Appeal No. 2006-1607
Application 10/062,894
which minimizes the "inter-symbol interference" between pulses (¶ 0027; Fig. 2). When pulses
are spaced more closely than Tmin, e.g., Tmin/5 in Fig. 3, it is hard to detect the pulse because
the overlapping neighboring pulses cause interference (¶¶ 0034-0035). Appellant discloses that
the pulses can be more positively discriminated when each pulse has a different phase from its
adjacent pulse (¶¶ 0036-0037), and discloses interleaving in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) phases
so the Tmin spacing can be separately applied to each sub-group (¶ 0045). The description in the
specification could be clearer. Appellant shows real and imaginary parts of pulses in Figs. 5A
and 5B, but it is not clear how a "baseband" (i.e., not modulated on a carrier wave) pulse can
have an imaginary part, unless appellant just means that the imaginary parts are intended to be
modulated and sent out in quadrature to the real part. A logical "1" is sent by a pulse and a
logical "0" is implicitly sent by not having a pulse in the time slot. In effect, appellant's method
is two interleaved PCM bit streams, each with a different phase, where the Tmin spacing is
separately applied to the pulses in each bit stream (¶ 0045).
Claims 1 and 11 are reproduced below.
1. A propagated signal, comprising:
a time period divided into a group of time slots each having a unique phase/time
position; and
multiple pulses distributed among said time slots encoding a data element by said
unique phase/time position.
11. A method of propagated [sic, propagating] a signal, comprising:
designating a time period divided into a group of time slots each having a unique
phase/time position; and
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