Appeal No. 2000-1900
Application No. 08/669,937
are examined in isolation rather than including a consideration
of plural signal points. In describing the “hard” decision
operation, Wei discloses (column 4, lines 57-67) the comparison
of received signal points with the known transmitted points and
the resultant determination of the number of errors in each
sequence pattern.2 We agree with the Examiner that, despite the
fact that signal points are examined in isolation, the skilled
artisan would recognize this “hard” decision decoding as
involving a determination of a “mathematical distance” of the
received bit sequence pattern with a known bit sequence pattern
in relation to a threshold distance such as a Hamming distance.3
In this regard, we also point out that Appellant’s own
specification (page 6, lines 7-10) recognizes that in
conventional hard decision decoders, a mathematical distance
determination is made using a minimum Hamming distance threshold.
Given this evidence before us, our review of the language of
claim 1 reveals nothing which would require a “soft” decision
operation, as asserted by Appellant, or, for that matter, any
2 Saleh has a similar disclosure at column 5, lines 18-43 and column 10,
lines 63-68.
3 See discussion of “Hamming distance” or “signal distance” at page 131
of Weik’s Standard Dictionary of Computers and Information Processing, (2nd
Ed., Hayden Book Co., Inc., Rochelle Park, NJ (1977)), a copy of which is
enclosed with this decision.
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