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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1-14 filed on December 19, 2023 are pending and claims 11 and 13-14 have been canceled.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on December 19, 2023 and July 14, 2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner and an initialed and dated copy of the Applicant’s IDS form 1449 is attached to the instant Office Action.
Claim Objections
Claims 3-4 are objected to because of the following informalities: Claims . Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1-5, 7-10 and 12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gan et al. (US 2023/0109874 A1, hereinafter "Gan") in view of Hart et al. (IEEE 802.11-21/0247r1, released on Feb 2021, hereinafter "Hart").
Regarding claim 1, Gan discloses a method for transmitting a trigger frame by a first station (STA) in a wireless local area network (WLAN) system (Gan, Fig. 8), the method comprising:
transmitting a first Physical layer Protocol Data Unit (PPDU) including the trigger frame to at least one second STA (Gan, Fig. 67 [0395-0396] the downlink PPDU may further include a MAC frame (i.e. trigger frame) corresponding to one or more second stations; The AP sends the downlink PPDU. Correspondingly, the station receives the downlink PPDU); and
receiving a second PPDU based on the trigger frame from at least one of the at least one second STA (Gan, Fig. 67 [0397] The station sends a response frame based on a TRS control field in the MAC frame in the received PPDU),
wherein the trigger frame includes information indicating presence of first bandwidth information and second bandwidth information (Gan. [0016] a first subfield, where the first subfield indicates an uplink bandwidth in combination with an uplink bandwidth subfield in the common information field of the trigger frame… where the fourth subfield indicates a spatial reuse parameter supporting 320 MHz bandwidth transmission),
Gan discloses wherein the first bandwidth information indicates a bandwidth for the first PPDU but does not explicitly disclose the second bandwidth information indicates a bandwidth for the second PPDU.
Hart from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the first bandwidth information indicates a bandwidth for the first PPDU and the second bandwidth information indicates a bandwidth for the second PPDU (Hart, Slide 3 Dynamic bandwidth (320 MHz bandwidth conveyed in RTS and CTS) and Dynamic bandwidth and/or dynamic preamble puncturing and slide 4 "RTS" and "CTS" must be able to convey 320 MHz bandwidth; and possibly puncturing info for 80/160M PPDUs).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified communication between AP and STA disclosed by Gan and dynamic bandwidth allocation disclosed by Hart with a motivation to make this modification in order to provide dynamic bandwidth (Hart, Slide 4).
Regarding claim 2, Gan does not explicitly disclose the first bandwidth information is indicated based on first 7 bits of a scrambling sequence of the first PPDU or first 7 bits of the scrambling sequence and B7 of a service field.
Hart from the same field of endeavor discloses the first bandwidth information is indicated based on first 7 bits of a scrambling sequence of the first PPDU or first 7 bits of the scrambling sequence and B7 of a service field (Hart, Slide 20 The I/G bit in the TA in the RTS to indicate that the First7BitsOfScramblingSequence carries these bandwidth-related indications).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified communication between AP and STA disclosed by Gan and dynamic bandwidth allocation disclosed by Hart with a motivation to make this modification in order to provide dynamic bandwidth (Hart, Slide 4).
Regarding claim 3, Gan does not explicitly disclose based on the first STA supporting a bandwidth equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value and the scrambling sequence and the service field including channel bandwidth information, a transmission vector (TXVECTOR) parameter, in the trigger frame, a transmitter address (TA) field of the trigger frame is configured as a bandwidth signaling TA,
the bandwidth signaling TA corresponds to information indicating presence of the
first bandwidth information.
Hart from the same field of endeavor discloses based on the first STA supporting a bandwidth equal to or greater than a predetermined threshold value and the scrambling sequence and the service field including channel bandwidth information, a transmission vector (TXVECTOR) parameter, in the trigger frame, a transmitter address (TA) field of the trigger frame is configured as a bandwidth signaling TA, the bandwidth signaling TA corresponds to information indicating presence of the first bandwidth information (Hart, slide 2 In an RTS/PS-Poll/CF-End/NDPA frame transmitted by an EHT STA in a non-HT duplicate format with bandwidth greater than 160 MHz to another EHT ST A, the TBD field in the SERVICE field carries the TXVECTOR parameter CH_BANDWIDTH_IN_NON_HT as in Table 36-1 (TXVECTOR and RXVECTOR parameters) and the TA field is a bandwidth signaling TA).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified communication between AP and STA disclosed by Gan and dynamic bandwidth allocation disclosed by Hart with a motivation to make this modification in order to provide dynamic bandwidth (Hart, Slide 4).
Regarding claim 4, Gan does not explicitly disclose based on the first STA supporting a bandwidth less than a predetermined threshold value and the scrambling sequence including channel bandwidth information, a TXVECTOR parameter, in the trigger frame, a TA field of the trigger frame is configured as a bandwidth signaling TA,
the bandwidth signaling TA corresponds to information indicating presence of the first bandwidth information.
Hart from the same field of endeavor discloses based on the first STA supporting a bandwidth less than a predetermined threshold value and the scrambling sequence including channel bandwidth information, a TXVECTOR parameter, in the trigger frame, a TA field of the trigger frame is configured as a bandwidth signaling TA, the bandwidth signaling TA corresponds to information indicating presence of the first bandwidth information (Hart, slide 2 In an RTS/PS-Poll/CF-End/NDPA frame transmitted by an EHT STA in a non-HT duplicate format with bandwidth greater than 160 MHz to another EHT STA, the TBD field in the SERVICE field carries the TXVECTOR parameter CH_BANDWIDTH_IN_NON_HT as in Table 36-1 (TXVECTOR and RXVECTOR parameters) and the TA field is a bandwidth signaling TA and Slide 3 indicating Dynamic preamble puncturing and dynamic bandwidth (Signal the preamble puncturing mode in RTS and CTS)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified communication between AP and STA disclosed by Gan and dynamic bandwidth allocation disclosed by Hart with a motivation to make this modification in order to provide dynamic bandwidth (Hart, Slide 4).
Regarding claim 5, Gan discloses the first PPDU is based on a non-high throughput (non-HT) format or a non-HT duplicate format (Gan, [0158] the AP replies with an acknowledgment frame…may be sent in a non-HT replication transmission form).
Regarding claim 7, Gan discloses a frequency position of the second bandwidth is included in a frequency position of the first bandwidth (Gan, [0201] The first 160 MHz channel is a first 160 MHz channel in ascending order of frequencies in a 320 MHz bandwidth, and the second 160 MHz channel is a second 160 MHz channel in ascending order of frequencies in the 320 MHz bandwidth).
Regarding claim 8, Gan does not explicitly disclose a size of the second bandwidth is equal to or less than a size of the first bandwidth.
Hart from the same field of endeavor discloses a size of the second bandwidth is equal to or less than a size of the first bandwidth (Hart, slide 18 Just zero or one responder per 20 MHz, or Responders detect their subchannels are idle (which may be less than the dup RTS bandwidth) and spoof that all the 20 MHz subchannels of the dup RTS are idle in their CTS transmissions (e.g. for the SST use case)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified communication between AP and STA disclosed by Gan and dynamic bandwidth allocation disclosed by Hart with a motivation to make this modification in order to provide dynamic bandwidth (Hart, Slide 4).
Regarding claim 9, Gan discloses the first STA is an access point (AP),
each of the at least one second STA is a non-AP STA (Gan, Fig. 8 AP and STA (i.e. non AP).
Regarding claims 10 and 12, these claims recite "a first station (STA) device" and "a second station (STA) device" that disclose similar steps as recited by the method of claims 1, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 1 as presented above.
Claim 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gan et al. (US 2023/0109874 A1, hereinafter "Gan") in view of Hart et al. (IEEE 802.11-21/0247r1, released on Feb 2021, hereinafter "Hart") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Lou et al. (US 2025/0048428 A1, Provisional application No. 63/168,035, filed on Mar.30, 2021 hereinafter "Lou").
Regarding claim 6, Gan in view of Hart does not explicitly disclose the second bandwidth information is indicated based on an uplink bandwidth (UL BW) subfield of a common information field of the trigger frame, or the UL BW subfield and an uplink bandwidth extension (UL Bandwidth Extension) subfield of a special user information field of the trigger frame.
Lou from the same field of endeavor discloses the second bandwidth information is indicated based on an uplink bandwidth (UL BW) subfield of a common information field of the trigger frame, or the UL BW subfield and an uplink bandwidth extension (UL Bandwidth Extension) subfield of a special user information field of the trigger frame (Lou, [0146-0147] several equations characterizing the non-AP STAs behavior to the NFRP trigger frame are functions of the UL bandwidth indication in the common information field; The UL bandwidth subfield may only signal a bandwidth of up to 160 MHz and a bandwidth extension subfield is proposed in the special User information field to signal 320 MHz).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Lou’s system for triggering frame into Gan’s communication between AP and STA process as modified by Hart with a motivation to make this modification in order to increase peak throughput and improve efficiency of the IEEE 802.11 networks (Lou, [0088]).
Conclusion
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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415