Appeal No. 2000-1461
Application No. 08/716,905
The examiner has taken teachings from three disparate references and attempts to
combine them to arrive at the instant claimed subject matter with apparently no suggestion
from the references for doing so.
Each of the instant claims requires the measurement of distortion in an RF network
or the performance characterization of Ka band transponders. Thomas is concerned with
controlling the output power of a transmitter communicating with a remotely positioned
receiving station through a linear transponder located at a satellite in order to keep the
power level of the input signal substantially constant. Tarantino is concerned with
determining the phase and amplitude response of a superheterodyne instrument wherein
data is acquired as a signal sweeps the passband and is analyzed to determine the phase and
amplitude characteristics of the instrument. Finally, Kroeger is concerned with satellite
communication but not with measurement of signal distortion in RF transponders.
Accordingly, it is difficult to understand why the skilled artisan would have been led
to combine the teachings of these references in some manner to arrive at the instant
claimed invention. More specifically, the claims call for, at least, the measuring of
distortion (or performance characterization) in satellite RF transponders wherein a
periodic wideband RF signal having a known periodic pattern is transmitted to a transponder
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