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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claims 1-15 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected group I, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 3/13/2026.
Accordingly, claims 16-20 are examined on their merits.
Claim Objections
Claim 16 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 16 recites the limitation of “passband including a frequency greater than 20 Hz” as known in the art the “passband” has a lower and upper range. Whereas the claim only recites “passband including a frequency greater than 20 Hz” which appears to be lower range without an upper range. Filters without the other end boundaries are usually known as “low pass filter” or “high pass filter” depending on the design. Therefore, the claim should rather provide the upper range or correct the filter type.
Claim 17 recites the limitation of “first filter is a bandpass filter having a lower band edge of 20 Hz or more, and an upper band edge of 200 Hz or less” which the lower and upper band edges appear to be overlapping that the filter may not be construed as “bandpass” filter. In other words, the lower edge is defined as 20hz or more which encompasses the frequencies all the way up to 200Hz (hence upper edge) and even more. Same analogy also applies to the upper edge including the frequencies of 20Hz or lower.
Therefore, the claim should rather better define the ranges so that they don’t overlap with each other.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 16-17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin et al (US20180263502A1) in view of Zoll (US 2019/0282178 A1).
Regarding claim 16, Lin taches a system (see e.g., fig. 1 and 10 as well as the associated pars.), comprising:
a processing circuit (“computing device 2403 includes at least one processor circuit, for example, having a processor 2409 and a memory 2412, both of which are coupled to a local interface 2415” [0090]); and
memory, operatively connected to the processing circuit and storing instructions that, when executed by the processing circuit, cause the system to perform a method [0090], the method comprising:
filtering a radar range history with a first filter, to form a first filtered radar range history (corresponding to processed radar signal B(t) in Fig 3, note: "range history" is deemed redundant/implicit since radar/radio detection and ranging and since in order for the radar signals to be processed they must first be detected and stored in a memory or processor and thus have a "history"); and
forming a first estimate (321) of a heart rate of a subject (109 in Fig 1) based on the first filtered radar range history (318) (Fig 1, 3, para [0040], human subject 109.", para [0050], The extracted respiration and heartbeat peaks are sent from the Tompkins peak detection blocks (block A and block B) 303 and 306 to the sequential block for respiration and heart rates estimation 321.").
Lin fails to disclose the first filter having a passband including a frequency greater than 20 Hz.
Zoll is also related to processing of physiological data based on radio frequency (e.g., radar) data analysis (abstract) and suggests using a digital filter range of 20-500 Hz to isolate S1-S4 heart vibrations and facilitate detection of potential problems such as heart murmurs (para [0126], detect heart vibrations (S1, S2, S3, and S4 vibrations, murmurs). ", para [0131], A variety of digital filters can be run on the input digital signal to remove, for example, interference signals such as 60 Hz components TABLE 2. Condition being monitored. S1-S4 heart vibration Digital filter range. 20-500 Hz.").
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to provide the first filter of FLORIDA having a passband including a frequency greater than 20 Hz since this filter range is suggested to help remove interference signals such as 60 Hz components and is within an optimum range to monitor S1-S4 heart vibration components that facilitate detection of potential problems such as heart murmurs, as suggested by ZOLL (para [0126], detect heart vibrations (S1, S2, S3, and S4 vibrations, murmurs). para [0131], A variety of digital filters can be run on the input digital signal to remove, for example, interference signals such as 60 Hz components TABLE 2. Condition being monitored. S1-S4 heart vibration. Digital filter range. 20-500 Hz.").
Regarding claim 17, Lin taches wherein the first filter is a bandpass filter having a lower band edge of 20 Hz or more, and an upper band edge of 200 Hz or less (range of 20-200 Hz overlaps with the digital filter range taught by Zoll of 20-500 Hz and narrowing the range would only be a matter of routine optimization, see Zoll, para [0131], A variety of digital filters can be run on the input digital signal to remove, for example, interference signals such as 60 Hz components TABLE 2. Condition being monitored S1-S4 heart vibration. Digital filter range. 20-500 Hz.").
Claims 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lin et al (US20180263502A1) in view of Zoll (US 2019/0282178 A1) and further in view of Rong et al (WO2021087337A1 below citations are from the US equivalent of US20230003835A1).
Regarding claim 18, the above noted combination teaches all the claimed limitations except for calculating a spectrogram of the first filtered radar range history, and estimating the heart rate based on the spectrogram.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Rong teaches wideband radars, such as ultra-wideband (UWB) radars can detect minute surface displacements for vibrometry applications (abst). FIG. 6A is a spectrogram of a radar result for remote recovery of the acoustic signal of FIG. 5 . FIG. 6B is a spectrogram of the original audio signal. The micro-displacements dominated by the passive object are collected from the range bins of interest and processed. An improved radar spectrogram is obtained since all the major spectral features (bright dots at higher frequencies and square shapes at lower frequencies) seen in FIG. 6B are recovered in FIG. 6A. Additionally, higher order harmonic frequency components and inter modulations are observed [0067].
There are nine sound symbols corresponding to the nine distinct peaks in the audio waveform (FIG. 10D). Similarly, the radar recovered waveform (FIG. 10C) has nine spikes with a significantly reduced signal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to energy loss in this blocked environment compared to the previous two evaluations. It is interesting to see that the most significant energy in the radar spectrogram is the low frequency content around 190 Hz while in the audio spectrogram it is 2nd-order harmonics around 380 Hz [0077]. Also see [0071]-[0076].
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled in the art before the invention was made to modify the method and/or device of the modified combination of reference(s) as outlined above with calculating a spectrogram of the first filtered radar range history, and estimating the heart rate based on the spectrogram as taught by Rong because by this surveillance is achieved by reconstructing audio from a passive object which is merely in proximity of the sound source using clever radar and audio processing techniques (abst of Rong).
Regarding claim 19, the above noted combination teaches all the claimed limitations except for wherein the estimating of the heart rate based on the spectrogram comprises counting a plurality of peaks in a portion of the spectrogram, each of the peaks being an S1 peak or an S2 peak.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Rong teaches wideband radars, such as ultra-wideband (UWB) radars can detect minute surface displacements for vibrometry applications (abst). FIG. 6A is a spectrogram of a radar result for remote recovery of the acoustic signal of FIG. 5 . FIG. 6B is a spectrogram of the original audio signal. The micro-displacements dominated by the passive object are collected from the range bins of interest and processed. An improved radar spectrogram is obtained since all the major spectral features (bright dots at higher frequencies and square shapes at lower frequencies) seen in FIG. 6B are recovered in FIG. 6A. Additionally, higher order harmonic frequency components and inter modulations are observed [0067]. An evaluation setup was constructed where two audio sources S1 and S2, separated in space, are being illuminated by a UWB radar [0070]. FIG. 8E is a spectrogram of a radar result for remote recovery of the acoustic signal from the further sound source S1 of FIG. 7 [0072].
There are nine sound symbols corresponding to the nine distinct peaks in the audio waveform (FIG. 10D). Similarly, the radar recovered waveform (FIG. 10C) has nine spikes with a significantly reduced signal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to energy loss in this blocked environment compared to the previous two evaluations. It is interesting to see that the most significant energy in the radar spectrogram is the low frequency content around 190 Hz while in the audio spectrogram it is 2nd-order harmonics around 380 Hz [0077]. Also see [0071]-[0076].
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled in the art before the invention was made to modify the method and/or device of the modified combination of reference(s) as outlined above with estimating of the heart rate based on the spectrogram comprises counting a plurality of peaks in a portion of the spectrogram as taught by Rong because by this surveillance is achieved by reconstructing audio from a passive object which is merely in proximity of the sound source using clever radar and audio processing techniques (abst of Rong).
Regarding claim 20, the above noted combination teaches all the claimed limitations except for wherein the method further comprises forming a second estimate of the heart rate of the subject based on the first filtered radar range history.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Rong teaches wideband radars, such as ultra-wideband (UWB) radars can detect minute surface displacements for vibrometry applications (abst). FIG. 6A is a spectrogram of a radar result for remote recovery of the acoustic signal of FIG. 5 . FIG. 6B is a spectrogram of the original audio signal. The micro-displacements dominated by the passive object are collected from the range bins of interest and processed. An improved radar spectrogram is obtained since all the major spectral features (bright dots at higher frequencies and square shapes at lower frequencies) seen in FIG. 6B are recovered in FIG. 6A. Additionally, higher order harmonic frequency components and inter modulations are observed [0067]. An evaluation setup was constructed where two audio sources S1 and S2, separated in space, are being illuminated by a UWB radar [0070]. FIG. 8E is a spectrogram of a radar result for remote recovery of the acoustic signal from the further sound source S1 of FIG. 7 [0072].
There are nine sound symbols corresponding to the nine distinct peaks in the audio waveform (FIG. 10D). Similarly, the radar recovered waveform (FIG. 10C) has nine spikes with a significantly reduced signal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to energy loss in this blocked environment compared to the previous two evaluations. It is interesting to see that the most significant energy in the radar spectrogram is the low frequency content around 190 Hz while in the audio spectrogram it is 2nd-order harmonics around 380 Hz [0077]. Also see [0071]-[0076].
It would have been obvious to an ordinary skilled in the art before the invention was made to modify the method and/or device of the modified combination of reference(s) as outlined above with forming a second estimate of the heart rate of the subject based on the first filtered radar range history as taught by Rong because by this surveillance is achieved by reconstructing audio from a passive object which is merely in proximity of the sound source using clever radar and audio processing techniques (abst of Rong).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SERKAN AKAR whose telephone number is (571)270-5338. The examiner can normally be reached 9am-5pm M-F.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Christopher Koharski can be reached at 571-272 7230. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/SERKAN AKAR/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3797
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