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 .
Status of Claims
This action is in reply to the application filed on 11/14/2024. Claims 1-18 are currently pending and have been examined.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 11/14/2024 have been considered by the examiner and initialed copies of the IDS are hereby attached.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 4, 6-7, 10, 12-13, 16 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Wang (US20140106697A1) in view of Mulassano (EP1916767B1).
Regarding claim 1 Wang discloses: An apparatus comprising (Figure 1): a notch filter having a tunable zero frequency of a transfer function and configured to receive an input signal and generate an output signal (Figure 1, element 102P); a bandpass filter coupled to an output of the notch filter and configured to receive the output signal (Figure 6, Paras 0013-0014: “Specifically, in the following case, the situation as described above occurs. In the frequency scanner 104P, the frequency scan bandwidth is set to 5 MHz and the width of a scan frequency BIN is set to 1 kHz. Thus, the scanning is performed 5,000 times. An integrating period of time for each scan frequency BIN is 1 msec.; therefore, a scanning period of time required for scanning the entire frequency band is 5 sec.[0014] Here, the width of the attenuation band BST of the notch filter 102P is set to 2 kHz and the frequency drift velocity .DELTA.f.sub.DR(CW) of the interference wave signal CW is set to 1 kHz/sec.“)
Wang does not teach “and an adaptive block coupled to the bandpass filter and configured to adjust parameters of the notch filter in order to minimize a specific cost function “.
However, Mulassano in the analogous arts teaches: and an adaptive block coupled to the bandpass filter and configured to adjust parameters of the notch filter in order to minimize a specific cost function (Para 0046: “The core of the notch filter 200 is represented by the adaptive block 220 that tracks the interference frequency and adjusts the filter parameters in order to achieve the minimization of a specific cost function.”)
It would have been obvious to someone in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Wang with Mulassano to incorporate the feature of: an adaptive block coupled to the bandpass filter and configured to adjust parameters of the notch filter in order to minimize a specific cost function. Wang and Mulassano are all considered analogous arts as they all disclose signal process methods for interference mitigation. However, Wang fails to disclose a feature of adaptive block that is configured to optimize an objective function by adjusting parameters. This feature is disclosed by Mulassano. It would have been obvious to someone in the art prior to the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Wang with Mulassano to incorporate the feature of: an adaptive block coupled to the bandpass filter and configured to adjust parameters of the notch filter in order to minimize a specific cost function as such a feature would increase the efficiency of the system.
Regarding claim 4 the combination of Wang and Mulassano discloses all the limitations of claim 1. Mulassano further teaches: wherein the adaptive block is configured to track an interference frequency and adjust the filter zero in order to achieve minimization of a cost function (Para 0046: “The core of the notch filter 200 is represented by the adaptive block 220 that tracks the interference frequency and adjusts the filter parameters in order to achieve the minimization of a specific cost function.”), the input of the adaptive block is coupled to the output of the bandpass filter (Para 0049: “Fig. 2d illustrates an example of the transfer function of the implemented notch filter for ka = 0.9 and ka = 0.7. A sinusoid in noise with an Interference to Noise ratio J/N of 6 dB is isolated and cancelled by the frequency response of the filter. The transfer function is obtained in steady state conditions. It can be seen that the width of the rejection band is regulated by the factor ka: the more ka is close to 1 the more the rejection band is narrow, however values of ka too dose to 1 cannot be employed for stability and convergence reasons.”).
Claims 10 and 16 recites limitations that are similar to those of claim 4, therefore claims 10 and 16 are rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 6 the combination of Wang and Mulassano discloses all the limitations of claim 1. Mulassano further teaches: configured to mitigate multi-spectral interference, wherein the notch filter is implemented by shifting a high pass filter after multiplying the real coefficients of its transfer function by a power function of the complex exponent (Paras 0024-0025: “In one illustrative embodiment the first transfer function is implemented as a first divider including a first delay stage coupled to a first multiplier, and a second divider connected to the first divider and including a second delay stage, wherein the second divider is coupled to a second multiplier. Thus, the corresponding filter transfer function may effectively implemented as hardware and/or software components without adding to substantial process complexity. [0025] For example, the first multiplier multiplies by two times the real part of the complex zero, and the second multiplier multiplies by the square of the magnitude of the complex zero “).
Claims 12 and 18 recites limitations that are similar to those of claim 6, therefore claims 12 and 18 are rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 7 Wang discloses: A method comprising: receiving an input signal from one or more global navigation satellite system satellites (Para 0001:The present invention mainly relates to an interference wave signal removing device in which a signal and the like to be received removes a different interference wave signal, a GNSS reception apparatus provided with the interference wave signal removing device, and a mobile terminal.); filtering the input signal using a first transfer function of a notch filter to generate a filtered signal (Figure 1, element 102P); filtering the filtered signal using a second transfer function of a bandpass filter to generate a bandpass filtered signal (Figure 6, Paras 0013-0014: “Specifically, in the following case, the situation as described above occurs. In the frequency scanner 104P, the frequency scan bandwidth is set to 5 MHz and the width of a scan frequency BIN is set to 1 kHz. Thus, the scanning is performed 5,000 times. An integrating period of time for each scan frequency BIN is 1 msec.; therefore, a scanning period of time required for scanning the entire frequency band is 5 sec.[0014] Here, the width of the attenuation band BST of the notch filter 102P is set to 2 kHz and the frequency drift velocity .DELTA.f.sub.DR (CW) of the interference wave signal CW is set to 1 kHz/sec.“).
Wang does not teach “and tracking an interference frequency of the bandpass filtered signal“.
However, Mulassano in the analogous art teaches: and tracking an interference frequency of the bandpass filtered signal (Para 0046: “The core of the notch filter 200 is represented by the adaptive block 220 that tracks the interference frequency and adjusts the filter parameters in order to achieve the minimization of a specific cost function.”).
Claims 13 recites limitations that are similar to those of claim 7, therefore claims 13 are rejected under the same rationale.
Claims 2, 8 and 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C 103 as being unpatentable over Wang (US20140106697A1) in view of Mulassano (EP1916767B1) and further in view of Jachowski (D. R. Jachowski, "Compact, frequency-agile, absorptive bandstop filters," IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium Digest, 2005., Long Beach, CA, USA, 2005, pp. 513-516).
Regarding claim 2 the combination of Wang and Mulassano discloses all the limitations of claim 1. Wang does not teach “wherein the notch filter is a digital complex filter of a 1st order “.
However, Jachowski in the analogous arts teaches: wherein the notch filter is a digital complex filter of a 1st order (Section II: “Two new first-order, two-resonance, absorptive bandstop filter topologies are illustrated in Fig. 1. The preferred topology is that of Fig. 1(a). It is equivalent to the topology of the “second-order building block” in [6] and is essentially a second-order bandpass filter connected in parallel with an all-pass nominally-90º-phase-shift element. It may also be described as a generalized version of the “cross-coupled Brune section” in [7] and [8]. Fig. 1(b) is equivalent to the topology of the “Modified Doublet” in [9] and is essentially a parallel connection of two first-order bandpass filters and an all-pass nominally-90°-phase-shift element. “).
Mulassano further teaches: wherein an input of the digital complex filter is coupled to an input of the apparatus and the frequency of a transfer function zero of the digital complex filter is equal to an interference frequency when adaptation is complete (Para 0007: “Fig. 1 a schematically illustrates an example of frequency response. As is evident, the presence of a zero in the transfer function of the single-pole notch filter causes the mitigation of the frequency components corresponding to the zero's phase, whereas the other filter parameters are chosen in order to preserve the other input signal elements. Even though it is possible to design notch filters in the analog domain, the majority of the applications are in the digital one, due to the fact that adaptive blocks may readily be implemented. Consequently, adaptive notch filters may represent promising filter components for many applications, such as suppressing CW interferers in GPS signals.”).
It would have been obvious to someone in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Wang with Jachowski to incorporate the feature of: wherein the notch filter is a digital complex filter of a 1st order. Wang and Jachowski are all considered analogous arts as they all disclose methods for interference mitigation. However, Wang fails to disclose of first order notch filter. This feature is disclosed by Jachowski. It would have been obvious to someone in the art prior to the effective filling date of the claimed invention to modify Wang with Jachowski to incorporate the feature of: wherein the notch filter is a digital complex filter of a 1st order as such a feature would increase the computational efficiency of the system.
Claims 8 and 14 recites limitations that are similar to those of claim 2, therefore claims 8 and 14 are rejected under the same rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 5, 9, 11, 15 and 17 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.
Regarding claim 3 the combination of Wang and Mulassano discloses all the limitations of claim 1, wherein the bandpass filter is a digital complex filter of a 1st order having a pole frequency that coincides with the zero frequency of the notch filter and having a transfer function of
PNG
media_image1.png
70
225
media_image1.png
Greyscale
wherein the input of the digital complex bandpass filter is coupled to an output of the apparatus.
In reference to depend/independent claim 3, the prior arts made of record individually or in any combination, failed to teach, render obvious, or fairly suggest to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing the combination of the claimed features of claim 3. Specifically, the prior arts made of record fail to disclose the limitation: “wherein the bandpass filter is a digital complex filter of a 1st order having a pole frequency that coincides with the zero frequency of the notch filter and having a transfer function of
PNG
media_image1.png
70
225
media_image1.png
Greyscale
wherein the input of the digital complex bandpass filter is coupled to an output of the apparatus.“
Claims 9 and 15 recites limitations that are similar to those of claim 3, therefore claims 9 and 15 are rejected under the same rationale.
Regarding claim 5 the combination of Wang and Mulassano discloses all the limitations of claim 1, configured to mitigate multi-spectral interference, the notch filter having a transfer function
PNG
media_image2.png
138
948
media_image2.png
Greyscale
In reference to depend/independent claim 5, the prior arts made of record individually or in any combination, failed to teach, render obvious, or fairly suggest to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing the combination of the claimed features of claim 5. Specifically, the prior arts made of record fail to disclose the limitation: “configured to mitigate multi-spectral interference, the notch filter having a transfer function
PNG
media_image2.png
138
948
media_image2.png
Greyscale
“
Claims 11 and 17 recites limitations that are similar to those of claim 5, therefore claims 7 and 17 are rejected under the same rationale.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Bongani J. Mashele whose telephone number is (703)756-5861. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 8:00AM-5:00PM (CT).
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor Resha H. Desai, can be reached on 571-270-7792. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/BONGANI JABULANI MASHELE/Examiner, Art Unit 3648
/TIMOTHY A BRAINARD/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 3648
Prosecution Insights