Ex Parte Ghosh

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Apr 30, 2013

11203593 (P.T.A.B. Apr. 30, 2013)

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
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BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
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Ex parte MONISHA GHOSH
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Appeal 2010-011641
Application 11/203,593
Technology Center 2100
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Before KRISTEN L. DROESCH, LYNNE E. PETTIGREW, and
MIRIAM L. QUINN, Administrative Patent Judges.

QUINN, Administrative Patent Judge.

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Application 11/203,593

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DECISION ON APPEAL
Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) (2002) from a final
rejection of claims 1-3, 6-8, and 11-27. Claims 4, 5, 9, and 10 have been
cancelled and claims 11-20 and 22-27 have been withdrawn from
consideration, leaving thus subject to this appeal only claims 1-3, 6-8, and
21 (App. Br. 3). We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We REVERSE.

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
According to Appellant, the invention relates to interleaving and
parsing in a Multiple In Multiple Out (MIMO)-Orthogonal Frequency-
Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless multimedia communication
system. Spec. 1, ll. 4-5.1 The subject matter on appeal involves a wireless
bit-interleaved coded OFDM (BI-COFDM) MIMO system that improves the
diversity seen by a convolutional decoder. Spec., Abstract. Details of the
appealed subject matter are recited in illustrative independent claim 1,
reproduced below from the Claims Appendix of the Appeal Brief:2
1. A wireless multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO)
apparatus, comprising:
a block interleaver that interleaves an input-punctured
convolutional bit stream and provides an interleaved output bit
stream;

1 References to Appellant’s Specification (“Spec.”) are directed to the
specification filed on August 12, 2005.
2 References to the Appeal Brief (“App. Br.”) are directed to
Appellant’s Appeal Brief filed on May 14, 2010, and references to the Reply
are directed to Appellant’s Reply Brief filed on August 17, 2010.
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a bit-to-symbol mapper to group the interleaved output bit
stream of the bit interleaver into output symbols;
a parser that sends each of the output symbols of the
mapper to one of a plurality of antennae in a round-robin
fashion; and
a deinterleaver that performs the inverse transformation of
the block interleaver on a bit stream transformed by the block
interleaver.
As evidence of unpatentability of the claimed subject matter, the
Examiner relies on the following references at pages 3 to 10 of the Answer:3
Kumar US 5,949,796 Sept. 7, 1999
Yonge III
Chheda
US 6,278,685 B1
US 6,704,370 B1
Aug. 21, 2001
Mar. 9, 2004
Dagan US 6,934,901 B2 Aug. 23, 2005
Maltsev US 7,570,695 B2 Aug. 4, 2009
The Examiner provides the following grounds of rejections, of which
Appellant seeks review:
(1) Claims 1, 3, and 21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Kumar and Chheda (Ans. 4-6);
(2) Claims 2, 7, and 8 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Kumar, Chheda, Yonge III, and Dagan (Ans. 7-9);
and

3 References to the Examiner’s Answer (“Ans.”) are directed to the
Answer mailed on June 28, 2010.
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(3) Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Kumar, Chheda, Yonge III, Dagan, and Maltsev
(Ans. 9-10).
ISSUE
Based on Appellant’s arguments, the dispositive issue on appeal is
whether the Examiner erred in rejecting independent claims 1 and 21 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) because the combination of Kumar and Chheda fails to
teach “a parser that sends each of the output symbols of the mapper to one of
a plurality of antennae in a round-robin fashion.” App. Br. 6-10.
ANALYSIS
We have reviewed the Examiner’s rejection in light of Appellant’s
contention. Further, we have reviewed the Examiner’s response to
Appellant’s arguments. We are persuaded by Appellant’s arguments for the
following reasons.
Independent claims 1 and 21 recite “a parser that sends each of the
output symbols of the mapper to one of a plurality of antennae in a round-
robin fashion.” The Examiner finds the prior art of record teaches the
claimed parser by stating that,
Together, Kumar and Chheda teach a parser that sends
[each] of the output symbols of the mapper to one of a
plurality of antennae (Kumar teaches a separator/parser 69
in Figure 4 of Kumar that sends each of the output symbols
of the bit-to-symbol mappers Signal Generators 47 and 49 to
one of a plurality of antennae) in a round-robin fashion
(Chheda teaches the use o[f] round-robin for distributing
data to a plurality of antennae).
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Ans. 6. With respect to the “plurality of antennae” of the disputed
limitation, the Examiner finds that Kumar is directed to resolving
transmission/reception interference issues for multiple broadcast antennas as
described in column 19, lines 46-59 of Kumar. Ans. 11. That passage of
Kumar states that “[i]t is also possible to use diversity at the transmitter site
by having multiple (at least two) broadcast antennas.” Kumar, col. 19, ll.
46-47. Therefore, the Examiner reasons, the antenna system disclosed in
Figure 4 of Kumar can be multiple antennas. Id.
Appellant contends that neither Kumar nor Chheda teaches the
disputed limitation. First, Appellant contends that the diversity of
transmission disclosed in Kumar involves a plurality of antennae
transmitting the same signal. App. Br. 7; Reply 4. Accordingly, Kumar
teaches “a separator that sends the same output symbols of the mapper to
each and every one of a plurality of antennae in order to provide the
transmission diversity.” App. Br. 7; Reply. 4.
We agree with Appellant. Kumar’s separator does not “send[] each of
the output symbols of the mapper to one of a plurality of antennae,” as
recited in claims 1 and 21. The diversity of transmission technique
described therein involves transmitting the same signal via each of the
plurality of antennas, and Kumar does not teach either altering this technique
or configuring the disclosed separator to send different groups of symbols to
each of the plurality of antennas.
Second, Appellant contends that the Examiner’s reliance on Chheda
does not cure the deficiency in Kumar. App. Br. 8. Specifically, Appellant
argues that the passage in Chheda the Examiner relies on (column 3, lines
15-20) teaches that “every other bit in the data streams is passed to one
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stream and the remaining bits are passed to another stream for Walsh coding
and spreading (column 5, lines 6-12).” App. Br. 8. Therefore, each of the
symbol streams is sent to a corresponding antenna. Id. As such, Appellant
argues, Chheda also fails to teach or suggest the disputed claim limitation.
We agree with Appellant. While Chheda discloses separating a data
stream “into two separate streams in a round-robin fashion for transmission
over two spatially separated antennas” (Chheda, col. 3, ll. 14-17), that data
stream involves bits, not symbols. Chheda discloses transmitting the symbol
stream without parsing that symbol stream in any way. See Chheda, fig.1,
col. 5, ll. 12-15. In fact, neither Kumar nor Chheda discloses the concept of
parsing symbols, much less sending each symbol to a different antenna in a
round-robin fashion. Therefore, on the record before us, we are constrained
to reverse the Examiner’s decision rejecting independent claims 1 and 21 as
being unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over Kumar and Chheda.
CONCLUSION
For the foregoing reasons, we conclude the Examiner erred in
rejecting independent claims 1 and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) over the
combination of Kumar and Chheda. Therefore, we do not sustain the
rejection of independent claims 1 and 21. And further, because the rejection
of independent claim 1 is not sustained, we also do not sustain the rejection
of dependent claims 2, 3, and 6-8, argued separately but based on the
patentability of claim 1 (App. Br. 10-11).
DECISION
We REVERSE the Examiner’s decision to reject claims 1-3, 6-8, and
21.
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REVERSED

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