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
This action is responsive to the application filed on 01/11/2024 has a total of 20 claims pending in the application; there are 2 independent claims and 18 dependent claims, all of which are ready for examination by the examiner.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-8 and 14-18 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims or amend these claims into their base claims, respectively.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-3, 9-13 and 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being unpatentable by Da Silva et al. Publication No. (US 2021/0273735 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Da Silva teaches a method, comprising:
performing a sensing measurement (sensing measurements made by STA (1) to be obtained by its upper layers and (2) to be reported to a second STA [0035-36] FIG.1); and
generating a sensing measurement report which includes a receive (Rx) signal- to-noise ratio (RxSNR) subfield indicating a Rx signal quality used in a channel state information (CSI) estimation (generating a Sensing Measurement Report comprising CSI measurements, CSI estimates, SNR measurements and may comprise other measurements of a radio channel [0055-62] The CSI Measurement Report field may be used by the Sensing Measurement Report frame and the Protected Sensing frame to carry CSI and/or SNR measurements obtained by a sensing receiver [0067-71] FIG.4).
Regarding claim 2, Da Silva teaches the method of Claim 1, wherein the generating of the sensing measurement report comprises calculating a value of the Rx_SNR subfield as an average of Rx signal-to-noise ratios measured in decibel (dB) on high-efficiency (HE) long training fields (HE-LTFs) or extremely-high-throughput (EHT) long training fields (EHT-LTFs) (calculating CSI Measurement Report information as defined in Table 8, and contains channel matrix elements indexed by data and pilot subcarrier index from lowest frequency to highest frequency [0069-71] the number N.sub.c of space-time streams is denoted by different variables for HT, VHT, HE, and EHT PPDU formats [0077-83] FIG.4).
Regarding claim 3, Da Silva teaches the method of Claim 1, wherein the generating of the sensing measurement report comprises calculating a value of the Rx_SNR subfield as an average of Rx signal-to-noise ratios measured in dB by averaging overall receiver chains (the CSI Measurement Report Control field may comprise the following subfields: PPDU Format, HE/EHT PPDU, Nr Index, Nc index, BW, HE BW, RU Start Index, RU End Index, Grouping (N.sub.g), and Coefficient size (N.sub.b). The subfields of the CSI Measurement Report Control field are defined in Table 7 [0066-67] FIG.4, the examiner explains that the Signal-to-Noise Ratio is expressed in decibels (dB) when measuring times power).
Claims 4-8 (indicated as allowable subject matter) based on the specific formulas for calculating the values of the receiver SNR.
Regarding claim 9, Da Silva teaches the method of Claim 1, wherein the Rx_SNR subfield comprises an 8- bit subfield, and wherein a value of the Rx_SNR subfield is mapped to an Rx SNR (The Average SNR of Space-Time Stream i subfield in Table 8 is an 8-bit 2s complement integer [0077-82]) measured in decibel (dB) with a step size of 0.25dB, 0.5dB or a different size (inherent, the examiner explains that the Signal-to-Noise Ratio is expressed in decibels (dB) when measuring times power).
Regarding claim 10, Da Silva teaches the method of Claim 9, wherein the value of the Rx_SNR subfield is mapped to a measured value range of x+ [-10, 53.75] in dBs, and wherein x denotes an offset in a number of quarter dBs (the Protected Sensing Frame may comprise a Category field and an Action field, wherein the Action field is in the octet immediately after the Category field. The value of the Protected Sensing Frame Action field is defined in Table 6 [0063-66]).
Regarding claims 11-15 and 19-20, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 1-3 and 9-10, respectively, where the difference used is the limitations were presented from a “requesting device” side with responder to the request (FIG.1) and the wordings of the claims were interchanged within the claim itself or some of the claims were presented as a combination of two or more previously presented limitations. This change does not affect the limitation of the above treated claims. Adding these phrases to the claims and interchanging the wording did not introduce new limitations to these claims. Therefore, these claims were rejected for similar reasons as stated above.
Claims 16-18 (indicated as allowable subject matter) based on the specific formulas for calculating the values of the receiver SNR.
Conclusion
When responding to this office action, Applicant is advised to clearly point out the patentable novelty which he or she thinks the claims present, in view of the state of the art disclosed by the references cited or the objections made. He or she must also show how the amendments avoid such references or objections See 37 CFR 1.111 (c).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ABDELNABI O MUSA whose telephone number is (571)270-1901, and email address is abdelnabi.musa@uspto.gov ‘preferred’. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:00 am - 5:00 pm. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Kevin Bates, can be reached on 571-2723980. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ABDELNABI O MUSA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2472