DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Application No. 18/286,980 filed on 10/13/2023. The amendment presented on 12/23/2025, which cancels claims 3, 10, and 20 and amends claims 1-2, 4-6, 8-9, 11-13, and 17, is hereby acknowledged. Claims 1-2, 4-9, 11-14, 17-19, and 21-22 have been examined.
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 .
Specification
The amendment to the Title "COMMUNICATION METHOD ON MULTIPLE LINKS BASED ON DTIM PERIOD” has been considered and is acceptable.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 4, 7-8, 11, 14, 17-18, and 21- 22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Min et al. (hereinafter Min)(US 2021/0051513).
Regarding claims 1 and 17-18, Min teaches as follows:
An electronic device (interpreted as the access point (AP), 400 in figure 4 and 102 in figure 1A), comprising a memory (408 in figure 4), a processor (processing circuitry 406 in figure 4) and a computer program stored on the memory and executable by the processor, wherein when the computer program is executed by the processor (the memory 408 may store information for configuring the processing circuitry 406 to perform operations for configuring and transmitting message frames and performing the various operations described herein. The memory may include any type of memory, including non-transitory memory, for storing information in a form readable by a machine, see, ¶ [0073] and figure 4), the processor is configured to:
determine a first message frame (interpreted as the beacon 220) on a first link (interpreted as the first link 214) of multiple links, wherein the first message frame comprises time information for sending a delivery traffic indication map (DTIM) beacon frame on one or more other links of the multiple links other than the first link (the AP 204 may send a beacon 218 followed by a beacon 220 using the first link 214. The time interval (equivalent to applicant’s time information) between the beacon 218 and the beacon 220 may be referred to as a beacon interval 222. The beacon 218 may indicate the beacon interval 222, allowing the STA 210 to activate from a doze state in time to receive the beacon 220, see, ¶ [0050]. Therefore beacon 220 also inherently includes a beacon interval 226 between the beacon 220 and the beacon 224)(The beacons may include both a TIM and one or more ML-TIMs. For example, the beacon 220 may include TIM 260 (e.g., indicating traffic for the first link 214) and a ML-TIM 262 (e.g., indicating traffic for the second link 216)(equivalent to applicant’s other than the first link). While not shown, the beacon 220 may include additional ML-TIMs for any additional links used by the A-MLD 202, see, ¶ [0052] and figure 2), wherein the time information is represented by a DTIM period (the length field, the delivery TIM (DTIM) Count field, the DTIM Period field, the Bitmap Control field, and the Partial Virtual Bitmap field fields are currently defined by the IEEE 802.11 technical standards for legacy beacons, see, ¶ [0024] and Table 1)(DTIM period value is a number that determines how often a beacon frame includes a DTIM according to the IEEE 802.11 standard, Therefore the DTIM period value is the claimed time information); and
send the first message frame on the first link (The AP 204 may send a beacon 218 followed by a beacon 220 using the first link 214, see, ¶ [0050]),
wherein the first message frame comprises link identifiers (IDs) of links on which the DTIM beacon frame is sent and DTIM periods corresponding to the link IDs (as shown above in Table 1, the beacon may include a Band ID (equivalent to applicant’s link ID), Bitmap Control, and Partial Virtual Bitmap for any frequency band. To communicate the traffic in multiple frequency bands, a single beacon may cascade some fields as shown below in Table 2… As shown in Table 2 above, each frequency band (e.g., Link X, Link Y, etc.) may be indicated by a Link ID (or Band ID) of the beacon, see, ¶ [0027]-[0028] and Table 1 and 2)(the length field, the delivery TIM (DTIM) Count field, the DTIM Period field, the Bitmap Control field, and the Partial Virtual Bitmap field fields are currently defined by the IEEE 802.11 technical standards for legacy beacons, see, ¶ [0024] and Table 1).
Regarding claims 4 and 11, Min teaches as follows:
Wherein the first message frame comprises a traffic indication map (TIM) element, and at least one of the time information (interpreted as DTIM period) or the link ID (interpreted as Band ID) is included in the TIM element (see, ¶ [0027]-[0028] and Table 1 and 2Table 1 and 2).
Regarding claims 7 and 14, Min teaches as follows:
Determining a link for transmitting downlink cache data (One of the advantages of multi-link communication is the flexibility in utilizing multiple available links, and multi-link APs dynamically may allocate links for downlink/uplink transmission. For example, in case the AP 204 decides to switch its operating link for downlink transmission from the first link 214 to the second link 216 for dynamic load balancing, latency reduction, etc., see, ¶ [0055]).
Regarding claims 8 and 21-22, Min teaches similar limitations as presented above.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 2, 9, and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Min et al. (hereinafter Min)(US 2021/0051513) in view of Rong et al. (hereinafter Rong)(US 2016/0173377).
Regarding claims 2, 9, and 19, Min teaches all limitations as presented above except for the DTIM timing offset.
Rong teaches as follows:
Operations 400 may begin with the AP transmitting a beacon frame (block 405). The beacon frame may include a TIM bitmap, timing offset information set to a value (e.g., the first value, a second value, a third value, and the like), and location information related to an UL resource pool. Depending on the value of the timing offset information, the AP may transmit a trigger frame(s) (block 410). The trigger frame may include control information usable by stations to derive the location of their respective UL resource (see, ¶ [0051] and figure 4a).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Min with Rong to include the timing offset information in the DTIM beacon frame in order to efficiently derive the location of UL resource pool.
Claims 5 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Min et al. (hereinafter Min)(US 2021/0051513) in view of Jang et al. (hereinafter Jang)(US 2023/0164859).
Regarding claims 5 and 12, Min teaches all limitations as presented above except for the reduced neighbor report element.
Jang teaches as follows:
The reduced neighbor report (RNR) element may include a target beacon transmission time (TBTT) information field (equivalent to applicant’s time information), and the TBTT information field may include information related to a link (equivalent to applicant’s link ID) through which the RNR element is transmitted (see, ¶ [0527] and figure 49).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Min with Jang to include the reduced neighbor report (RNR) element as taught by Jang in order to efficiently establish multi-link setup.
Claims 6 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Min et al. (hereinafter Min)(US 2021/0051513) in view of Cariou et al. (hereinafter Cariou)(US 2021/0185607).
Regarding claims 6 and 13, Min teaches all limitations as presented above except for the listen interval of a multi-link device level.
Cariou teaches as follows:
The AP indicates the Beacon interval (equivalent to applicant’s first message frame) in the Beacon frame in f time units (TU), which is 1024 μs. When the AP decides the Beacon interval, the STA indicates what the listen interval is in the association request frame (equivalent to applicant’s second message frame) to indicate how often the STA wakes up to receive the Beacon frame when the STA is in the power save mode (see, ¶ [0049]); and
it is desirable to introduce an Multi-link device (MLD) parameter indication to decide if the indication is for an MLD level (one value for a peer MLD) or per link level (different values for different APs). For example, if different Beacon intervals exist for several APs, then the listen interval indication from a non-AP MLD will have different values from the listen interval in each link, rather than having only one value (see, ¶ [0033])(teaches limitations of applying same listen interval for all links).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Min with Cariou to include transmitting an association request frame including the listen interval for the multi-link device level as taught by Cariou in order to efficiently indicate how often the STA wakes up.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 12/23/2025 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Summary of Applicant’s Arguments
In the remarks the applicant argues as follows:
1) Regarding amended claims 1, 8, and 17, Min discloses that the MLD-TIM element format includes an Element ID field, a Length field, a Band ID field, a DTIM Count field, a DTIM Period field, a Bitmap Control field, and a Partial Virtual Bitmap field. In other words, the Element ID field and the Band field are added to the legacy TIM as the MLD-TIM element format. There is only one DTIM Period field, such as the legacy DTIM Period field, in the beacon and there is no correspondence between the DTIM periods and the link IDs. Therefore, the above-mentioned sections of Min fails to teach or suggest link IDs and DTIM periods corresponding to the link IDs.
between the DTIM periods and the link IDs. Therefore, the above-mentioned sections of Min fails to teach or suggest link IDs and DTIM periods corresponding to the link IDs.
Response to Arguments:
In response to applicant's argument 1), Min teaches as follows:
The first beacons used for MLDs may include both TIM information for the logical non-AP entities of the first and second non-AP MLDs operating in the first frequency band in which the first beacons are sent and may include an additional TIM element, referred to as a ML-TIM element for each frequency band used by the logical entities of the A-MLD (see, ¶ [0022]);
MLD-TIM element includes DTIM period and the additional TIM element, ML-TIM, include the Link ID (see, ¶ [0053] and figure 2).
Therefore, DTIM periods correspond to the Link ID.
In response to applicant's argument regarding amended claims 2, 6, 9, 13, and 19, new references have been cited for newly added limitations as presented above.
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 Jeong S Park whose telephone number is (571)270-1597. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 8:00-4:30 ET.
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/JEONG S PARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454
March 26, 2026