teaches that the electronic control device is configured to correct a temperature drift of the voltage controlled oscillator by adapting the control voltage (see col. 15 lines 5-12, col. 16, lines 38-44).
-Regarding claim 18. Shanan et al teaches that Shanan et al teaches that the control voltage is adjusted in a first control loop (1, 2, 7a, 4, 5, 1) of the VCO (see figure 1A and col. 6, lines 7-20) , wherein the electronic control device forms part of an additional control loop of the VCO comprising a partial path ((1, 2, 7a, VTUNE, CLKOUT, 5, 1), figure 1A) of the loop and another partial path ((VTUNE,63, 101, 104, VOSC), figure 6) of the loop, wherein (VOSC), figure 6) corresponds to ( CLKOUT of figure 1A), (see col. 4, lines 60-65, col. 6, lines 7-20, col. 10, lines 59-65, col. 11, lines 31-38, col. 12, lines 47-64), wherein as such, in operation, the electronic control device is configured to maintain the control voltage in a dependency of an electric supply voltage (provided from element (2) of the additional control loop of the VCO), wherein the control voltage is derived from, and indeed, is the electric supply voltage (see figures 1A and 6).
-Regarding claim 19, as for claims 13 and 18, as such, Shanan et al teaches that the electronic control device is configured to maintain the control voltage inside the specified range with respect to the electric supply voltage
-Regarding claim 20, as for claim 13, Shanan et al teaches that the electronic control device is configured to control the VCO, wherein the VCO can be an LC-oscillator based frequency synthesizer (see (120) of figure 7 and col. 17, line 52 to col. 18, line 15).
-Regarding claim 24, Shanan et al teaches that an electronic control device (63, 101) (see figure 6) , comprising:
a first input (being an input of (78)) configured to receive a control voltage (VTUNE) of a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) (104);
a second input (being an input of (76)) configured to receive a reference control voltage (VHD) of the VCO; and
an output (being an output of (78));
wherein the electronic control device is configured to adjust a bias current (referred to “bias current”, col. 10, line 52) of a current source (109) of the VCO by providing a signal (BIAS) at the output in response to a temperature change (referred to “temperature and supply variations”, col. 16, lines 43-44) in order to maintain a level of the control voltage inside a specified range (VHD, VLD),
(see figures 4A , 4B and 6, and col. 11, line 50 to col. 13, line 35, col. 15, line 44 to col. 16, line 44).
Shanan et al further teaches that the electronic control device is configured to control the VCO, which can be an LC-oscillator based frequency synthesizer (see (120) of figure 7 and col. 17, line 52 to col. 18, line 15).
-Regarding claim 25, Shanan et al teaches a method for operating an electronic control device (63, 101) (see figure 6), the method (see figure 6) comprising:
receiving, via a first input (being an input of (78)), a control voltage (VTUNE) of a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) (104) and
receiving, via a second input (being an input of (76)), a reference control voltage (VHD) of the voltage controlled oscillator; and
providing a temperature-induced bias current change (indicated by a signal (BIAS) at an output (being an output of (78)) to the voltage controlled oscillator such that a level of the control voltage is kept inside a specified range (VHD, VLD),
(see figures 4A , 4B and 6, and col. 11, line 50 to col. 13, line 35, col. 15, line 44 to col. 16, line 44).
-Claim 26 is rejected with similar reasons set forth for claim 14.
-Claim 28 is rejected with similar reasons set forth for claim 17.
-Regarding claim 29, as applied to claim 24, Shanan et al teaches that the method comprises controlling, via the electronic control device, the VCO, wherein the VCO can be an LC-oscillator based frequency synthesizer (see (120) of figure 7 and col. 17, line 52 to col. 18, line 15).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 23 is 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PHUONG M PHU whose telephone number is (571)272-3009. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00-16:00.
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/PHUONG PHU/
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2632