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 .
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.
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.
Claim(s) 1-8 and 13-15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ghosh (US 2017/0195954 A1) in view of Cariou et al. (US 2019/0045438 A1) in view of Rajib et al. (US 2020/0267644 A1) in view of Tian et al. (US 2015/0189614 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Ghosh discloses a method of reducing power consumption in a low power Wi-Fi device, comprising:
negotiating target wait time (TWT) parameters with an access point, wherein the TWT parameters include a TWT wake interval duration (Fig. 2, 210, 212, listen Interval [0041]-[0042] disclosing negotiation of target beacon transmission time as indicated in Fig. 2, the timing of the first TBTT and listen interval appear to be the result of the negotiation in which the user device is in a doze state between the beacon 214 and the beacon at the end of the listen interval when the user device is not otherwise engaged in communications during target wake time service periods);
configuring the low power Wi-Fi device to exit a low power mode once per TWT wake interval duration to receive one beacon from the access point (Fig. 2, 211, beacon 214, beacon at the end of listen interval, [0042] disclosing “ user device 234 remains in a doze state after TBTT 211, after beacon 214, after TWT SP 216, after the unannounced TWT SP, etc. When the user device 234 is not in a doze state, the user device 234 may be in an awake state, powered on, or in an active state such that the user device 234 is capable of communicating and/or listening to communications with, at least in part, the AP 202”); and
waking periodically to receive a beacon (Fig. 2, 210, 212, listen Interval [0041]-[0042] disclosing negotiation of target beacon transmission time as indicated in Fig. 2, the timing of the first TBTT and listen interval appear to be the result of the negotiation in which the user device is in a doze state between the beacon 214 and the beacon at the end of the listen interval when the user device is not otherwise engaged in communications during target wake time service periods, wherein the user device wakes each listen interval (i.e., periodically) to receive a beacon).
Ghosh does not expressly disclose the following; however, Cariou discloses negotiating target wait time (TWT) parameters with an access point, wherein the TWT parameters include an announce mode of operation ([0022] disclosing TWT includes an announced mode; [0032] disclosing announced mode is negotiated as evidenced by the disclosure of modification of the negotiated agreement for some parameters without changing the agreed upon parameters such as announced mode) and a TWT wake duration, wherein the TWT wake duration defines a duration of a TWT service period ([0022] disclosing Target Wake Time (TWT) operations allows STAs to negotiate a target wake time (TWT) service period (SP)).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the techniques of Ghosh with the teaching in Cariou because the suggestion lies in Cariou that this allows for increases in power savings ([0023] using common sense as a guide, skipping TWT SPs allows the STA to remain asleep and conserve power).
Rajib suggests estimating a tolerable latency period associated with an application executing on the low power Wi-Fi device; and configuring the low power Wi-Fi device to exit a low power mode once per latency period to receive one beacon from the access point ([0046] and [0049] disclosing the STA skipping a number TWT SPs; as opposed to [0003] waking at every TWT SP; [0058] disclosing the maximum number of TWT SP skips may be configured based on an applications latency tolerance).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the techniques Ghosh to include these features taught by Rajib because adaptively skipping TWT SPs can reduce power consumption in both announced and unannounced modes of operation ([0057]).
Tian suggests the beacon is a portion of a beacon, referred to as a truncated beacon, wherein the truncated beacon is less than an entire beacon and comprises a MAC header and a timestamp field ([0057] disclosing timing synchronization is achieved through periodic beacons; Fig. 4, [0058]-[0060] disclosing such beacons may be short beacons or S1G beacons comprising a MAC header and a time stamp field and the term “short beacon” appears to imply the beacon is less than “an entire beacon” or less than a conventional beacon).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the invention of Ghosh as taught by Tian because this allows devices to maintain synchronization and suggest the reduction of overhead by use of short beacon frames ([0057]-[0060]).
Regarding claim 2, Ghosh discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the periodic waking is based on time (The term periodic inherently is based on time; further, Ghosh Fig. 4 Listen Interval in the time domain).
Regarding claim 3, Ghosh suggests the method of claim 1, wherein the periodic waking occurs every Nth beacon, where N is an integer (Fig. 4, Listen Interval is an interval comprising several beacons at the end of which the device wakes to receive a beacon ).
Regarding claim 4, Ghosh disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the periodic waking occurs once per TWT wake interval (Fig. 2, 210, 212, listen Interval [0041]-[0042] disclosing negotiation of target beacon transmission time as indicated in Fig. 2, the timing of the first TBTT and listen interval appear to be the result of the negotiation in which the user device is in a doze state between the beacon 214 and the beacon at the end of the listen interval when the user device is not otherwise engaged in communications during target wake time service periods, wherein the user device wakes each listen interval (i.e., periodically) to receive a beacon).
Regarding claim 5, Ghosh does not disclose the following; however, Rajib suggests the method of claim 1, wherein the periodic waking occurs every Mth TWT wake interval, where M is an integer ([0046] and [0049] disclosing the STA skipping a number TWT SPs; as opposed to [0003] waking at every TWT SP; [0041] disclosing an integer number N1 of service periods are skipped; it is noted that it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to repeat this process of evaluating the first skipping criteria after skipping N1 service periods in order to have a simplified technique of skipping the same number of periods based on one criteria for each evaluation).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the techniques of Ghosh with the teaching in Cariou because the suggestion lies in Cariou that this allows for increases in power savings ([0023] using common sense as a guide, skipping TWT SPs allows the STA to remain asleep and conserve power).
Regarding claim 6, Ghosh does not expressly disclose the following; however, Rajib and Tian suggest the method of claim 1, wherein the low power Wi-Fi device wakes to receive at least one truncated beacon per latency period (Rajib: [0046] and [0049] disclosing the STA skipping a number TWT SPs; as opposed to [0003] waking at every TWT SP; [0058] disclosing the maximum number of TWT SP skips may be configured based on an applications latency tolerance; Tian: [0057] disclosing timing synchronization is achieved through periodic beacons; Fig. 4, [0058]-[0060] disclosing such beacons may be short beacons or S1G beacons).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the techniques of Ghosh as suggested by Rajib and Tian because this provides for decreased power consumption by reducing the number of times the device has to wake up as taught by Rajib while also providing a reduction in overhead consumed by using short beacons instead of conventional beacons.
Regarding claim 7, Ghosh does not expressly disclose the following; however, Tian discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the low power Wi-Fi device uses a timestamp disposed in the timestamp field to synchronize an internal clock to that of the access point ([0057]-[0060]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the invention of Ghosh as taught by Tian because this allows devices to maintain synchronization and suggest the reduction of overhead by use of short beacon frames ([0057]-[0060]).
Regarding claim 8, Ghosh does not disclose the following; however, Tian suggests the method of claim 7, wherein the low power Wi-Fi device verifies that the timestamp is valid prior to using the timestamp to synchronize an internal clock to that of the access point ([0063], [0067]-[0077] disclosing detecting if rollover of the timer has occurred, and if so, the device updates the timer based on the five MSBs of TSB completion field 820 increased by one decimal unit instead of using the four LSBs in the time stamp field 418).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the techniques of Ghosh as taught by Tian because this allows use of the reserved bit in the Frame Control (FC) field to be used or other features ([0066]-[0067]).
Regarding claims 13-15, the claims are directed towards a low power Wi-Fi device, comprising: a Wi-Fi network interface; a processing unit; and a memory device in communication with the processing unit comprising instructions, which when executed by the processing unit, cause the low power Wi-Fi device to perform the method of claims 1 and 7-8. Ghosh discloses such embodiments ([0028] disclosing the devices operate according to IEEE 802.11 standards (i.e. Wi-Fi); Fig. 5, [0074]-[0081]; examiner takes official notice that it is notoriously well known that devices such as those disclosed by Ghosh (Fig. 5, [0074]-[0075] disclosing “The communication station 500 may also be suitable for use as a handheld device, a mobile device, a cellular telephone, a smartphone, a tablet, a netbook, a wireless terminal, a laptop computer, a wearable computer device”) comprise applications executed by the “application processor” disclosed at [0079]; as such, it would be obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention that the devices of Ghosh include applications; See also [0080]-[0081] disclosing software). Accordingly, claims 13-15 are rejected on the grounds presented above for claims 1 and 7-8.
Claim(s) 9-12 and 16-19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ghosh (US 2017/0195954 A1) in view of Cariou et al. (US 2019/0045438 A1) in view of Rajib et al. (US 2020/0267644 A1) in view of Tian et al. (US 2015/0189614 A1), further in view of Zheng et al. (US 2015/0244619 A1).
Regarding claim 9, Ghosh does not disclose the following; however, Chow Tian discloses the method of claim 8, wherein the low power Wi-Fi device maintains a local TSF timer based on the timestamp ([0057]) and Zheng suggests the low power Wi-Fi device estimates an expected range of values of the timestamp based on a prior timestamp and a duration since the prior timestamp, and compares the expected range of values to the timestamp contained in the timestamp field of the truncated beacon ([0577] disclosing if the difference between the timestamp received in the beacon and the TSF counter maintained in the device exceeds a threshold (i.e., a range of values from TSF maintained in the device to TSF plus the certain threshold)).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the techniques of Ghosh as suggested by Zheng because the teaching lies in Zheng that this allows a device to determine if the associations between the device and the access point are still valid or not in order to redo the authentication and association with the AP.
Regarding claim 10, Ghosh does not disclose the following; however, Zheng suggests the method of claim 9, wherein the low power Wi-Fi device ignores the timestamp if the timestamp is not within the expected range of values ([0577] disclosing this indicates an invalid case because the AP has been reset and authentication and association must be performed again suggesting the timestamp is not used).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the techniques of Ghosh as suggested by Zheng because the teaching lies in Zheng that this allows a device to determine if the associations between the device and the access point are still valid or not in order to redo the authentication and association with the AP.
Regarding claim 11, Ghosh does not disclose the following; however, Zheng suggests the method of claim 9, wherein the low power Wi-Fi device enters a synchronization acquisition mode if the timestamp is not within the expected range of values ([0577] suggesting the difference indicates a lack of synchronization which must be reset via authentication and association).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to modify the techniques of Ghosh as suggested by Zheng because the teaching lies in Zheng that this allows a device to determine if the associations between the device and the access point are still valid or not in order to redo the authentication and association with the AP.
Regarding claim 12, Ghosh does not disclose the following; however, Tian suggest the method of claim 11, wherein in synchronization acquisition mode, the low power Wi-Fi device attempts to receive a next beacon ([0057] disclosing timing synchronization is achieved through periodic beacons).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the techniques of Ghosh with the teaching in Tiam because this provides a simple manner for a device to synchronize with an access point.
Regarding claims 16-19, the claims are directed towards the apparatus which performs the method of claims 9-12; accordingly, claims 16-19 are rejected on the grounds presented above for claims 9-12.
Conclusion
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/JOSEPH A BEDNASH/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2461