DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Amendment
Applicant’s amendment submitted 11/11/2025 has been entered. Claims 1 and 11 are amended. Claim 8 is canceled. Claims 1-5, 7, and 9-15 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant argues neither Liu nor Montemurro determines a future "next period" using the first frame's transmission period and then uses that determined next period to exclude the first channel and reallocate listening to other channels (see pages 6-7 of Remark). Liu teaches determining if a second preamble is detected on a second channel (Liu, Col. 2, lines 21-30), and Montemurro teaches determining a future “next period” using the first frame’s transmission period (Montemurro, 0046 and 0049). Arguments regarding excluding the first channel are moot as a new reference has been applied. For clarity, Na, page 8, para 10-11, teaches adding a scanned channel to a set of channels already scanned then excluding channels in the set from future scans.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 1 should be amended to read, in part, “if the first frame is not identified as the designated frame, … and wait for the subsequent frame to be received on at least one channel excluding the first channel from among the at least two channels during the second period in the designated search time” (lines 13-16)
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1, 4-5, 7, 9, 11, and 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu et al. (US 9198120), Liu hereinafter, in view of Montemurro et al. (US 2014/0079043), Montemurro hereinafter, further in view of Na et al. (KR-20170049273), Na hereinafter.
Re. Claim 1 (Currently Amended) An electronic device (Liu, Claim 1) comprising:
communication circuitry (Liu, Col. 1, lines 44-45: A client station comprises a transceiver module, a scanning module, and an association module.); and
at least one processor including processing circuitry, memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively (Liu, Col. 14, lines 29-40: The term module may refer to, be part of, or include an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC); a digital, analog, or mixed analog/digital discrete circuit; a digital, analog, or mixed analog/digital integrated circuit; a combinational logic circuit; a field programmable gate array (FPGA); a processor (shared, dedicated, or group) that executes code; memory (shared, dedicated, or group) that stores code executed by a processor; other suitable hardware components that provide the described functionality; or a combination of some or all of the above, such as in a system-on-chip.), cause the electronic device to:
receive, via the communication circuitry, an initial portion of a first frame on a first channel selected among at least two channels In other features, the scanning module is configured to scan the multiple channels and determine whether one or more access points are available for association in one or more of the multiple channels by (i) transmitting a probe request via each of the multiple channels, and (ii) detecting whether one or more responses to the probe request are received from the one or more access points via one or more of the multiple channels.);
if the first frame is identified as a designated frame based on decoding information obtained from the initial portion of the first frame (Liu, Col. 2, lines 13-20: In other features, the decoding module is configured to determine, based on decoding the signal field, whether the frame is (i) a beacon or (ii) a probe response to a probe request; and to decode, in response to the frame being (i) the beacon or (ii) the probe response to the probe request, a remaining portion of the frame to determine whether to associate with one of the access points that transmitted the beacon or response to the beacon.),
receive a remaining portion of the first frame on the first channel In other features, the decoding module is configured to determine, based on decoding the signal field, whether the frame is (i) a beacon or (ii) a probe response to a probe request; and to decode, in response to the frame being (i) the beacon or (ii) the probe response to the probe request, a remaining portion of the frame to determine whether to associate with one of the access points that transmitted the beacon or response to the beacon.);
store, in the memory, information of an access point (AP) derived from the first frame including the initial portion and the remaining portion (Liu, Fig. 3, Col. 12, lines 23-25: At 208, if control decides to associate with the access point that was found, control associates with the access point that was found. [In associating with the access point, it is necessary to store information of the access point.]); and
if the first frame is not identified as designated frame (Liu, Col. 2, lines 21-30: In other features, the decoding module is configured to stop decoding the signal field in response to the decoding module being unable to decode the signal field, or in response to the decoding module determining, based on the decoding of the signal field, that the frame is neither a beacon nor a probe response to a probe request.),
wait for frames to be received on at least one channel from among the at least two channels The preamble detection module is configured to, in response to the decoding module stopping the decoding of the signal field, begin detecting whether a second preamble of a second frame is received via a second channel of the multiple channels.),
Yet, Liu does not explicitly teach receive, during a first period within a designated search time;
receive during a second period within the designated search time;
determine a next period in which a subsequent frame from the AP is expected based on a transmission period of the first frame and wait for frames to be received on at least one channel excluding the first channel from among the at least two channels during the second period in the designated search time, wherein the designated search time is set differently depending on whether an application related to a location-based service or an application that requires a Wi-Fi connection is running on the electronic device.
However, in the related art, Montemurro teaches receive, during a first period within a designated search time (Montemurro, 0057: In monitoring for a beacon frame, device 116a monitors a channel of a Wi-Fi connection for a set scanning time in a scanning period. [The scanning time corresponds to the first period, and the scanning period corresponds to the designated search time.]);
receive during a second period within the designated search time (Montemurro, 0048: When actively or passively scanning, device 116a needs to dwell on the channel for a period of time that is long enough to potentially receive a probe response or beacon frames from a SSID that it is trying to locate. … Also, when a maximum dwell period is reached, by one convention the station is required to start a scan on another channel.);
determine a next period in which a subsequent frame from the AP is expected based on a transmission period of the first frame (Montemurro, 0046: The body of a beacon frame contains: a beacon interval, providing the amount of time between beacon transmissions; a timestamp, which may be used by a station to synchronize itself and update its local clock; and the SSID of network 118 of AP 110. 0046: The beacon frame may also contain a Delivery TIM (DTIM) which is a flag indicating whether any buffered broadcast or multicast traffic is going to be transmitted from the AP 110 to device 116 immediately (or shortly) after the beacon signal. And 0049: As noted earlier, AP 110b will periodically send broadcast/multicast packets that can be received by device 116a at intervals determined, in part, by the value of the DTIM field. As such, device 116a, it must be synchronized such that device 116a is able to receive and respond to such beacon signals and receive, as required, the broadcast/multicast traffic that proceeds them.) and
wherein the designated search time is set differently depending on whether an application related to a location-based service or an application that requires a Wi-Fi connection is running on the electronic device (Montemurro, 0058-0059: For example, device 116a maybe: i) not connected to a network; ii) connected to a network; or iii) connected to multiple networks in different frequency bands (for example, device 116a may have a Wi-Fi Direct/P2P connection with a connection to an AP infrastructure network). For situation i), device 116a may wish to make occasional, but not overly frequent, scans for network connection(s), such as for example, scanning for networks for a scan time of approximately 30 ms approximately once every 60 seconds. … It will be appreciated that the scan times and scan periods stated (e.g. 60 s and 10 s) may be changed for different conditions. Table A: In the case of geo-location dependent operations, a scan time may be set according to a velocity of device 116a, as it relates to the regulatory domain limits. To have timely information from networks and as such to be responsive to timely connection requests, an embodiment may control and moderate network scan requests based on one or more conditions detected by or evaluated by device 116a and/or requests received from application(s) operating on device 116a.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method and apparatus for scanning multiple channels in a wireless network of Liu with the system and method for controlling network scan parameters for a network connection of Montemurro. The resulting invention would reduce batter usage by varying the frequency of scans to increase their efficiency (Montemurro, 0010).
Neither Liu nor Montemurro explicitly teaches wait for frames to be received on at least one channel excluding the first channel from among the at least two channels during the second period in the designated search time.
However, in the related art, Na teaches wait for frames to be received on at least one channel excluding the first channel from among the at least two channels during the second period in the designated search time (Na, Page 8, para. 10-11: The terminal 210 determines whether the slot j is the last Nth slot in step S580 and adds the predetermined channel i to the set Φ in step S582 if it is not the Nth slot. Here, the set (Φ) denotes a set including channels that have been searched for. The terminal 210 selects an arbitrary channel among the remaining channels excluding the channels included in the set Φ at step S584 and repeats the wireless sensing process for the random access at step S520 in the next slot j + (S586).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the invention of Liu as modified by the teaching of Montemurro with the process for random access of Na. The resulting invention would provide for preventing collisions (Na, Abstract).
Re. Claim 4, Liu in view of Montemurro and Na teaches claims 1.
Liu further teaches wherein the instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to identify whether the first frame is the designated frame based on a result of performing full decoding of the first frame (Liu, Col. 7 lines 50-57 - Whenever a preamble is detected in one of the channels, the client station can begin decoding a signal field of the frame received in the channel and determine whether the received frame is a desired frame (e.g., a beacon or a probe response frame); and Col 10 lines 3-7 - In response to the frame being a beacon or a probe response, the decoding module 112 can decode the rest of the frame to determine whether to associate with one of the access points that transmitted the beacon or the probe response.).
Re. Claim 5, Liu in view of Montemurro and Na teaches claims 1.
Yet, Liu does not explicitly teach wherein the information in the portion of the first frame comprises at least one of transmission rate information of the first frame or length information of the first frame.
However, in the related art, Montemurro teaches wherein the information in the portion of the first frame comprises at least one of transmission rate information of the first frame or length information of the first frame (Montemurro, 0046: The beacon frame can also provide: data indicating the supported transmission rates of the WLAN; data regarding the signaling parameters of the WLAN, such as frequency hopping spread spectrum, direct sequence spread spectrum, etc.; data on the capabilities of the WLAN; and data providing a traffic indication map (TIM).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method and apparatus for scanning multiple channels in a wireless network of Liu with the system and method for controlling network scan parameters for a network connection of Montemurro. The resulting invention would reduce batter usage by varying the frequency of scans to increase their efficiency (Montemurro, 0010).
Re. Claim 7, Liu in view of Montemurro and Na teaches claim 1.
Yet, Liu does not explicitly teach wherein the instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to identify a transmission period of the first frame based on the first frame.
However, in the related art, Montemurro teaches wherein the instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to identify a transmission period of the first frame based on the first frame (Montemurro, 0046: The body of a beacon frame contains: a beacon interval, providing the amount of time between beacon transmissions; a timestamp, which may be used by a station to synchronize itself and update its local clock; and the SSID of network 118 of AP 110.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method and apparatus for scanning multiple channels in a wireless network of Liu with the system and method for controlling network scan parameters for a network connection of Montemurro. The resulting invention would reduce batter usage by varying the frequency of scans to increase their efficiency (Montemurro, 0010).
Re. Claim 9, Liu in view of Montemurro and Na teaches claim 1.
Liu further teaches wherein the portion of the first frame comprises a frame header of the first frame (Liu, Col. 2, lines 4-12 - In other features, the scanning module includes a preamble detection module configured to detect whether a preamble of a frame is received via a first channel of the multiple channels, and a decoding module configured to attempt to decode a signal field of the frame in response to the preamble detection module detecting that the preamble of the frame is received via the first channel of the multiple channels, where the signal field follows the preamble.).
Re. Claim 11, Claim 11 is directed toward a method corresponding to the device of claim 1. Claim 11 does not further limit or define over the subject matter of claim 1. Therefore, claim 11 is rejected for similar reasons as laid out for claim 1 above.
Re. Claim 14, Claim 14 is directed toward a method corresponding to the device of claim 4. Claim 14 does not further limit or define over the subject matter of claim 4. Therefore, claim 14 is rejected for similar reasons as laid out for claim 4 above.
Re. Claim 15, Claim 15 is directed toward a method corresponding to the device of claim 5. Claim 15 does not further limit or define over the subject matter of claim 5. Therefore, claim 15 is rejected for similar reasons as laid out for claim 5 above.
Claims 2-3 and 12-13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu in view of Montemurro as applied to claims 1 and 11 above, and further in view of Wu et al. (US 7539146), Wu hereinafter.
Re. Claims 2, Liu in view of Montemurro and Chu teaches claims 1.
Liu further teaches, wherein the instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to: decode the portion of the first frame (Liu, Col. 2, line 59-Col. 3, line 2 - In other features, the scanning module includes a preamble detection module configured to detect whether a preamble of a frame is received via one of the multiple channels; and a decoding module configured to, in response to the preamble detection module detecting that the preamble of the frame is received via one of the multiple channels, decode the preamble or a signal field following the preamble, and determine, based on the decoding of the preamble or the signal field, whether the preamble or the signal field includes an indication that the frame is (i) a beacon, (ii) a probe response, or (ii) transmitted by one of the access points. See also Col. 4 lines 36-54.).
None of Liu, Montemurro, or Na explicitly teaches identifying whether the first frame is the designated frame based on a comparison between a decoding result of the portion of the first frame and a reference value.
However, in the related art Wu teaches identifying whether the first frame is the designated frame based on a comparison between a decoding result of the portion of the first frame and a reference value (Wu, Col. 5, line 60 – Col. 6, line 3 - In step 702 (FIG. 7), detector 506 compares the sequence number of a received frame to the sequence number of a previously received frame with the same sender MAC address. More specifically in the present example, when detector 506 receives a beacon frame, it determines the sender MAC address of the beacon frame. If the sender MAC address of the received beacon frame matches the sender MAC address of an authorized AP, detector 506 compares the sequence number of the received beacon frame to the sequence number of a previously received beacon frame from the same authorized AP, which was stored earlier. See also Col. 5, lines 20-24 and lines 36-38.).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further combine the invention of Liu as modified by the teaching of Montemurro and Na with the invention for detecting a counterfeit access point in a wireless local area network of Wu. The resulting invention could improve security in the WLAN (Wu, Col. 4 lines 66-67).
Re. Claims 3, Liu in view of Montemurro, and Wu teaches claims 2.
Liu further teaches the instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor individually or collectively, cause the electronic device to determine whether to perform full decoding of the first frame based on the decoding result of the portion of the first frame (Liu, Col. 3 lines 3-7 - In other features, the decoding module is configured to decode, in response to the frame being (i) the beacon or (ii) the probe response, a remaining portion of the frame to determine whether to associate with one of the access points that transmitted the beacon or the probe response. See also Col. 4, lines 36-54).
Re. Claim 12, Claim 12 is directed toward a method corresponding to the device of claim 2. Claim 12 does not further limit or define over the subject matter of claim 2. Therefore, claim 12 is rejected for similar reasons as laid out for claim 2 above.
Re. Claim 13, Claim 13 is directed toward a method corresponding to the device of claim 3. Claim 13 does not further limit or define over the subject matter of claim 3. Therefore, claim 13 is rejected for similar reasons as laid out for claim 3 above.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu in view of Montemurro and Na, as applied to claim 9 above, and further in view of Kim et al. (US 2018/0035379), Kim hereinafter.
Re. Claim 10, Liu in view of Montemurro and Na teaches claim 9.
None of Liu, Montemurro, or Na explicitly teaches wherein the frame header of the signal comprises at least one of a legacy preamble, a high throughput (HT) preamble, a very high throughput (VHT) preamble, a high efficiency (HE) preamble, or a combination thereof.
However, in the related art, Kim teaches the frame header of the first frame comprises at least one of a legacy preamble, a high throughput (HT) preamble, a very high throughput (VHT) preamble, a high efficiency (HE) preamble, or a combination thereof (Kim, ¶0037 - In the existing packet format for IEEE 802.11n, the preamble includes: a legacy short-training field (L-STF), a legacy long-training field (L-LTF), a legacy signal-training field (L-SIG), a high-throughput signal field 1 (HT-SIG1), a high-throughput signal field 2 (HT-SIG2), error detection for the signal fields (CRCs), a high-throughput short-training field (HT-STF), and a high-throughput long-training field (HT-LTF). The preamble is followed by the data in a Payload 1 field (which includes the MAC address), other Payload fields (2 to N) (where N is variable that depends on the data length), and error detection for the data (CRCd). Similarly, in the existing packet format for IEEE 802.11ac, the preamble fields include: the L-STF, the L-LTF, the L-SIG, a very high-throughput signal field 1 (VHT-SIG1), a very high-throughput signal field 2 (VHT-SIG2), CRCs, a very high-throughput short-training field (VHT-STF), a very high-throughput long-training field (VHT-LTF), and a very high-throughput, signal-field type B (VHT-SIGB).).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to further combine the invention of Liu as modified by the teaching of Montemurro and Na with the invention for power savings with preamble in WLAN systems of Kim. The resulting combination could reduce the power consumption of an electronic device during communication with another electronic device in a wireless local area network (Kim, ¶0023).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CASON H MORSE whose telephone number is (571)270-5235. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30-6:00 Mon.-Thurs., Fri. varies.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rebecca Song can be reached at (571) 270-3667. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/C.H.M./Examiner, Art Unit 2417
/REBECCA E SONG/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2417