DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 7 January 2026 has been entered.
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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see page 8, filed 7 January 2026, in view of the amendments with respect to claim 1 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The objection of the claim has been withdrawn.
Applicant’s arguments, see pages 8-11, filed 7 January 2026, in view of the amendments with respect to the rejection(s) of claim(s) 1-5, 8, 10-13, and 16 under 35 USC 103 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Brown, Motozuka, and Sakhnini.
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) 1-5, 8, 10-13, and 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Brown et al. US 2006/0140251 A1 (hereinafter referred to as “Brown”) in view of Motozuka et al. US 2020/0177207 A1 (hereinafter referred to as “Motozuka”) in view of Sakhnini et al. US 2025/0096959 A1 (hereinafter referred to as “Sakhnini”).
As to claim 1, Brown teaches a transmission device (¶¶37-39; figure 1: transmitter) in a satellite Internet of Things (IoT) system (Note: the language recited solely in the preamble does not provide any distinct definition of any of the claimed invention’s limitations. Thus, the preamble of the claim(s) is not considered a limitation and is of no significance to claim construction. See Pitney Bowes, Inc. v. Hewlett-Packard Co., 182 F.3d 1298, 1305, 51 USPQ2d 1161, 1165 (Fed. Cir. 1999). See MPEP § 2111.02), comprising:
a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) value generator that receives first data and generates and outputs a payload CRC value (¶50; figure 1: CRC encoding unit receives input data stream, generates CRC code, appends CRC to the input data stream, and passes it to FEC encoder);
a forward error correction encoder that receives second data consisting of the first data and the payload CRC value from the CRC value generator, and performs forward error correction coding on the second data (¶50; figure 1: FEC encoder receives data with appended CRC and encodes it by forward error correction code);
an interleaver that receives the forward error correction coded second data from the forward error correction encoder, generates interleaved payload blocks (¶¶51 and 94; figure 1: bit interleaving unit received encoded bit stream from FEC encoder and perform bit interleaving with interleaving span covering multiple subbands cyclically shifting the bits based on the time delay between originally neighboring bits); and
a frequency hopping unit that receives the at least one first payload block and the at least one second payload block from the interleaver, and generates and transmits payload blocks frequency-hopped according to a hopping sequence (¶¶52-65; figure 1: frequency hopping unit received interleaved bits, performs conversion and modulation according to hopping sequences, and transmits the frequency hopping subband signals).
Although Brown teaches “A transmission device…interleaved payload blocks; a frequency hopping…to a hopping sequence”, Brown does not explicitly disclose “adds padding…payload blocks” and “a transmitter…least one symbol”.
However, Motozuka teaches an interleaver that receives the forward error correction coded second data from the forward error correction encoder, generates interleaved payload blocks, adds padding to an end of at least one first payload block among the interleaved payload blocks, performs a cyclic shift using an offset on a portion remaining excluding the padding in the at least one first payload block, and performs the cyclic shift using the offset on at least one second payload block that does not include the padding, among the interleaved payload blocks (¶¶73, 75, 206-207, 297, and 300; figures 1, 9B, and 28: interleaver receives FEC coded data from FEC encoder, generates blocks, adds padding/dummy symbols to the last column, and performs cyclic shifts on block addresses by offset n_offset(q)).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to improve upon the apparatus described in Brown by including “adds padding…payload blocks” as taught by Motozuka because it provides Brown’s apparatus with the enhanced capability of increasing communication quality (Motozuka, ¶8).
Although Brown in view of Motozuka teaches “A transmission device…to a hopping sequence”, Brown in view of Motozuka does not explicitly disclose “a transmitter…least one symbol”.
However, Sakhnini teaches a transmitter (¶48: transmitter) that transmits the payload blocks frequency-hopped at the frequency hopping unit by considering an idle period, wherein the idle period is configured by the transmitter between the payload blocks and the idle period has a length equal to or greater than at least one symbol (¶¶65-69; figure 3: symbol-wise or slot-wise transition gap between frequency hopped transmissions).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to improve upon the apparatus described in Brown in view of Motozuka by including “a transmitter…least one symbol” as taught by Sakhnini because it provides Brown in view of Motozuka’s apparatus with the enhanced capability of allowing time for the UE to reconfigure for the new frequency location of the next frequency hop destination (Sakhnini, ¶¶65-69; figure 3).
As to claim 2, Brown in view of Motozuka in view of Sakhnini teaches the transmission device according to claim 1. Brown further teaches further comprising: a whitening unit that receives a payload, performs whitening so that a sum of data of the payload approaches 0, and outputs the first data to the CRC value generator (¶¶75 and 91-92).
As to claim 3, Brown in view of Motozuka in view of Sakhnini teaches the transmission device according to claim 1. Brown further teaches wherein the interleaver outputs the interleaved payload blocks by dividing the forward error correction coded second data into N data groups, sequentially and respectively inputting values of the N data groups into N rows of an interleaver memory, sequentially and respectively outputting the values input to the N rows in a column direction to generate and output the interleaved payload blocks, wherein N is a positive integer (¶¶51-60 and 94; figure 1).
As to claim 4, Brown in view of Motozuka in view of Sakhnini teaches the transmission device according to claim 1. Brown further teaches wherein the interleaver applies the offsets differently to each of the at least one first payload block and the at least one second payload block (¶¶51-60 and 94; figure 1).
As to claim 5, Brown in view of Motozuka in view of Sakhnini teaches the transmission device according to claim 4. Brown further teaches wherein the offset is determined as max{1, 48/n}, where n is an index of the at least one first payload block and the at least one second payload block, the n is equal to or greater than 0, and the n is equal to or less than N-1 (¶¶51-60 and 94; figure 1).
As to claim 8, Brown in view of Motozuka in view of Sakhnini teaches the transmission device according to claim 1. Brown further teaches further comprising: a header generator that generates a packet header consisting of a synchronization word field, a physical header field, and a physical header CRC value field, and outputs the packet header to the frequency hopping unit, wherein the header generator delivers some bits of a physical header CRC value to the frequency hopping unit by mapping the some bits to a reserved field of the physical header field, and delivers remaining bits of the physical header CRC value to the frequency hopping unit by mapping the remaining bits to the physical header CRC value field (¶¶52-65 and 94; figure 1).
As to claim 10, claim 10 is rejected the same way as claim 1.
As to claim 11, claim 11 is rejected the same way as claim 3.
As to claim 12, claim 12 is rejected the same way as claim 4.
As to claim 13, claim 13 is rejected the same way as claim 5.
As to claim 16, claim 16 is rejected the same way as claim 8.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to JUSTIN T VAN ROIE whose telephone number is (571)270-0308. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 8:00am - 4:30pm.
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/JUSTIN T VAN ROIE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2469