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 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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
Claims 1-7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qasem (2022, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing) and Perrine (2010, IEEE).
Regarding claim 1, Qasem teaches a receiving method comprising:
detecting a position of a first sequence and a position of a second sequence in a received signal of each of a plurality of channels received by [a receiver] [[pg. 11, col. 1] a cross-correlation between the received signal and the well-known preamble and postamble segments is first performed; [pg. 2, col. 2] rest of this paper is structured as follows: the system model, including the transmitter and the receiver of the proposed schemes, is presented in Section 2; [pg. 1, col. 1] main challenges of underwater acoustic channels are represented by the long-delay effect and doubly selective channel caused by the oceanic environment [1, 2] [sec 4] proposed precoded IM-OFDM-SS performance is evaluated in terms of BER and PAPR based on simulation and real experimental underwater channels];
calculating, for each of the plurality of channels, a time period which has been required to receive a predetermined part of the received signal [[eq. 8] describes length of received signal β’ as compared to transmitted signal length β], based on the detected position of the first sequence and the detected position of the second sequence [[pg. 11, col. 1] the first resulted peak was used for synchronization while the difference between the first and the second peaks is utilized to evaluate the DSF as in (8)];
performing a correcting process of correcting one or both of an outlier included in the position of the first sequence having been detected for each of the plurality of channels and an outlier included in the time period having been calculated for each of the plurality of channels [[pg. 1, col. 1-2] use of correcting coding can also provide communication with better quality [4]; [pg. 11, col. 1] after estimating and compensating the DSF, the signal shows the output of the correlator between the preamble and the received signal processed as explained in Section 2];
estimating Doppler shift by using the time period after the correcting process for each of the plurality of channels [[eq. 8] shows ratio of length of received signal β’ to transmitted signal length β; [pg. 4, col. 1] Also, a Doppler shift ej2πβf n t is affecting every subcarrier. The frequency-dependent Doppler shift causes a critical ICI in the UWAC. To mitigate the ICI effect, the two-step Doppler estimation and compensation in [21] are adopted in this paper where two low-frequency modulation (LFM) segments are used as preamble and postamble to coarsely estimate the DSF at the receiver end. The DSF is estimated by a cross-correlation between yðtÞ and those two known segments, preamble and postamble. Crosscorrelation operation will give a signal with two peaks; the first one is utilized for synchronization. The difference between first and second cross-correlation peaks is used to find the length of the received signal β′. By comparing β′ with the length of transmitted signal length β which is supposed to be known, the DSF can be estimated as]; and
offsetting the received signal by using the Doppler shift having been estimated for each of the plurality of channels and outputting the received signal divided based on the position of the first sequence after the correcting process to an equalizer [[pg. 1, col. 1] exhaustive processing must be employed at the receiving end for equalizing and estimating the channel to ensure the reliability of UWA communication; [fig. 1] shows doppler estimation & compensation block which supplies downstream channel estimation & equalization block; [pg. 4, col. 2] orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) [22] is adopted in this paper for underwater channel estimation, and the minimum means square error (MMSE) is used for equalization. After removing the overhead packets from the MMSE equalizer output].
Qasem does not explicitly teach and yet Perrine teaches a plurality of receivers [[title] doppler estimation and correction for shallow underwater acoustic communications; [abstract] doppler correction with static versus adaptive equalizers … packet transmission samples (each 0.5s long) from a five-channel receiver array.].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention with a reasonable expectation of success to replace the receiver as taught by Qasem with the receivers array as taught by Perrine so that directional hydrophones may cover more area [[pg. 748, col. 1]].
Regarding claim 2, Qasem teaches the receiving method according to claim 1, wherein the received signal includes a payload sandwiched between a preamble and a postamble [[fig. 7] shows preamble followed by zeros and OFDM #n packets and finally postamble], the first sequence is a preamble data included in the preamble, the second sequence is a postamble data included in the postamble [[pg. 4, col. 1] two low-frequency modulation (LFM) segments are used as preamble and postamble to coarsely estimate the DSF at the receiver end. The DSF is estimated by a cross-correlation between yðtÞ and those two known segments, preamble and postamble.], and the predetermined part of the received signal is from a predetermined position of the preamble to a predetermined position of the postamble [[pg. 11, col. 1] the first resulted peak was used for synchronization while the difference between the first and the second peaks is utilized to evaluate the DSF as in (8)].
Regarding claim 3, Qasem teaches the receiving method according to claim 1, wherein one or both of the outlier included in the position of the first sequence and the outlier included in the time period are is corrected using a robust regression method [note: instant para. 0028 prediction using an iterative reweighted least square (IRLS) method as the robust regression; [pg. 1, col. 1] single-carrier modulation was proven to be capable of dealing with the ISI since the adaptive equalizer can be employed, e.g., a decision feedback equalizer with a recursive least squares algorithm [3]].
Regarding claim 4, Qasem teaches the receiving method according to claim 3, wherein the robust regression method is one or more of an iterative weighted least square method, a least median method, a random sample consensus method, convex relaxation, a greedy method for a purpose of Ip norm minimization, a proximity gradient method for a purpose of Ip norm minimization, logistic regression, ridge regression, and LASSO regression [[pg. 1-2 bridging] single-carrier modulation was proven to be capable of dealing with the ISI since the adaptive equalizer can be employed, e.g., a decision feedback equalizer with a recursive least squares algorithm [3]. Furthermore, the use of correcting coding can also provide communication with better quality [4]; [4] E. Sozer, J. G. Proakis, and F. Blackmon, “Iterative equalization and decoding techniques for shallow water acoustic channels,” in MTS/IEEE Oceans 2001. An Ocean Odyssey. Conference Proceedings (IEEE Cat. No.01CH37295), vol. 4, pp. 2201–2208, Honolulu, HI, USA, December 2001.].
Regarding claim 5, Qasem does not explicitly teach and yet Perrine teaches the receiving method according claim 1, wherein each of the plurality of receivers receives a sound wave propagating in water [[title] doppler estimation and correction for shallow underwater acoustic communications; [abstract] doppler correction with static versus adaptive equalizers … packet transmission samples (each 0.5s long) from a five-channel receiver array.].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention with a reasonable expectation of success, to replace the receiver as taught by Qasem with the receivers array as taught by Perrine so that directional hydrophones may cover more area [[pg. 748, col. 1]].
Regarding claim 6, Qasem teaches a synchronization device comprising:
a detector that detects a position of a first sequence and a position of a second sequence in a received signal of each of a plurality of channels received by a [receiver] [[pg. 11, col. 1] [pg. 2, col. 2]];
a calculator that calculates, for each of the plurality of channels, a time period which has been required to receive a predetermined part of the received signal, based on the detected position of the first sequence and the detected position of the second sequence [[eq. 8][pg. 11, col. 1]];
a correcting circuitry that performs a correcting process of correcting one or both of an outlier included in the position of the first sequence having been detected estimated for each of the plurality of channels and an outlier included in the time period having been calculated for each of the plurality of channels [[pg. 1, col. 1-2] use of correcting coding can also provide communication with better quality [4]];
a Doppler estimation circuitry that estimates Doppler shift by using the time period after the correcting process for each of the plurality of channels [[eq. 8] [pg. 4, col. 1]]; and
an offsetting circuitry that offsets the received signal by using the estimated Doppler shift having been estimated for each of the plurality of channels and outputs the received signal divided based on the position of the first sequence after the correcting process to an equalizer [[pg. 1, col. 1] exhaustive processing must be employed at the receiving end for equalizing and estimating the channel to ensure the reliability of UWA communication; [fig. 1] shows doppler estimation & compensation block which supplies downstream channel estimation & equalization block; [pg. 4, col. 2] orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) [22] is adopted in this paper for underwater channel estimation, and the minimum means square error (MMSE) is used for equalization. After removing the overhead packets from the MMSE equalizer output].
Qasem does not explicitly teach and yet Perrine teaches a plurality of receivers [[title] doppler estimation and correction for shallow underwater acoustic communications; [abstract] doppler correction with static versus adaptive equalizers … packet transmission samples (each 0.5s long) from a five-channel receiver array.].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention with a reasonable expectation of success to replace the receiver as taught by Qasem with the receivers array as taught by Perrine so that directional hydrophones may cover more area [[pg. 748, col. 1]].
Regarding claim 7, Qasem teaches a receiving apparatus comprising:
a [receiver] that receive signals of different individual channels [[pg. 2, col. 2] rest of this paper is structured as follows: the system model, including the transmitter and the receiver of the proposed schemes, is presented in Section 2; [pg. 1, col. 1] main challenges ofUWA channels are represented by the long-delay effect and doubly selective channel caused by the oceanic environment [1, 2]];
a detector detecting unit that detects a position of a first sequence and a position of a second sequence in a received signal of each of a plurality of the channels, the received signals is each of the signals having been received by the plurality of receivers reception units [[pg. 11, col. 1] [pg. 2, col. 2];
a calculator calculation unit that calculates, for each of the plurality of channels, a time period which has been required to receive a predetermined part of the received signal, based on the detected position of the first sequence and the detected position of the second sequence [[eq. 8][pg. 11, col. 1];
a correcting circuitry that performs a correcting process of correcting one or both of an outlier included in the position of the first sequence having been detected estimated for each of the plurality of channels and an outlier included in the time period having been calculated for each of the plurality of channels [[pg. 1, col. 1-2] use of correcting coding can also provide communication with better quality [4]];
a Doppler estimation circuitry that estimates Doppler shift by using the time period after the correcting process for each of the plurality of channels [[eq. 8] [pg. 4, col. 1];
an offsetting circuitry that offsets the received signal by using the estimated Doppler shift having been estimated for each of the plurality of channels and outputs the received signal divided based on the position of the first sequence after the correcting process [[pg. 1, col. 1] exhaustive processing must be employed at the receiving end for equalizing and estimating the channel to ensure the reliability of UWA communication; [pg. 4, col. 2]]; and
an equalizer equalization unit that performs an equalizing process by using the received signal of each of the plurality of channels output from the offsetting circuitry unit [[fig. 1] shows doppler estimation & compensation block which supplies downstream channel estimation & equalization block; [pg. 4, col. 2] orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) [22] is adopted in this paper for underwater channel estimation, and the minimum means square error (MMSE) is used for equalization. After removing the overhead packets from the MMSE equalizer output].
Qasam does not explicitly teach and yet Perrine teaches a plurality of receivers [[title] doppler estimation and correction for shallow underwater acoustic communications; [abstract] doppler correction with static versus adaptive equalizers … packet transmission samples (each 0.5s long) from a five-channel receiver array.].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention with a reasonable expectation of success to replace the receiver as taught by Qasem with the receivers array as taught by Perrine so that directional hydrophones may cover more area [[pg. 748, col. 1]].
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Qasem (2022, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing) and Perrine (2010, IEEE) as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Zhang (2019, IEEE Trans. on Aerospace).
Regarding claim 8, Qasem does not explicitly teach and yet Zhang teaches the receiving method according to claim 1 wherein, in the correcting process, both of the outlier included in the position of the first sequence having been detected for each of the plurality of channels and the outlier included in the time period having been calculated for each of the plurality of channels are corrected [[sec. I introduction] localization solutions … based on a coherent delay and Doppler model, was introduced in [10] under the passive set-up, which estimates the location of the source directly from the signal measurements … direct methods that find the source location from the signal measurements in one step are often time consuming … second approach to dealing with the nonlinearity is to introduce redundant parameters in the TDOA versus source location relation [15]. This allows closed-form estimation of the source location via weighted least squares; [pg. 449, col. 1] nonlinear weighted least squares (NWLS) problem using TDOA estimates (first step), or both TDOA and FDOA estimates (second step), was formulated and solved, followed by bias reduction.; [pg. 452, col. 1] we first find the TDOA and FDOA of each sensor w.r.t. the reference sensor, and then use an iterative reweighted approach with varying weighting matrix to determine the source location and velocity].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention with a reasonable expectation of success to combine the receiver as taught by Qasem, with the iterative reweighted least squares algorithm as taught by Zhang so that fitting errors for sensors close to the are weighted versus other sensors [[pg. 454, col. 1] Intuitively, if the mth sensor is close to the source, it is expected that the range difference fitting error in (50) is small, and so is the range rate difference fitting error in (56). As such, a larger weight is applied to this sensor than those with poorer measurement quality. Through this process, the proposed iterative reweighted scheme is able to perform automatic sensor weighting/selection. This effect is observed in numerical simulation results shown in Section IV.].
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 7/6/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. (see below).
REMARKS
Claims 1-8 are now pending in the application. Claim 8 has been added to the application. Support for the new claim may be found throughout the application as filed, including Figure 4. No new matter is introduced. The Examiner is respectfully requested to reconsider and withdraw the rejection(s) in view of the amendments and remarks contained herein.
REJECTION UNDER 35 U.S.C. § 103
Claims 1-7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Qasem et al. ("Precoded IM-OFDM-SS for Underwater Acoustic Communication") in view of Perrine et al. ("Doppler estimation and correction for shallow underwater acoustic communications"). This rejection is respectfully traversed.
In a multipath environment involving a change in the Doppler shift such as an underwater environment, estimation of the Doppler shift or detection accuracy of a frame head position may be degraded, and errors of received data may increase. Applicant's claimed invention relates to reducing errors in received data even in a multipath environment involving a change in Doppler shift. Of note, claim 1 recites "performing a correcting process of correcting one or both of an outlier included in the position of the first sequence having been detected for each of the plurality of channels and an outlier included in the time period having been calculated for each of the plurality of channels" in combination with other claim elements.
The examiner's rejection relies on Qasem to teach this feature. In particular, Qasem describes "the use of correcting coding can also provide communication with better quality [4]" in columns 1 and 2 on page 1. The term "correcting coding" as described in the reference [4] referred to by Qasem means the process of --correcting coding-- performed by a receiving apparatus when a signal transmitted by a transmitting apparatus was incorrectly received by the receiving apparatus. Therefore, it is clear that the process of the --correcting coding-- of Qasem is performed for a signal after an equalizing process is performed.
In contrast, the correcting of the "outlier(s)" as recited in the pending claims is performed by the first outlier correcting unit 412 and the second outlier correcting unit 413 included in the estimation unit 41 as shown in Fig. 4 of the present application. Moreover and as shown in Fig. 3, the estimation unit 41 is provided before the equalizer 5 which performs the equalizing process. That is, correcting the "outliers" occurs before the equalizing process. In this regard, claim 1 recites "outputting the received signal divided based on the position of the first sequence after the correcting process to an equalizer" (emphasis added). In Qasem, correcting the coding occurs after the equalizing process. Perrine does not cure this deficiency. Therefore, it is respectfully submitted that the pending claims defines patentable subject matter over this combination of references Accordingly, Applicant respectfully requests reconsideration and withdrawal of this rejection.
The Examiner disagrees that, in Qasem, correcting the coding occurs after the equalizing process. In fact, Qasem shows in fig. 1 that the doppler estimation & compensation block occurs upstream in the processing chain before the channel estimation & equalization block. Therefore, the argument cannot be found persuasive.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JONATHAN D ARMSTRONG whose telephone number is (571)270-7339. The examiner can normally be reached M - F 9am-5pm.
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/JONATHAN D ARMSTRONG/ Examiner, Art Unit 3645
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