Detailed Office 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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 1, 7, 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102 (a)(1) as being anticipated by Huang (USPGPUB 2022/0337261).
Regarding claims 1, 10, Huang disclose a comparator and method (fig. 1) , comprising: a comparator circuit configured to generate a decision signal according to an input signal; an offset calculation circuit configured to calculate an offset of the comparator circuit according to the decision signal to generate a plurality of control signals (paragraphs 0015 – 0018; 0026 – 0029, 0033); a hybrid offset voltage generation circuit configured to select a first reference voltage and a second reference voltage from a plurality of reference voltages according to the control signals and utilize the first reference voltage and the second reference voltage to perform a charge transfer operation to generate a plurality of calibration voltages (paragraphs 0015 – 0018); and an offset cancellation circuit configured to cancel the offset according to the plurality of calibration voltages (0021).
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Regarding claim 7, Huang disclose an analog-to-digital converter (fig. 3) , comprising: a plurality of comparator circuits (COM1, COM2, fig. 3) configured to generate a plurality of decision signals according to an input signal; an offset calculation circuit configured to calculate an offset of the plurality of comparator circuits according to the plurality of decision signals to generate a plurality sets of control signals (figs. 3, 4); a hybrid offset voltage generation circuit configured to select a first reference voltage and a second reference voltage from a plurality of reference voltages according to the plurality of sets of control signals and utilize the first reference voltage and the second reference voltage to perform a charge transfer operation to generate a plurality sets of calibration voltages (figs. 3, 4; paragraphs 0027 – 0032); and a plurality of offset cancellation circuits configured to cancel the offset according to the plurality sets of calibration voltages (paragraph 0029) .
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Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2 – 6, 8, 9, 11 – 15 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.
Conclusion
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/JEAN B JEANGLAUDE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2845
