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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 4 December, 2025 has been entered.
This Office Action is in response to the remarks and amendments filed on 4 December 2025.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Claims 1, 15 and 20 have been amended.
Response to Arguments
35 USC § 103
Applicant argues that the prior art of record does not teach the amended claim limitation. Examiner finds the argument persuasive and a new ground of rejection is presented herewith.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-2, 6-13, 15-16 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al (US 2017/0353598), in view of Rahman et al (US 2022/0191266), further in view of Wang et al (US 2018/0262622).
Regarding claim 1, Cho teaches a method, comprising:
receiving, at one or more processing devices, information pertaining to voice data packets exchanged for an audio call between a first mobile device and a second mobile device connected over a cellular network, wherein the information pertaining to the voice data packets is captured using a packet probe device configured to monitor data transfer between a first network device and a second network device of the cellular network (Cho fig.1; [0035] provides “The voice call service is provided for subscribers to communicate in real time by exchanging voice over a communication network”; [0039] provides “The eNB 110 connects to a core network, which makes it possible for the UEs connected to the eNB 110 to perform data communication using IP addresses...In an embodiment, the core network may further include the server 180”; [0045] provides “…the server 180 may receive log information from the eNB 110 and manage voice call quality in a mobile network based on the log information. That is, the server 180 may generate a voice call quality metric based on the voice call quality information collected by the eNB 110 for use in managing the voice call quality in the mobile network”; [0046] provides “The log information may include at least one of information on packets traveling between the UE 100 and the eNB 110, information on packets traveling (or processed and delivered to an upper or lower layer) inside the eNB 110, and information on packets traveling between eNBs”; [0051-0053] provides “The server may acquire predetermined information from the packet information collected by the eNB and store the acquired information separately for use in analysis about muting, packet loss, and jitter”);
analyzing, by the one or more processing devices, the information pertaining to the voice data packets to obtain (i) a set of first metrics characterizing a first flow of voice data packets from the first mobile device to the second mobile device and (ii) a set of second metrics characterizing a second flow of voice data packets from the second mobile device to the first mobile device (Cho [0045] provides “…the server 180 may receive log information from the eNB 110 and manage voice call quality in a mobile network based on the log information. That is, the server 180 may generate a voice call quality metric based on the voice call quality information collected by the eNB 110 for use in managing the voice call quality in the mobile network”; [0065] provides “…the server may use a muting ratio, a packet loss ratio, or a jitter ratio calculated in the voice call session as a per-call quality metric, an inter-cell quality metric, and an inter-eNB quality metric”; [0051-0053]);
based at least on a subset of the first metrics and a subset of the second metrics, identifying, by the one or more processing devices, that the first flow of voice data packets is disrupted over a particular time period of a threshold duration, and the second flow of voice data packets is substantially undisrupted over the particular time period (Cho [0052] provides “The server may determine at operation S210 whether a muting occurs during a voice call based on the log information. It is determined that a muting has occurred when one of the following two conditions is fulfilled: that an interval between voice packets is longer than a first threshold and that a number of lost packet during the interval is greater than a second threshold”);
identifying, by the one or more processing devices, the particular time period as a one-way audio period (Cho [0052] provides “The server may determine at operation S210 whether a muting occurs during a voice call…” wherein muting can be broadly interpreted as a one-way audio period);
and altering, by the one or more processing devices, at least one parameter of the cellular network based at least on the identification of the one-way audio period (Cho [0090] provides “…the server may check for the RF signal problem. The server may analyze the RF information, timing advance (TA) information, and geometric information during the DL muting period to determine whether the muting is caused by poor RF signal status or an interference. The server may provide the determination result in order for the operator to make a management decision regarding whether to deploy a new network or adjust antenna arrangement for service quality improvement”).
Cho teaches the above including a one-way audio period, but Cho does not explicitly teach based on identifying that the first flow of voice data packets is disrupted over the particular time period and the second flow of voice data packets is substantially undisrupted over the particular time period, wherein the one-way audio period corresponds to a one-way call condition characterized by disruption of voice data packet flow in only one direction. However, in a similar field of endeavor, Rahman teaches based on identifying that the first flow of voice data packets is disrupted over the particular time period and the second flow of voice data packets is substantially undisrupted over the particular time period (Rahman [0026] provides “The mobile device 102 can further include a disruption tracker 130 configured to track the content disruption 122 (e.g., the mute event) and/or determine associated information. For example, the disruption tracker 130 can include a circuit, a software module/routine, and the like configured to store the tracked duration(s) from the media timer 124 even when the duration(s) do not satisfy the autonomous termination threshold 126. In some implementations, the disruption tracker 130 can have a stack/layer (e.g., an RTP stack) that tracks or processes the RTP periodically to provide information related to the mute event (e.g., the tracked value of the media timer 124) to a reporting or a messaging stack/layer (e.g., an IMS stack). Also, the disruption tracker 130 can be configured to determine other related aspects of the content disruption 122, such as by calculating/measuring a packet loss rate, a direction of the mute (e.g., whether the packets are absent in an uplink direction and/or a downlink direction), and the like. In some implementations, the disruption tracker 130 can be configured to obtain the link quality measures 108 at the time of the content disruption 122”; Rahman [0043] provides “Accordingly, the reporting stack 204 can derive the disruption measure 224 of FIG. 2 based on calculating the mute duration using a number of sequentially (e.g., back to back) reported absences in the RTP packets and the corresponding durations/periods associated with the reporting frequency. Also, the reporting stack 204 can calculate the packet drop rate based on a total number of reported absences in the RTP packets in comparison to a total number of communicated packets and/or a total duration for the session. The reporting stack 204 can determine the mute direction based on details of the RTP packet detection included in the internal content report 214”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to implement the feature of a disruption detector in the system as taught by Cho. One of skill in the art will recognize, a need for tracking and logging mute events that occur during communication sessions and generating a disruption report that includes one or more aspects of a mute event detected during a communication session so that the disruption report can be communicated to a network for further analysis (Rahman Abstract, [0009]).
Cho-Rahman teaches the above but Cho-Rahman does not explicitly teach wherein the one-way audio period corresponds to a one-way call condition characterized by disruption of voice data packet flow in only one direction. However, in a similar field of endeavor, Wang teaches wherein the one-way audio period corresponds to a one-way call condition characterized by disruption of voice data packet flow in only one direction (Wang [0062] provides “For example, the voice parameter may include one or more of a voice packet loss, a voice delay, and a voice rate. For the scenario of (d), the RAN device may perform determining based on a status of a received unidirectional voice packet. For example, when an uplink or a downlink voice packet received by the RAN device is 0, the terminal is in the one-way audio state. Alternatively, when an uplink or a downlink packet error probability of a voice packet at a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer is greater than a preset threshold, for example, 80%, the terminal is in the one-way audio state”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to implement the feature of a unidirectional packet disruption characterization of one-way audio in the system as taught by Cho-Rahman. One of skill in the art will recognize a need to define and recognize such disruptions to reduce a call drop rate in a voice communication process and improve user experience (Wang [0005]).
Regarding claim 2, the method of claim 1, wherein the first network device is included in a core system of the cellular network, and wherein the second network device is included in a multimedia subsystem (Cho fig.1 and [0036] provides a IP multimedia subsystem).
Regarding claim 6, the method of claim 1, wherein the threshold duration is between two seconds and five seconds (Cho [0060] provides “…if an interval between two consecutive voice packets is longer than the first threshold (e.g., 400 ms) during user's speech in a mobile communication network, the server may determine that muting has occurred”).
Regarding claim 7, the method of claim 1, wherein the first metrics and the second metrics are aligned in time, and wherein identifying the particular time period as the one-way audio period is based on at least the time-aligned first metrics and second metrics (Cho fig.3; [0062-64]).
Regarding claim 8, the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one parameter of the cellular network altered based on the identification of the particular time period as the one-way audio period comprises at least one of: a radio link failure timer, a radio resource control (RRC) reestablishment rate; a handover parameter; or a codec selection (Cho fig.7; [0090] provides “…the server may check for the RF signal problem. The server may analyze the RF information, timing advance (TA) information, and geometric information during the DL muting period to determine whether the muting is caused by poor RF signal status or an interference. The server may provide the determination result in order for the operator to make a management decision regarding whether to deploy a new network or adjust antenna arrangement for service quality improvement”).
Regarding claim 9, the method of claim 1, wherein the information pertaining to the voice data packets comprises at least one of: metadata of the voice data packets; data within the voice data packets; or routing data associated with the voice data packets (Cho figs. 9-10).
Regarding claim 10, the method of claim 1, wherein, during the particular time period, zero voice data packets flow from the first mobile device to the second mobile device, and at least one voice data packet flows from the second mobile device to the first mobile device (Cho [0053] provides “At operation S220, the server may calculate per-link muting ratios in the mobile communication network based on the determination result of operation S210. The per-link muting ratio may be calculated by the call, the cell, or the eNB. Here, the term “link” denotes a link between two nodes in the mobile communication network, e.g., between an eNB and a UE, between two layer-specific entities inside an eNB, and between an eNB and a core network entity”).
Regarding claim 11, the method of claim 1, comprising: receiving, at the one or more processing devices, log data obtained in a drive test, the log data comprising information about the first flow of data packets and the second flow of data packets (Cho [0084-0085] provides “…the server may calculate per-link muting ratios of the voice call as inter-cell or inter-eNB quality metric to locate a problematic part of the network”); based at least on the log data, identifying, by the one or more processing devices, the particular time period as the one-way audio period, wherein analyzing the information pertaining to the voice data packets is performed in response to identifying the particular time period as the one-way audio period based at least on the log data, and wherein the information pertaining to the voice data packets comprises protocol-level signaling data that is unavailable in the log data obtained in the drive test (Cho [0051-0052] provides “The server may acquire predetermined information from the packet information collected by the eNB and store the acquired information separately for use in analysis about muting, packet loss, and jitter…The server may determine at operation S210 whether a muting occurs during a voice call based on the log information”); and determining, by the one or more processing devices, based at least one the protocol- level signaling data, the at least one parameter of the cellular network to be altered (Cho [0090] provides “…the server may check for the RF signal problem. The server may analyze the RF information, timing advance (TA) information, and geometric information during the DL muting period to determine whether the muting is caused by poor RF signal status or an interference. The server may provide the determination result in order for the operator to make a management decision regarding whether to deploy a new network or adjust antenna arrangement for service quality improvement”).
Regarding claim 12, the method of claim 11, wherein analyzing the information pertaining to the voice data packets comprises filtering voice packet data on one or more protocols (Cho [0094] provides “The server may determine a certain protocol layer entity of the eNB as the cause of the muting based on the analysis” wherein the determination provides for protocol-based analysis).
Regarding claim 13, the method of claim 11, wherein the information pertaining to the voice data packets comprises at least one voice data packet in PCAP format (Cho [0094] provides “The server may determine a certain protocol layer entity of the eNB as the cause of the muting based on the analysis”; see also figs. 9-10).
Regarding claim 15, this claim contains limitations found within those of claim 1, and the same rationale rejection applies, where applicable.
Regarding claim 16, this claim contains limitations found within those of claim 2, and the same rationale rejection applies, where applicable.
Regarding claim 19, this claim contains limitations found within those of claim 11, and the same rationale rejection applies, where applicable.
Regarding claim 20, this claim contains limitations found within those of claim 1, and the same rationale rejection applies, where applicable.
Claims 3-5, 14 and 17-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cho et al (US 2017/0353598), in view of Rahman et al (US 2022/0191266), in view of Wang et al (US 2018/0262622), further in view of Ravichandran (US 2020/0204599).
Regarding claim 3, Cho-Rahman-Wang has taught the method of claim 2 wherein the multimedia subsystem comprises an IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) (Cho fig.1 and [0036]), but Cho-Rahman-Wang does not explicitly teach wherein the core system comprises a 5G core. However, in a similar field of endeavor, Ravichandran teaches a 5G core (Ravichandran [0017]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to describe the system for use with current technology networks (e.g., 4G LTE networks, 5G networks, etc.) so as to provide a wider reach and use for the claimed invention. One of skill in the art will recognize, however, that similar solutions could be used for establishing one-way video calls on 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), machine-to-machine (M2M), and even future network technologies that have yet to be invented. Thus, the use of 2G, 3G, 4G LTE, and 5G in the disclosure is simply a reflection of current technologies and does not limit the invention. Indeed, one of ordinary skill in the art will see that the system could also be used, with little or no modification, with other technologies (Ravichandran [0017]).
Regarding claim 4, Cho-Rahman-Wang-Ravichandran has taught the method of claim 3, wherein the packet probe device is configured to monitor the data transfer at a call session function control (CSCF) of the IMS (Ravichandran [0087]). Motivation provided with reference to claim 3.
Regarding claim 5, Cho-Rahman-Wang-Ravichandran has taught the method of claim 3, wherein the packet probe device is disposed between the 5G core and the IMS (Ravichandran [0112]). Motivation provided with reference to claim 3.
Regarding claim 14, Cho-Rahman-Wang-Ravichandran has taught the method of claim 11, wherein the protocol-level signaling data comprises one or more of stream control transmission protocol (SCTP) data; F1AP/radio resource control (RRC) data; NG application protocol (NGAP) data; or non-access-stratum for 5G (NAS- 5GS) data (Ravichandran [0093]). Motivation provided with reference to claim 3.
Regarding claim 17, this claim contains limitations found within those of claim 3, and the same rationale rejection applies, where applicable.
Regarding claim 18, this claim contains limitations found within those of claim 4, and the same rationale rejection applies, where applicable.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Wang et al US 2014/0122933.
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/I.R/Examiner, Art Unit 2459 /SCHQUITA D GOODWIN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2459