DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application is being examined under the pre-AIA first to invent provisions.
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.
Status of the Claims
Claims 1-20 filed on 10 DEC 2024 are currently pending and have been examined.
Priority
The pending application 18/975,911, filed on 10 DEC 2024, claims priority from provisional application 63/608,632, filed on 11 DEC 2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 26 MAR 2025 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
In claim 1, line 9, “a 3 dB portion an azimuth beam” should be “a 3 dB portion of an azimuth beam”
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
The claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. Claim 15 does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the broadest reasonable interpretation of the claim includes signals per se. Specifically, claim 15 recites “a machine-readable medium,” which, under its broadest reasonable interpretation includes, e.g., transitory signals. Because the broadest reasonable interpretation of claim 15 covers both subject matter that falls within a statutory category as well as subject matter that does not, the claim as a whole is not directed to a statutory category and is thus not patentable under 35 U.S.C. 101 (see MPEP 2106 (II), specifically paragraph two discussing the case Mentor Graphics v. EVE-USA, Inc., 851 F.3d 1275, 112 USPQ2d 1120 (Fed. Cir. 2017)). Limiting the claimed subject matter to include only non-transitory computer readable media would allow the applicant to overcome this rejection.
Dependent claims 16-20 are rejected as depending from rejected claim 15.
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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 8-11 and 15-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Aoyama et al. (US 2017/0146638 A1, cited by applicant in IDS dated 26 MAR 2025) in view of Peregrim et al. (US 5,430,445).
Regarding claim 1, Aoyama et al. discloses:
[Note: what is not explicitly taught by Aoyama et al. has been struck-through]
A moving target indicator radar system (Aoyama et al. radar device, Fig. 9) comprising:
a radar transceiver (Aoyama et al. sensor 1b, Fig. 9; ¶ [0160]); and
processing circuitry (Aoyama et al. correlation processor 2, motion hypothesis generator 4, range compensation amount calculator 6, phase compensation amount calculator 7, motion compensator 8, signal integrator 9, target detector 10, hypothesis tester 11, best hypothesis updater 12, target position estimator 15, beam direction selector 16, and correlation result combiner 17, CPI divider, phase compensator 20, CPI FFT calculator 21 can be implemented by program processing using a CPU, Fig. 9; ¶ [0054], [0165]) coupled to the radar transceiver, the processing circuitry configured to:
provide a command to move an antenna beam in an azimuth direction (Aoyama et al. “the beam direction selector 16 selects a beam direction covering the position of the target estimated by the target position estimator 14 in an observation coverage.” - ¶ [0163]; Fig. 9);
control the radar transceiver to transmit a series of pulses throughout antenna beam motion (Aoyama et al. “the sensor 1b emits beams in a plurality of predetermined beam directions.” - ¶ [0171]) such that the series of pulses are assembled into Coherent Processing Intervals (CPIs) (Aoyama et al. “The CPI divider 18 divides the received signals, which were converted into by the sensor 1c, into short time blocks (i.e., Coherent Pulse Intervals (CPISs)) where velocity of motion of the target can be assumed as being equivalent.” - ¶ [0186]) and such that for a possible target, sequential sets of CPIs are combined (Aoyama et al. “The signal integrator 9b integrates amplitude values of the same Doppler frequency bins in the resulting CPI blocks of the FFT performed by the CPI FFT calculator 21.” - ¶ [0190])
detect at least one moving target in at least one CPI (Aoyama et al. “The target detector 10b detects a Doppler frequency of the target from an integration result of the signal integrator 9b.” - ¶ [0191]).
Peregrim et al. discloses:
covering at least a 3 dB portion an azimuth beam (Peregrim et al. “The patches 161…1645 are projections of the beam 15 3 dB two way contour of the ground.” – Col. 30, lines 6-8; Fig. 1A)
It would have been obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the features as disclosed by Peregrim et al. into the invention of Aoyama et al. to yield the invention of claim 1 above. Both Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. are considered analogous arts to the claimed invention as they both disclose scanning radar beams across a surface and using coherent processing to detect targets. Aoyama et al. discloses the limitations of claim 1 outlined above. However, Aoyama et al. fails to explicitly disclose covering at least a 3 dB portion an azimuth beam. This feature is disclosed by Peregrim et al. where “The patches 161…1645 are projections of the beam 15 3 dB two way contour of the ground.” (Peregrim et al. Col. 30, lines 6-8; Fig. 1A). The combination of Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. would be obvious with a reasonable expectation of success to provide the main beam with sidelobes that “have substantially lower amplitudes than the main beam 502 such that objects in the direction out of the main beam 502 will produce radar reflection small enough to be ignored” in order to achieve high resolution (Peregrim et al. Col. 30, lines 39-43; Col. 2, lines 21-22).
Regarding claim 2, Aoyama et al. as modified above discloses:
The moving target indicator radar system of claim 1, wherein the sequential sets cover the azimuth beam null-to-null (Aoyama et al. “The search radar observes a wide coverage, which cannot be observed at a time, by sequentially switching beam directions. In FIG. 10, a circle having a numeral in the center represents an observation coverage (a beam spot) for a single beam, where the numeral represents an order of observation.” - ¶ [0168]; Fig. 10).
Regarding claim 3, Aoyama et al. as modified above discloses:
[Note: what is not explicitly taught by Aoyama et al. has been struck-through]
The moving target indicator radar system of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is configured to:
steer the beam such that the beam moves to a new azimuth with each coherent processing interval (CPI) (Aoyama et al. “The search radar observes a wide coverage, which cannot be observed at a time, by sequentially switching beam directions. In FIG. 10, a circle having a numeral in the center represents an observation coverage (a beam spot) for a single beam, where the numeral represents an order of observation. That is, a beam is emitted to each observation direction in the order of #1, 2, 3, . . . , 16.” - ¶ [0168]); and
Peregrim et al. discloses:
the circuitry comprises a set of processors and wherein each processor is configured to process one CPI independently of other processors of the set of processors and wherein each processor is configured to generate a range-Doppler map that includes target indications (Peregrim et al. “It should be appreciated using parallel processing techniques, that signals to provide the sum map, the azimuth difference map and the elevation difference map are processed simultaneously to increase the speed of the processing.” – Col. 32, lines 28-32).
It would have been obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the features as disclosed by Peregrim et al. into the invention of Aoyama et al. to yield the invention of claim 3. Both Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. are considered analogous arts to the claimed invention as they both disclose scanning radar beams across a surface and using coherent processing to detect targets. Aoyama et al. as modified above discloses the invention of claim 1. However, Aoyama et al. fails to explicitly disclose the circuitry comprises a set of processors and wherein each processor is configured to process one CPI independently of other processors of the set of processors and wherein each processor is configured to generate a range-Doppler map that includes target indications. This feature is disclosed by Peregrim et al. where “It should be appreciated using parallel processing techniques, that signals to provide the sum map, the azimuth difference map and the elevation difference map are processed simultaneously to increase the speed of the processing.” (Peregrim et al. Col. 32, lines 28-32). The combination of Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. would be obvious with a reasonable expectation of success to include parallel processing in order to “increase the speed of the processing.” (Peregrim et al. Col. 32, lines 28-32) .
Regarding claim 8, Aoyama et al. discloses:
[Note: what is not explicitly taught by Aoyama et al. has been struck-through]
A method comprising:
commanding an antenna beam to move in an azimuth direction (Aoyama et al. “the beam direction selector 16 selects a beam direction covering the position of the target estimated by the target position estimator 14 in an observation coverage.” - ¶ [0163]; Fig. 9);
controlling a radar transceiver to transmit a series of pulses throughout antenna beam motion (Aoyama et al. “the sensor 1b emits beams in a plurality of predetermined beam directions.” - ¶ [0171]) such that the series of pulses are assembled into Coherent Processing Intervals (CPIs) (Aoyama et al. “The CPI divider 18 divides the received signals, which were converted into by the sensor 1c, into short time blocks (i.e., Coherent Pulse Intervals (CPISs)) where velocity of motion of the target can be assumed as being equivalent.” - ¶ [0186]) and such that for a possible target, sequential sets of CPIs are combined (Aoyama et al. “The signal integrator 9b integrates amplitude values of the same Doppler frequency bins in the resulting CPI blocks of the FFT performed by the CPI FFT calculator 21.” - ¶ [0190])
detecting at least one moving target in at least one CPI (Aoyama et al. “The target detector 10b detects a Doppler frequency of the target from an integration result of the signal integrator 9b.” - ¶ [0191]).
Peregrim et al. discloses:
covering at least a 3 dB portion an azimuth beam (Peregrim et al. “The patches 161…1645 are projections of the beam 15 3 dB two way contour of the ground.” – Col. 30, lines 6-8; Fig. 1A)
It would have been obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the features as disclosed by Peregrim et al. into the invention of Aoyama et al. to yield the invention of claim 8 above. Both Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. are considered analogous arts to the claimed invention as they both disclose scanning radar beams across a surface and using coherent processing to detect targets. Aoyama et al. discloses the limitations of claim 1 outlined above. However, Aoyama et al. fails to explicitly disclose covering at least a 3 dB portion an azimuth beam. This feature is disclosed by Peregrim et al. where “The patches 161…1645 are projections of the beam 15 3 dB two way contour of the ground.” (Peregrim et al. Col. 30, lines 6-8; Fig. 1A). The combination of Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. would be obvious with a reasonable expectation of success to provide the main beam with sidelobes that “have substantially lower amplitudes than the main beam 502 such that objects in the direction out of the main beam 502 will produce radar reflection small enough to be ignored” in order to achieve high resolution (Peregrim et al. Col. 30, lines 39-43; Col. 2, lines 21-22).
Regarding claim 9, the same cited section and rationale as corresponding claim 2 is applied.
Regarding claim 10, the same cited section and rationale as corresponding claim 3is applied.
Regarding claim 15, Aoyama et al. discloses:
[Note: what is not explicitly taught by Aoyama et al. has been struck-through]
A machine-readable medium including instructions that, when executed on a set of processors, cause the set of processors to perform operations (Aoyama et al. correlation processor 2, motion hypothesis generator 4, range compensation amount calculator 6, phase compensation amount calculator 7, motion compensator 8, signal integrator 9, target detector 10, hypothesis tester 11, best hypothesis updater 12, target position estimator 15, beam direction selector 16, and correlation result combiner 17, CPI divider, phase compensator 20, CPI FFT calculator 21 can be implemented by program processing using a CPU, Fig. 9; ¶ [0054], [0165]; it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to include a machine-readable medium to store the program to be implemented by the CPU) including:
providing a command to move an antenna beam in an azimuth direction (Aoyama et al. “the beam direction selector 16 selects a beam direction covering the position of the target estimated by the target position estimator 14 in an observation coverage.” - ¶ [0163]; Fig. 9); and
controlling a radar transceiver to transmit a series of pulses throughout antenna beam motion (Aoyama et al. “the sensor 1b emits beams in a plurality of predetermined beam directions.” - ¶ [0171]) such that the series of pulses are assembled into Coherent Processing Intervals (CPIs) (Aoyama et al. “The CPI divider 18 divides the received signals, which were converted into by the sensor 1c, into short time blocks (i.e., Coherent Pulse Intervals (CPISs)) where velocity of motion of the target can be assumed as being equivalent.” - ¶ [0186]) and such that for a possible target, sequential sets of CPIs are combined (Aoyama et al. “The signal integrator 9b integrates amplitude values of the same Doppler frequency bins in the resulting CPI blocks of the FFT performed by the CPI FFT calculator 21.” - ¶ [0190])
detecting at least one moving target in at least one CPI (Aoyama et al. “The target detector 10b detects a Doppler frequency of the target from an integration result of the signal integrator 9b.” - ¶ [0191]).
Peregrim et al. discloses:
A machine-readable medium (Peregrim et al. parameter memory 130, Fig. 2; “A set of parameters for each of numerous ranges are stored in parameter memory 130. Based on calculations made by inertial navigation system (INS) 132 of the range to the patch 16.sub.i, the timing and control unit 128 reads the values of those parameters from parameter memory 130 and sends control signals to other elements of the SAR 12 to have the SAR 12 operate with the appropriate parameters.” – Col. 11, lines 25-33)
covering at least a 3 dB portion an azimuth beam (Peregrim et al. “The patches 161…1645 are projections of the beam 15 3 dB two way contour of the ground.” – Col. 30, lines 6-8; Fig. 1A)
It would have been obvious to someone with ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the features as disclosed by Peregrim et al. into the invention of Aoyama et al. to yield the invention of claim 15 above. Both Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. are considered analogous arts to the claimed invention as they both disclose scanning radar beams across a surface and using coherent processing to detect targets. Aoyama et al. discloses the limitations of claim 15 outlined above. However, Aoyama et al. fails to explicitly disclose a machine-readable medium and covering at least a 3 dB portion an azimuth beam. This feature is disclosed by Peregrim et al. where a timing and control unit reads parameters from parameter memory to send appropriate control signals and “The patches 161…1645 are projections of the beam 15 3 dB two way contour of the ground.” (Peregrim et al. Col. 30, lines 6-8; Fig. 1A). The combination of Aoyama et al. and Peregrim et al. would be obvious with a reasonable expectation of success to provide the main beam with sidelobes that “have substantially lower amplitudes than the main beam 502 such that objects in the direction out of the main beam 502 will produce radar reflection small enough to be ignored” in order to achieve high resolution (Peregrim et al. Col. 30, lines 39-43; Col. 2, lines 21-22).
Regarding claim 16, the same cited section and rationale as corresponding claim 2 is applied.
Regarding claim 17, the same cited section and rationale as corresponding claim 3 is applied.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-7 and 11-14 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Regarding dependent claim 4, the prior art of record fails to explicitly teach or render obvious, either alone or in combination, each processor is configured to: generate a list of detections from the range-Doppler map, the list including at least range and Doppler information, and CPI information for each detection; and remove the range-Doppler map from memory subsequent to generating the list, as set forth in claim 4.
Dependent claims 5-7 are objected to as depending from objected claim 4.
Dependent claim 11 is objected to for similar reasons as claim 4.
Dependent claims 12-14 are objected to as depending from objected claim 11.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NAOMI M WOLFORD whose telephone number is (571)272-3929. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday, 8:30 am - 4:30 pm EST.
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 Desai can be reached at (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.
NAOMI M. WOLFORD
Examiner
Art Unit 3648
/N.M.W./Examiner, Art Unit 3648 12 AUG 2026
/RESHA DESAI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 3648
Prosecution Insights