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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 07/08/2026 has been entered.
Claim Objections
Claim 3 is objected to because of the following informalities: as to claim 3, line 2, “the survivor path” should be replaced by a survivor path. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 10 is objected to because of the following informalities: as to claim 10, line 2, “the survivor path” should be replaced by a survivor path. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim 17 is objected to because of the following informalities: as to claim 17, line 2, “DPE” should be replaced by DFE. Appropriate correction is required.
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 21 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shakiba (US 2019/0319825), in view of Konishi et al. (hereinafter, referred to as Konishi) (US 2021/0384921).
As to claim 21, Shakiba discloses a system (see Fig. 7B), comprising: a signal processing chain to decode a received signal (see Fig. 7B, the combination of blocks 760, 772, 774, and 776) and recover a transmitted PAM4 symbol (see paragraphs 0073 and 0080-0085); and an MLSE decoder (see Fig. 7B, block 770 and paragraph 0080) to perform sequence estimation and data recovery (see Fig. 7B, signal 778 and paragraphs 0073 and 0085) at least partially based on a 2:2 trellis (see Fig. 7A and paragraphs 0055, 0074, and 0080). Shakiba further discloses that the MLSE decoder performs sequence estimation and data recovery further at least partially based on a DFE-decision-corrected signal of the signal processing chain (see Fig. 7B, DFE 760, signal 764, MLSD 770, paragraphs 0083 and 0085). Shakiba discloses all the subject matters claimed in claim 21, except that one or more soft decision outputs indicate reliability of respective decoded symbols to facilitate error correction and channel decoding. Konishi, in the same field of endeavor, discloses a decoding unit, where the decoding unit executes soft decision decoding based on the likelihood values generated by a likelihood generation circuit (see paragraph 0053). Konishi further discloses that the one or more soft decision outputs indicate reliability of respective decoded symbols to facilitate error correction and channel decoding (see the abstract and Fig. 1, blocks 15, 16, 17, and 18 and paragraphs 0006, 0015, and 0053 soft decisions directly indicate the reliability of decoded symbols). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention was made to modify the teachings of Shakiba, as suggested by Konishi, in order to retain reliability information about received data and improve the performance of the decoding process.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 2, 4-9, and 11-15 are allowed.
Claims 3, 10, and 17 would be allowable if rewritten in a way that overcomes the objections cited above.
Claims 22 and 23 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LEILA MALEK whose telephone number is (571)272-8731. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:30am-4:30pm.
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LEILA . MALEK
Examiner
Art Unit 2632
/LEILA MALEK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2632
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