DETAILED ACTION
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 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.
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election without traverse of Group 1 (Claims 1-10, 17 and 20) in the reply filed on 11/5/2022 is acknowledged. Claims 1-10, 17 and 20 are currently examined.
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 of this title, 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.
Claims 1-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 20120268249 A1 (Kansai), in view of Lin, K., Kansal, A., Lymberopoulos, D. and Zhao, F., 2010, June. Energy-accuracy trade-off for continuous mobile device location. In Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Mobile systems, applications, and services (pp. 285-298) (Lin) and in further view of Taleb, S., Abbas, N., Hajj, H. and Dawy, Z., 2013, June. On sensor selection in mobile devices based on energy, application accuracy, and context metrics. In 2013 Third International Conference on Communications and Information Technology (ICCIT) (pp. 12-16). IEEE (Taleb).
Regarding Claims 1 and 9:
A method for minimizing energy consumption of a device, the method comprising: selecting one of a plurality of location-determining apparatus assembled with the device, wherein each of the plurality of location-determining apparatus operates at a known location-determining-related energy consumption level and at a known accuracy level, and wherein the selecting is performed by selecting one of the plurality of location- determining apparatus that a) operates at a lowest location-determining-related energy consumption level among the plurality of location-determining apparatus, and b) operates at at least a required accuracy level; and determining location-related data related to a location of the device using the selected location-determining apparatus assembled with device (Kansai: Figs. 1-2, a system configuration that uses energy efficient location detection to determine a mobile device location, a mobile device 102 moves around various places that are interested to the user of the device 102; par. 13-21, each place of 112-118 may have different wireless services/technologies that have different location accuracy and energy consumption levels; the mobile device has multiple sensors at different accuracy and energy consumption levels, e.g., par. 28-34, a low energy sensor 204 can be an accelerometer, a compass, a proximity sensor (sensing how close device 200 is to the user of device 200), a gyroscope, a camera, a microphone, and so forth; a low energy sensor 204 can also be a wireless networking (e.g., WiFi) component that detects signals from wireless networks (e.g., identifiers of particular wireless access points, identifiers of particular wireless networks, etc.). A low energy sensor 204 can also be a cellular component that detects signals from cellular towers or transmitters, ; Fig. 4, the location determined method also determines the device states, e.g., stationary, motion e.g., pedestrian in running or walking states, vehicle in moving state, which in turns may determine measurement time intervals; Fig. 5, the system also estimates when to use high energy sensor to provide more precise location determination).
Kansai does not illustrate explicitly on a dynamic sensor selection algorithm based on accuracy and energy consumption. However, Lin and Taleb teaches (Lin: 3., e.g., Fig. 2; Taleb: e.g., Fig. 2 and table 2).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Kansai with a dynamic sensor selection algorithm based on accuracy and energy consumption as further taught by Lin and Taleb. The advantage of doing so is to provide an accuracy-energy based algorithm that reduces energy consumption while conserving the required application accuracy, and build a sensor selection model to choose among location sensors (Lin: Abstract).
Regarding Claim 2, Kansai as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising: detecting a presence of any of a plurality of available communication networks accessible to the device; selecting one of a plurality of communication apparatus assembled with the device, wherein each of the plurality of communication apparatus operates at a known transmission-related energy consumption level, and wherein the selected apparatus is configured to transmit via at least one of the available communication networks and operates at a lowest transmission-related energy consumption level among the plurality of communication apparatus; and transmitting the location-related data using the selected communication apparatus (Kansai: Figs: 1-5, the system selects a proper location sensor/technology based on the accuracy and energy consumption level, which implies that the selected technology is used to communicate with external devices, e.g., Wi-Fi, GPS, and etc.).
Regarding Claims 3 and 10, Kansai as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1 wherein selecting is performed responsive to sensing a change in a physical condition of the device (e.g., Kansai: Figs 2, 4; Lin: 3.).
Regarding Claims 4 and 11, Kansai as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 3 wherein the physical condition is any of a start of motion of the device and a cessation of motion of the device (Kansai: Fig. 4; Lin: 3.; Taleb: e.g., Fig. 2)..
Regarding Claims 5 and 12, Kansai as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising: at a first point in time, storing a first instance of location-related-data; and at a later point in time subsequent to the first point in time, determining the required accuracy level using the first instance of location-related-data (Kansai: Fig. 5 and par, 57-61; tracking location changes and may change sensor types accordingly; Lin: 3., dynamic sensor selection algorithm).
Regarding Claims 6 and 13, Kansai as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 2 further comprising determining the required accuracy level based on the available communication networks, wherein each of the available communication network is associated with a recommended accuracy level, and wherein the required accuracy level is the recommended accuracy level of one of the available communication networks accessible to a communication apparatus that operates at a lowest transmission-related energy consumption level (Taleb: Fig. 2 and Table 2).
Regarding Claims 7 and 14, Kansai as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 2, further comprising: receiving a list of available communication networks; and wherein the detecting comprises extracting the available communication networks from the list (Taleb: Fig. 2 and Table 2; Lin: 3., sensor energy model and dynamic sensor accuracy model).
Regarding Claims 8 and 15, Kansai as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 2, further comprising: receiving a list of location determination assisting entities, each associated with an identifier and a location; and wherein the detecting comprises extracting the location from the list (Lin: 3., e.g.,”may display nearest movie show times, nearest deals and coupons on products the user has expressed an interest in”).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHITONG CHEN whose telephone number is (571) 270-1936. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:30am - 5pm.
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/ZHITONG CHEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649