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 .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant’s claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119 (a)-(d). The certified copy has been filed in parent Application No. EP 23203265, filed on October 12, 2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS’s) submitted complies with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 33 and 35 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
The feature of claim 33 is a desired result that can be affected by external factors such as environment, direction or orientation of the beams/lobes and which beams/lobes are being reflected by which various types of materials. In other words, even if this feature is true in a lab, it may not be true for certain scenarios thus making it ambiguous as how differentiate from prior art in terms of structure. As such, the metes and bounds of this claim cannot be fully defined, thus the claim is indefinite.
Claim 35 depends from a nonexistent claim 39 and not entirely clear which claim was meant to be the base claim. As such, the metes and bounds of this claim cannot be fully defined, thus the claim is indefinite.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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 16 – 22, 28 – 31 and 34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Hanevich (US 20140105256 A1).
As to claims 16 – 17 and 34, Hanevich discloses several adjacent band circuits to receive different frequency channels (Paras. 43, 49 and 66);
Hanevich further discloses combining at least two received channel responses (Fig. 2 item 272).
As to claim 18, Hanevich discloses wideband signals (see Abstract. If necessary, Examiner takes official notice of ultra-wideband wherein the motivation would be resolution.).
As to claim 19, Hanevich discloses “Referring now to FIG. 6, a method 600 depicts an alignment adjustments performed in individual band circuits that enables a successful combination (i.e., stitching) of adjacent bands (Para. 92).”
As to claim 20 (depending from claim 19), Hanevich discloses “However, in other embodiments, the phase relationships can be other than equal, so long as the amplitude and phase responses of the electronic filters are complementary, resulting, as described above, in amplitude and phase responses of the two filters that produce a substantially flat amplitude and group delay response when summed together, and hence facilitate the goal of band stitching of two associated band circuits with minimal distortion (Para. 41).”
As to claim 21, Hanevich processed a first, second or combined channel response. See Hanevich Paras. 41 and 92.
As to claim 22 (depending from claim 21) and 31, Hanevich discloses Hilbert (shape) Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filters as shown in Fig. 2 thus also meeting scope of channel impulse response as claimed in claim 31.
As to claim 28, Hanevich discloses combining at least three channel responses as shown in Fig. 2.
As to claim 29 and 30, Hanevich discloses a transmitter (Fig. 1) and receiver comprising the channel responses (Fig. 2).
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 23 and 25 – 27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Hanevich in view of Prothero (US 20120263031 A1).
As to claims 23, 25 – 27, Hanevich does not teach a transformation of combined signal via a Gaussian filter.
In the same field of endeavor, Prothero teaches “A Gaussian filter may be used to control the frequency spread of the combined waveforms. The signal receiver may over-sample the received real and imaginary data to reduce noise and identify the transmitted signals using the technique of matched filters known to the art (Para. 111).”
In view of the teachings of Prothero, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before filing to apply Gaussian filter to the combined signal to control the frequency spread thus reducing interference and noise. Gaussian filters also are known to have characteristics resulting in reduced noise, clutter and other artifacts.
Claims 24 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Hanevich in view of Fukuda (US 20090074031 A1).
As to claims 24, Hanevich does not disclose raised-cosine as part of pre-processing.
In the same field of endeavor, Fukuda discloses “FIG. 7 shows frequency characteristics when a raised-cosine filter is used as the low-pass filter (Para. 44).”
In view of the teachings of Fukuda, it would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before filing to apply raised-cosine low-pass filtering to smooth the edges of low-pass thus reducing effects of transients thus improving resolution.
Claims 18 and 32 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Hanevich in view of Official Notice.
As to claim 18, the Examiner takes official notice of UWB wherein the motivation is accuracy via improved resolution.
As to claim 32, the Examiner takes official notice of IEEE to provide standardized framework for radar engineers to work from reducing workload and error.
Claim 35 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Hanevich in view of Pratt (US 20170338874 A1).
As to claims 35 (dependency unknown), Hanevich does not discloses spatial characteristic derived from combined channel.
In the same field of endeavor, Pratt teaches “For example, receiver-side combining techniques can be applied to achieve the simulated effect of digital beamforming at the transmitter, where an arbitrary transmit beam direction can be considered simply by forming the appropriate weighted combination of the received versions of the transmit signals. In other words, simulated transmit beamforming may be achieved via signal processing at the receiver. Of course, receive beamforming can also be implemented via signal processing at the receiver (Para. 28).”
In view of the teachings of Pratt, it would have been obvious to the ordinarily skilled to use the combined signal to determine spatial characteristic, e.g., beamforming, to allow for separation of objects of interest thereby improving accuracy.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MICHAEL W JUSTICE whose telephone number is (571)270-7029. The examiner can normally be reached 7:30 - 5:30 M-F.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, William Kelleher can be reached at 571-272-7753. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MICHAEL W JUSTICE/Examiner, Art Unit 3648
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