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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Response to Applicant’s Remarks
1a. Applicant’s arguments and remarks, filed on 12/4/2025 (hereinafter Remarks), are acknowledged, and have been fully considered.
Regarding Applicant’s amendments:
forming a plurality of clusters of stations based on capabilities of each station,
The Examiner finds new prior art Kumar (US 20230318924 A1) discloses similar features:
[0036] …. The cluster is formed by configuring the NAN devices to the selected wireless channel and the discovery window. Due to random choosing the wireless channel, a set of NAN devices may choose same wireless channel for communication which introduces a data traffic congestion in the wireless channel.
[0116] As shown in the FIG. 4B, while clustering the NAN devices (100a1-100a4, 100d, 100f, 100h) according to the proposed method, the smart watches (100a1-100a4) with the inner cluster attribute of wearable device, groups to form the inner cluster (200f). The inner cluster (200f) can be used to do tasks specific for smart watches (100a1-100a4). The NAN devices (100d, 100f, 100h) which do not have a common internal cluster attribute will join together to form the cluster (300) using the existing method.
Figs 4B and 4D.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
2. 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.
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 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.
2a. Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lopez (US 20240196331 A1) in view of Kumar (US 20230318924 A1).
2b. Summary of the Cited Prior Art
Lopez discloses a method for multi-link communication.
Kumar discloses a method for Wi-Fi cluster forming.
2c. Claim Analysis
Regarding Claim 1, Lopez discloses:
A method of allocating radio links for stations capable of operating in different spectra, the method comprising
[(Lopez discloses:
[0120] The IEEE 802.11be task group (TGbe) relates to a standard amendment termed Extremely High Throughput (EHT), aiming to support, e.g., increased data rate and decreased latency. One feature introduced in EHT is multi-link operation (MLO); supported by multi-link devices. A multi-link device (MLD) is a logical and/or physical entity that has more than one affiliated station (STA; also referred to herein as multiple communication receivers, or simply multiple receivers) and has a single medium access control (MAC) service access point (SAP) for the upper layers of the communications stack (upper MAC). Thus, an MLD has several radio chains and is capable of simultaneous communication on two or more radio frequency (RF) links.
Figs 1-5)]:
forming a plurality of clusters of stations based on capabilities of each station
[(Lopez discloses forming a multi-link device (MLD) network:
[0120] The IEEE 802.11be task group (TGbe) relates to a standard amendment termed Extremely High Throughput (EHT), aiming to support, e.g., increased data rate and decreased latency. One feature introduced in EHT is multi-link operation (MLO); supported by multi-link devices. A multi-link device (MLD) is a logical and/or physical entity that has more than one affiliated station (STA; also referred to herein as multiple communication receivers, or simply multiple receivers) and has a single medium access control (MAC) service access point (SAP) for the upper layers of the communications stack (upper MAC). Thus, an MLD has several radio chains and is capable of simultaneous communication on two or more radio frequency (RF) links.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)];
wherein capabilities of each station include an operating spectrum and concurrency in transmission and reception in the operating spectrum
[(Lopez discloses operating frequency bands and access time:
[0022] In some embodiments, selecting one or more links of the possible links is based on one or more of: link traffic load, link capacity, link budget, link channel bandwidth, link frequency band, link carrier frequency, link multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capability, link channel conditions, link interference, time to channel access for link, and amount of data to be transmitted.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)];
determining a radio link recommendation for each of the plurality of clusters
[(Lopez discloses determining and selecting radio links based on capabilities:
[0067] Responsive to there being data (e.g., a data frame) available for transmission to the user device 150, the access node determines which of the multiple links are possible links for transmission of the data, as illustrated by step 118.
[0068] The determination of possible links in step 118 may comprise starting from the set of multiple links and discarding links which are not allowable and/or not feasible for transmission of the data.
[0069] For example, the determination of possible links in step 118 may be based on knowledge from earlier negotiation regarding link establishment.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)];
determining a load for each radio link based on each station accepting the radio link recommendation
[(Lopez discloses determining radio links based on traffic loads:
[0076] The selection in step 120 of one or more links of the possible links may be performed in any suitable way. For example, the selection in step 120 may be based on one or more of: link traffic load, link capacity, link budget, link channel bandwidth, link frequency band, link carrier frequency, link MIMO capability, link channel conditions, link interference, time to channel access for link, and amount of data to be transmitted (e.g., size of the payload).
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)];
determining whether the load for each radio link is balanced, and
[(Lopez discloses determining radio link based on load balance:
[0126] For example, the possible links may have different capacities (e.g., due to channel bandwidth, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capability of the STA, etc.) and/or different traffic loads. When the AP MLD has such information, it may select the links for transmission based thereon (e.g., to balance the network load, reduce the collision probability, reduce the latency, etc.).
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)];
if the loads are balanced, sending the radio link recommendation to each station in the plurality of clusters
[(Lopez discloses sending the radio link indication for transmission:
[0086] In step 122, the access node 100 transmits a wake-up signal (WUS) 193 to the user device 150, and the user device 150 receives the WUS 193 in step 162. Generally, the WUS 193 is (explicitly or implicitly) indicative of that there is data for transmission to the user device 150. The WUS 193 is also indicative of the selected one or more links. The WUS 193 is for indicating to the user device 150 a request to wake up one or more receivers.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)].
Lopez does not disclose “cluster”.
However, Kumar discloses:
forming a plurality of clusters of stations based on capabilities of each station,
[(Kumar discloses:
[0036] …. The cluster is formed by configuring the NAN devices to the selected wireless channel and the discovery window. Due to random choosing the wireless channel, a set of NAN devices may choose same wireless channel for communication which introduces a data traffic congestion in the wireless channel.
[0116] As shown in the FIG. 4B, while clustering the NAN devices (100a1-100a4, 100d, 100f, 100h) according to the proposed method, the smart watches (100a1-100a4) with the inner cluster attribute of wearable device, groups to form the inner cluster (200f). The inner cluster (200f) can be used to do tasks specific for smart watches (100a1-100a4). The NAN devices (100d, 100f, 100h) which do not have a common internal cluster attribute will join together to form the cluster (300) using the existing method.
Figs 4B and 4D)].
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to integrate Lopez’s method for multi-link communication with Kumar’s method for Wi-Fi cluster forming with the motivation being to improve coverage (Kumar, [0008]).
Regarding Claim 2, Lopez discloses:
wherein the collection of stations includes single-radio multilink, and multiple-radio multilink devices
[(see:
[0006] For example, in the context of an IEEE 802.11 standard, a legacy communication device typically has a single physical layer and one MAC layer, while a multi-link communication device has multiple station (STA) instantiations (each implementing physical layer functions and lower MAC functions) and a single instantiation for implementing upper MAC functions. Each of the multiple STA instantiations may be seen as representing a physical radio, and the upper MAC instantiation is configured to aggregate information of the multiple STA instantiations (i.e., information of the multiple STA instantiations is aggregated in the MAC layer). Thus, a multi-link device can be seen as a device with multiple STAs that operate semi-independently on different channels, but with a single interface towards the upper layers (e.g., layers above MAC).
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)].
Regarding Claim 3, Lopez discloses:
wherein determining whether the loads on the radio links are balanced includes determining channel utilizations of the radio links
[(see:
[0078] In some examples, link(s) with lowest traffic load among the possible links (or with traffic load below a traffic load threshold value) may be selected. This approach may result in relatively low latency for the data transmission.
[0084] In some examples, link(s) among the possible links with MIMO capabilities that accommodates (e.g., matches) the amount of data to be transmitted may be selected. This approach may result in relatively high utilization of the system resources.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)].
Regarding Claim 4, Lopez discloses:
wherein forming the plurality of clusters includes determining whether each station can operate on multiple spectra.
[(Lopez discloses multiple link frequency bands may function as multiple spectra:
[0022] In some embodiments, selecting one or more links of the possible links is based on one or more of: link traffic load, link capacity, link budget, link channel bandwidth, link frequency band, link carrier frequency, link multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capability, link channel conditions, link interference, time to channel access for link, and amount of data to be transmitted.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)].
Regarding Claim 5, Lopez discloses:
wherein forming the plurality of clusters includes determining whether each station can operate with different spectra on multiple radio links
[(Lopez discloses multiple link frequency bands may function as multiple spectra:
[0022] In some embodiments, selecting one or more links of the possible links is based on one or more of: link traffic load, link capacity, link budget, link channel bandwidth, link frequency band, link carrier frequency, link multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capability, link channel conditions, link interference, time to channel access for link, and amount of data to be transmitted.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)].
Regarding Claim 6, Lopez discloses:
wherein forming the plurality of clusters includes determining whether each station can wake up on one or more radio links
[(see:
[0023] A second aspect is a method for a user device configured for reception from a radio access node over multiple links. The user device comprises multiple receivers corresponding to the multiple links and one or more wake-up radios, wherein at least one of the one or more wake-up radios is configured to wake up two or more of the multiple receivers. The method comprises receiving a wake-up signal from the radio access node, wherein the wake-up signal is indicative of one or more of the multiple links, and waking up one or more of the multiple receivers, corresponding to the indicated one or more links.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)].
Regarding Claim 7, Lopez discloses:
wherein determining a radio link recommendation includes determining an amount of interference on a channel in the operating spectrum of each station
[(see:
[0022] In some embodiments, selecting one or more links of the possible links is based on one or more of: link traffic load, link capacity, link budget, link channel bandwidth, link frequency band, link carrier frequency, link multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capability, link channel conditions, link interference, time to channel access for link, and amount of data to be transmitted.
Fig 1, Steps 118-122, see also Figs 2-5)].
Regarding Claims 8-14, the claims disclose similar features as of Claims1-7, and are rejected accordingly.
Regarding Claims 15-20, the claims disclose similar features as of Claims1-6, and are rejected accordingly.
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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 extension fee 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 Jung-Jen Liu whose telephone number is 571-270-7643. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday to Friday, 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Kwang B. Yao can be reached on 571-272-3182. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JUNG LIU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2473