Appeal No. 2006-0406
Application 09/497,865
7, 21, and 37. Because these claims stand or fall together, the
rejection of claims 1, 7, 21, and 37 is affirmed.
Although we interpret that claims 1, 7, 21, and 37 do not
require transmitting a transmit beam, we agree with the examiner
that Aoki teaches a transmitting a transmit beam using the
element corresponding to the strongest signal. Aoki teaches a
retrodirective antenna wherein a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)
circuit 18 computes the intensity of the incoming radio waves in
every direction (col. 4, line 59, to col. 5, line 9) and the
direction of the incoming radio wave is detected by circuit 19
from the intensities of the incoming waves (col. 5, lines 10-15)
and a control signal computes an amount of control for the phases
of the transmitted radio waves to have them correspond to the
direction of arrival (col. 5, line 15, to col. 6, line 7). Thus,
the control signal determined from the strongest signal of the
elements is used to control transmission of a signal back in the
direction from which the signal is coming. Appellants agree that
some retrodirectivity aspect is provided in Aoki (RBr2).
However, it is argued, the system shown in Fig. 2 operates in a
different way and provides circuitry for each of the respective
antenna elements, which is an inefficient use of resources due to
the amount of redundant circuitry (RBr3). It is not known
whether appellants are arguing that there is receiving circuitry
for each element or transmitting circuitry for each element.
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