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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 4, 7-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Fukushima et al. ‘Evaluating Indoor Localization Performance on an IEEE 802.11 ac Explicit-feedback-based CSI Learning System’, June 2019, (From Information Disclosure Statement).
Regarding claim 1, Fukushima et al. discloses a position estimation device, comprising:
a wireless communication control unit (see AP and STA in Introduction of page 1), implemented using one or more computing devices, configured to:
determine a transmission command related to a transmission start (see section III, A., “transmits a null data packet announcement (NDPA)”), a transmission frequency (evaluation settings include frequency, see section IV, “channel frequency band”, page 3), or a transmission schedule of a wireless signal used for position estimation (see location estimation, introduction, page 1 and illustrated in fig. 1), and
transmit the transmission command for the wireless signal to a wireless communication unit of a fixed terminal installed in a same environment as a host device or a wireless communication unit of a position estimation target (see section I, page 1, introduction, “The proposed CSI learning system utilizes compressed angles with an access point (AP), a station (STA)” in a “IEEE 802.11ac”, WLAN); a wireless communicator configured to:
receive a wireless signal transmitted from the wireless communication unit of the fixed terminal or the wireless communication unit of the position estimation target based on the transmission command (see “STA receives NDP”, null data packet, see III, A., page 2), and
acquire channel information regarding radio wave propagation from the wireless signal (see capture CSI feedback, page 2);
an input feature amount generation unit (within capture device, fig. 1), implemented using one or more computing devices, configured to convert the channel information into an input feature amount that is inputtable to a position estimation model (see III, page 2, “convert bit strings to angle ϕ ;3. compute sinϕ, cosϕ, sin ,and cos ;and 4.create database by machine learning, 5. estimation”); and
a position estimation model using unit (see location estimation, IV, page 3), implemented using one or more computing devices (see capture device fig. 1), configured to determine a position of the position estimation target by inputting the input feature amount to a position estimation model (see fig. 1, input of CSI to for feature info to provide estimation results) obtained by modeling a relationship between channel information related to the radio wave propagation (see CSI data, fig. 1 used to feed learning model) and position information of the position estimation (see estimation results, fig. 1) target by machine learning (learning model, fig. 1).
Regarding claims 7-8, Fukushima et al. discloses a position estimation method to be performed by a position estimation device and a non-transitory computer readable medium having stored thereon a position estimation program causing a computer to execute operations comprising:
determining a transmission command related to a transmission start (SEE “transmits a null data packet announcement (NDPA)”, section III A., page 2), a transmission frequency (evaluation settings include frequency, see section IV, “channel frequency band”, page 3), or a transmission schedule of a wireless signal used for position estimation, and transmitting the transmission command for the wireless signal to a wireless communication unit of a fixed terminal installed in a same environment as a host device or a wireless communication unit of a position estimation target (see section I, page 1, introduction, “The proposed CSI learning system utilizes compressed angles with an access point (AP), a station (STA)” in a “IEEE 802.11ac”, WLAN);
receiving a wireless signal transmitted from the wireless communication unit of the fixed terminal (see AP, section I, page 1) or the wireless communication unit of the position estimation target based on the transmission command and acquiring channel information (see “capture CSI feedback”, section III, A. page 2) regarding radio wave propagation from the wireless signal;
converting the channel information into an input feature amount that is inputtable to a position estimation model (see section III, page 2, “.convert bit strings to angle ϕ,;3.computesinϕ,cosϕ, sin , and cos ;and 4.create database by machine learning, 5. estimation”); and
determining a position of the position estimation target (see location estimation, Introduction, page1) by inputting the input feature amount to a position estimation model (see fig. 1, feature information provided to “learning model”) obtained by modeling a relationship between channel information related (feature information comes from CSI data, also fig. 1) to the radio wave propagation (see radio wave by “direct wave”, IV experimental evaluation for location estimation, page 3) and position information of the position estimation target by machine learning (see estimation results stimming from estimation results, fig. 1).
Regarding claim 4, Fukushima et al. discloses the position estimation device according to claim 1, wherein; the wireless communication control unit is configured to determine a transmission stop or a transmission start (“The NDPA is a frame to announce the start of channel sounding”, see section III., section A) of a wireless signal or a transmission frequency of a wireless signal according to a contribution of the wireless signal to the position estimation of the position estimation target.
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 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fukushima et al. in view of Shilov et al. (US 2020/0382992 A1).
Regarding claim 2, position estimation device according to claim 1, wherein: the wireless communication unit is configured to:
Fukushima does not specifically disclose however Zhou discloses detect congestion in wireless communication (see congestion detection [0020]) within a frequency band being used (see [0055], “collision is detected if low and high priority UEs transmissions overlap in both time and frequency”), and the wireless communication control unit is configured to: determine a transmission frequency (see determine.. transmission frequency [0201]) of the wireless signal or a number of wireless communication units that transmit the wireless signal based on the congestion;
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to combine the teachings of Fukushima with that of Shilov. Doing so would improve communication signal response time.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fukushima et al. (US 2014/0073317 A1) in view of Tamir et al. (US 2011/0032361 A1).
Regarding claim 3, position estimation device according to claim 1, wherein: the wireless communication control unit is configured to determine a transmission frequency (transmission frequency is determined [0058]) of a wireless signal according to position estimation accuracy (see in accordance with… position accuracy [0058]) required by a predetermined application program (see [0049], applications);
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to combine the teachings of Fukushima with that of Tamir. Doing so would conform to well-known techniques in the field of invention.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Fukushima et al. (US 2014/0073317 A1) in view of Imafuku et al. (US 2014/0045519 A1).
Regarding claim 5, Fukushima discloses the position estimation device according to claim 1, wherein; the wireless communication control unit is configured to:
Fukushima does not specifically disclose however Imafuku discloses to evaluate a contribution of a wireless signal to position estimation of the position estimation target with respect to a position condition of the position estimation target (see location and estimation, [0013]), cause a wireless signal having a high contribution (see alternative to weaker signal being halted, so high contribution signals would not be halted) to the position estimation to be transmitted according to the position condition of the position estimation target, and cause a wireless signal having a low contribution to be stopped (halting for weak signals [0025]);
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing to combine the teachings of Fukushima with that of Imafuku. Doing so would improve efficiency and redundancy control.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 6 is 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to K. WILFORD SHAHEED whose telephone number is (469) 295-9175. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Friday 9 am-6pm; CST; ALT Friday. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. The examiner’s Supervisor, Jinsong Hu, can be reached at (571)272-3965, where attempts to reach the examiner are unsuccessful.
Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. For more information about the PAIR system, see http://pair-direct.uspto.gov. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative or access to the automated information system, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KHALID W SHAHEED/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2643