DETAILED ACTION
This Final Office Action is in response to application number 18/530,285 filed on December 6th 2023. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statements
The Information Disclosure Statement (IDS), submitted on January 17th 2024, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement has been considered by the examiner.
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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1,3,5-7,9-10,12,14-16,18-20 and 22-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C.103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 20220279587 A1) in view of Zhang et al. (US 11387965 B2).
Regarding claims 1,10 and 19, Kim et al. disclose an access point (AP) comprising: one or more processors; and memory storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the AP to: transmit a trigger frame soliciting a plurality of trigger-based (TB) physical protocol data units (PPDUs) from a first station (STA) and a second STA, the trigger frame indicating: a first uplink resource allocation for the first STA; and a second uplink resource allocation for the second STA; receive in response to the trigger frame: a first TB PPDU from the first STA, via the first uplink resource allocation; and a second TB PPDU from the second STA, via the second uplink resource allocation (US 20220279587 A1 Paragraph 0100 discloses the above limitations through “The RU described in the present specification may be used in uplink (UL) communication and downlink (DL) communication. For example, when UL-MU communication which is solicited by a trigger frame is performed, a transmitting STA (e.g., an AP) may allocate a first RU (e.g., 26/52/106/242-RU, etc.) to a first STA through the trigger frame, and may allocate a second RU (e.g., 26/52/106/242-RU, etc.) to a second STA. Thereafter, the first STA may transmit a first trigger-based PPDU based on the first RU, and the second STA may transmit a second trigger-based PPDU based on the second RU. The first/second trigger-based PPDU is transmitted to the AP at the same (or overlapped) time period.”);
Kim et al. fail to explicitly disclose transmit to the first STA and to the second STA, a multi-station (multi-STA) block acknowledgment (BA) frame, wherein the multi-STA BA frame comprises a BA information field comprising: a first per association identifier (AID) traffic identifier (TID) info subfield comprising a first AID 11 subfield comprising a first AID of the first Sala second per AID TID info subfield comprising a second AID11 subfield comprising a second AID of the second STA; and a third per AID TID info subfield, after the first and second per AID TID info subfields, comprising a third AID11 subfield set to a first value indicating presence, within the third per AID TID info subfield, of a padding field comprising padding bits.
However in an analogous art Zhang et al. disclose transmit to the first STA and to the second STA, a multi-station (multi-STA) block acknowledgment (BA) frame, wherein the multi-STA BA frame comprises a BA information field comprising: a first per association identifier (AID) traffic identifier (TID) info subfield comprising a first AID 11 subfield comprising a first AID of the first Sala second per AID TID info subfield comprising a second AID11 subfield comprising a second AID of the second STA; and a third per AID TID info subfield, after the first and second per AID TID info subfields, comprising a third AID11 subfield set to a first value indicating presence, within the third per AID TID info subfield, of a padding field comprising padding bits (The structure described in the above limitation is depicted by FIG. 15 of the specification. US 11387965 B2 FIG. 6 and Paragraph 40 discloses “Still referring to FIG. 6, the PSDU is the block acknowledgement frame for A-MPDUs in all the uplink PPDUs, a block acknowledgement information field in the block acknowledgement frame includes m STA information subfields (STA 1 info to STA m info). The m STA information subfields have a one-to-one correspondence with m uplink PPDUs received by an AP, and each STA information subfield includes an AID TID field, a block acknowledgement starting sequence control field, and a block acknowledgement bitmap field. m is an integer greater than 1.” Paragraph 33 discloses “The A-MPDU includes at least one A-MPDU subframe. Each A-MPDU subframe includes an MPDU delimiter and an MPDU. Optionally, the A-MPDU subframe may further include a padding field located after the MPDU. The MPDU delimiter is used to separate a plurality of aggregated MPDUs.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim et al. to incorporate the teachings of Zhang et al., to implement a multi-station (multi-STA) block acknowledgment (BA) frame as depicted by FIG 15 of the specification., in order to facilitate a reduction in overhead and latency.
Regarding claims 3, 12 and 23, Kim et al. disclose the AP of claim 1, wherein the first and second uplink resource allocations are associated with a first time resource (US 20220279587 A1 Paragraph 0257 discloses “In particular, resources for terminals having traffic with a tight delay requirement (that is, data to be transmitted within a short time) may be allocated separately. For example, AID 2043 may be related to an OFDMA random access RU for a terminal having traffic with a tight delay requirement among terminals associated with the AP. For example, if there is traffic with latency requirement of 10 msec and 7 msec has already elapsed, only terminals having traffic to be transmitted within 3 msec can transmit traffic through random access in AID 2043. AID 2043 is only an example and may be set differently. For example, among STAs associated with the AP, STAs having traffic requiring latency smaller than or equal to the first threshold may perform random access in the RU to which AID 2044 is allocated, and among STAs associated with the AP STAs having traffic requiring latency less than or equal to the second threshold may perform random access in the RU to which AID 2043 is allocated. Here, the second threshold value may be smaller than the first threshold value.”).
Regarding claims 5 and 24, Kim et al. disclose the AP of claim 1, wherein the multi-STA BA frame acknowledges the first TB PPDU and the second TB PPDU (US 20220279587 A1 FIG. 14 discloses the Multi STA Block ACK in response to TB PPDU from STA1 and STA4).
Regarding claims 6 and 15, Kim et al disclose the AP of claim 1.
Kim et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the first per AID TID info subfield comprises a first Block Ack Bitmap subfield indicating reception status of one or more medium access control (MAC) service data unit (MSDU) or Aggregated MSDU (A-MSDU) of the first TB PPDU; and the second per AID TID info subfield comprises a second Block Ack Bitmap subfield indicating reception status of one or more medium access control MSDU or A-MSDU of the second TB PPDU.
However in an analogous art Zhang et al. teaches wherein the first per AID TID info subfield comprises a first Block Ack Bitmap subfield indicating reception status of one or more medium access control (MAC) service data unit (MSDU) or Aggregated MSDU (A-MSDU) of the first TB PPDU; and the second per AID TID info subfield comprises a second Block Ack Bitmap subfield indicating reception status of one or more medium access control MSDU or A-MSDU of the second TB PPDU. (FIG. 6 discloses the Block ACK Bitmap field for each STA Info and the associated AID TID. Paragraph 40 discloses “Still referring to FIG. 6, the PSDU is the block acknowledgement frame for A-MPDUs in all the uplink PPDUs, a block acknowledgement information field in the block acknowledgement frame includes m STA information subfields (STA 1 info to STA m info). The m STA information subfields have a one-to-one correspondence with m uplink PPDUs received by an AP, and each STA information subfield includes an AID TID field, a block acknowledgement starting sequence control field, and a block acknowledgement bitmap field. m is an integer greater than 1.”)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim et al. to incorporate the teachings of Zhang et al., wherein the first per AID TID info subfield comprises a first Block Ack Bitmap subfield indicating reception status of one or more medium access control (MAC) service data unit (MSDU) or Aggregated MSDU (A-MSDU) of the first TB PPDU; and the second per AID TID info subfield comprises a second Block Ack Bitmap subfield indicating reception status of one or more medium access control MSDU or A-MSDU of the second TB PPDU., in order to enable physical and MAC layers to process acknowledgements in modular, decoupled manner.
Regarding claims 7,16 and 20 Kim et al disclose the AP of claim 1.
Kim et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the third per AID TID info subfield comprises an Ack Type subfield and a TID subfield set to respective values configured to indicate a padding context of the third per AID TID Info subfield.
However in an analogous art Zhang et al. teaches wherein the third per AID TID info subfield comprises an Ack Type subfield and a TID subfield set to respective values configured to indicate a padding context of the third per AID TID Info subfield (Paragraph 57 discloses “ The AID TID field includes an AID subfield, an acknowledgement frame type (ACK type) subfield, and a TID subfield.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim et al. to incorporate the teachings of Zhang et al., wherein the third per AID TID info subfield comprises an Ack Type subfield and a TID subfield set to respective values configured to indicate a padding context of the third per AID TID Info subfield, in order to create an optimized self-contained indexing system for multi-user wireless networks.
Regarding claims 9, 18 and 22, Kim et al. disclose the AP of claim 1.
Kim et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the
However in an analogous art Zhang et al. teaches wherein the(FIG. 6 discloses STA 1 Info to STA M info, where by to meet the requirements of this limitation STA M info = STA 3 Info).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim et al. to incorporate the teachings of Zhang et al., wherein thebenefits of multi-user multiplexing without letting acknowledgement overhead minimizing the efficiency gains.
Regarding claim14, Kim et al. disclose the STA of claim 10, wherein the multi-STA BA frame acknowledges the first TB PPDU (US 20220279587 A1 FIG. 14, FIG. 10 item 1050 and paragraph 0130 disclose “An ACK frame 1050 for the TB PPDU may be implemented in various forms.”).
Claims 8,17 and 21are rejected under 35 U.S.C.103 as being unpatentable over Kim et al. (US 20220279587 A1) n view of Zhang et al. (US 11387965 B2) further in view of Patil et al (US 20250142319 A1).
Regarding claims 8,17 and 21 Kim et al. disclose The AP of claim 1.
Kim et al. fail to explicitly disclose wherein the padding field is configured to extend a length of the multi-STA BA frame for the first STA and the second STA to prepare a response for transmission a short interframe space (SIFS) after reception of the multi-STA BA frame.
However in an analogous art, Yu et al. teaches wherein the padding field is configured to extend a length of the multi-STA BA frame for the first STA and the second STA to prepare a response for transmission a short interframe space (SIFS) after reception of the multi-STA BA frame. (US 20250142319 A1 Paragraph 0073 discloses “FIG. 6A shows an example of a timeline 600-a that supports ACK frame transmission with MAC header verification, payload verification, or both. A wireless device, such as a wireless device, a STA 104, or an AP 102 as described with reference to FIGS. 1 and 3-5, may communicate according to the timeline 600-a. In some implementations, an originator device may extend a duration of one or more MPDUs to accommodate a processing capability of the wireless device (such as a recipient device). For example, the originator device may extend the duration of the one or more MPDUs (such as using padding) to enable the wireless device to support SIFS-based BA for verified content. The extension of time may allow the wireless device to perform MAC header verification, payload verification, or both and transmit an ACK frame 606-a within a SIFS time interval 608-a.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Kim et al. to incorporate the teachings of Patil et al., to implement padding field is configured to extend a length of the multi-STA BA frame for the first STA and the second STA to prepare a response for transmission a short interframe space (SIFS) after reception of the multi-STA BA frame, in order to accommodate processing delays associated with STAs.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1,10 and 19 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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 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 Samuel Dilan Rutnam whose telephone number is 703-756-1374. The examiner can normally be reached between 8:30am-5:00pm Mon-Fri.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy Kundu can be reached on 571-272-8586.
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/Samuel Dilan Rutnam/
Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
/SUJOY K KUNDU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
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