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 .
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-5 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.
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 text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
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 and 7 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hatae (US 2012/0128377) in view of Ebrahimzad (US 10587358).
Regarding claim 1 and similar claim 7, Hatae teaches an optical reception device (Fig. 4) comprising: a reception circuit that performs digital coherent reception of an optical signal (Fig. 4, reception circuit 10a); a conversion circuit that samples an electric field signal in an analog format that represents an optical electric field component of the optical signal (Fig. 4, input into ADC 12) and converts the electric field signal into a digital signal in a digital format (Fig. 4, output from ADC 12); a detection circuit that detects a sampling phase of the digital signal and generates sampling phase information that corresponds to the sampling phase (Fig. 4, detection circuit 16 detects a sampling phase; paragraph [0010], on the basis of the sampling phase value detected by a sampling phase detection unit 16); a compensation circuit that compensates for the sampling phase of the digital signal based on the sampling phase information (Fig. 4, compensation circuit 15, paragraph [0010], The sampling phase adjusting unit 15 adjusts a timing at which the signal value of a received signal is sampled, and adjusts a sampling timing on the basis of the sampling phase value detected by a sampling phase detection unit 16); and an adjustment circuit that adjusts signal intensity of the digital signal before the sampling phase information is generated (Fig. 4, adjustment circuit 13 is placed prior to the phase detection unit 16, paragraph [0010], An imbalanced amplitude correction unit 13 in the received data digital processing unit 11 corrects the imbalance between the I signal amplitude and the Q signal amplitude of the received data containing the I signal and the Q signal that have been digitized by the ADC 12).
However, Hatae doesn’t teach that the received optical signal has probabilistic constellation shaping (PCS) applied to it.
Ebrahimzad teaches transmitting optical signals with PCS applied which are then received at a receiver (Col. 6, lines 25-30, According to some examples, PCS may be implemented by applying PCS encoding prior to FEC encoding at an optical transmitter…the PCS encoding may be applied to blocks of client bits at the optical transmitter to produce “shaped” or “unbalanced” bits).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the transmitted optical signal which are then received as taught by Hatae and incorporate the PCS applied to the transmitted stream as taught by Ebrahimzad inorder to improve spectral efficiency and capacity.
Claim(s) 2 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hatae (US 2012/0128377) in view of Ebrahimzad (US 10587358) in further view of Ozawa (US 2011/0285432).
Regarding claim 2, Hatae in view of Ebrahimzad teaches the optical reception device according to claim 1, further comprising: wherein the adjustment circuit is provided in a preceding stage of the compensation circuit (Fig. 4, adjustment circuit 13 is in a preceding stage of the compensation circuit 15).
Hatae in view of Ebrahimzad don’t teach a control circuit that sets an adjustment value that increases the signal intensity in the adjustment circuit and releases the adjustment value after the sampling phase information is notified from the detection circuit to the compensation circuit, wherein the adjustment circuit adjusts the signal intensity based on the adjustment value.
Ozawa teaches a control circuit (Fig. 1, control circuit 40) that sets an adjustment value (Fig. 1, adjustment value EQLCTL) that increases the signal intensity in the adjustment circuit and releases the adjustment value (paragraph [0089] shows the increase and release of the adjustment values) after the sampling phase information is notified from the detection circuit (paragraph [0055], The phase monitor 50 detects a phase relationship between the clock signal CK and digital signal on the basis of the value D(n) and the value DX(n) which are outputted by the sampler 20, in each period T(n)) wherein the adjustment circuit adjusts the signal intensity based on the adjustment value (paragraph [0055], The phase monitor 50 then stops control of the level adjustment amount of the digital signal by the equalizer controller 40 when the phase difference is greater than a predetermined value, and permits control of the level adjustment amount of the digital signal by the equalizer controller 40 when the phase difference is equal to or less than a predetermined value. The phase monitor 50 outputs to the equalizer controller 40 a value ENABLE for indicating control enablement or stop in the equalizer controller 40).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to apply the controlled level adjustment technique of Ozawa into the pre-sampling amplitude correction stage taught by Hatae to provide controlled signal-level adjustment during the sampling phase acquisition and releasing that adjustment once the sampling phase is determined.
Claim(s) 6 and 8 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Hatae (US 2012/0128377) in view of Ebrahimzad (US 10587358) in further view of Komaki (US 2012/0308227).
Regarding claim 6 and similar claim 8, Hatae in view of Ebrahimzad teaches the optical reception device according to claim 1.
Hatae in view of Ebrahimzad don’t teach wherein the detection circuit detects the sampling phase based on a phase detection method that includes a Gardner system.
Komaki teaches wherein the detection circuit detects the sampling phase based on a phase detection method that includes a Gardner system (paragraph [0021], FIG. 8 illustrates an example of a Gardner's phase detector used in a sensitivity monitoring phase detector of FIG. 6).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the sampling phase detection circuit taught by Hatae and incorporate the Gardner phase-detection method taught by Komaki since both arts address the same problem of accurately determining and controlling the sampling phase in the coherent receiver. Thus, applying the phase detection technique taught by Komaki to the phase detection unit 16 of Hatae would have been a predictable substitution of one known phase detection technique for another for its intended purpose. The modification would predictably provided a Gardner-based detection of the sampling phase without requiring a fundamental change to the receiver architecture.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See the notice of reference cited (PTO-892).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to PRANESH K BARUA whose telephone number is (571)270-1017. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Sat: 11-8pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, David Payne can be reached on 5712723024. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PRANESH K BARUA/Examiner, Art Unit 2635
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