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 § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 19 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Re Claim 19, it is unclear whether the claim is a method claim. To correct, the preamble should indicate “a method comprising”.
Re Claim 20, it is unclear whether the claim is directed toward apparatus claim. To correct, the active steps in the body should be changed i.e., “obtaining” should be -obtain-, “generating” to -generate-.
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)(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, 7, 12-15, 19 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Shellhammer et al PG PUB 2022/ Shellhammer et al 0385437.
Re Claims 1, 19 and 20, Shellhammer et al teaches in figure 1, AP 102 (a Processor) configured obtains a data for transmission to a STA 104 (a receiver) wherein the AP generating a first PLCP of plurality of PPDUs wherein a first PDDU (a first component PPDU) for an aggregated PPDU (a concatenated C-PPDU) wherein the first PDDU is directed is directed the STA wherein the first PPDU, See figure 2A, includes a data field 214 for at least a portion of the data [0012-0117].
Re Claim 3, Shellhammer et al teaches in figure 2A, the first PPDU (the first component PPDU) includes the data field 214 whereby the AP transmits the first PPDU to the STA (the receiver).
Re Claim 7, Shellhammer et al teaches in figure 7, the PPDU (the first component PPDU) includes a PHY preamble 702 (a full preamble) comprising a U-SIG 716 [0076].
Re Claims 12, 13, 15, Shellhammer et al teaches in figure 8, the MU-PPDU format for the PPDU [0028] wherein figure 6 teaches AP multiplexes the first PPDU ND602 and a second PPDU 604 in the 320 MHz Bandwidth (in frequency) [0082] wherein the first and second PPDU aggregated (another component PPDU; a regular PPDU).
Re Claim 14, Shellhammer et al teaches MU-PPDU format is directed to one or more different STAs.
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 2, 4-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shellhammer et al PG PUB 2022/0385437 in view of MALICHENKO et al PG PUB 2024/0163871.
Re Claim 2, Shellhammer et al fails to explicitly teach “the plurality of component PPDUs are scheduled to be transmitted consecutively in time.”. However, MALICHENKO et al teaches an AP schedules the clients with TDMA time slots for transmitting/receiving PPDUs [0020 0023]. By combining the teaching, the plurality of component PPDUs in Shellhammer et al can be transmitted in consecutive TDMA time slots in MALICHENKO et al. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to be adaptive different transmission modes.
Re Claim 4, MALICHENKO et al teaches the AP determines the PPDU length based on the UL duration [0023] and optimized based on a target latency (a desired communication latency) [0031].
Re Claim 5, MALICHENKO et al teaches the target latency can be configured, in this case, to 1ms.
Re Claim 6, MALICHENKO et al teaches the AP can select a lower average latency (a low latency mode) [0067] and based on the selected latency generates the first PPDU (the first component PPDU).
Claim 18 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shellhammer et al PG PUB 2022/0385437 in view of WANG et al PG PUB 2021/0409165.
Re Claim 18, Shellhammer et al teaches in figure 6B, the AP generating the A-PPDU 610 wherein the first PPDU is transmitted to the STA (a first receiver) and a second PPDU (a second component PPDU) is directed to another STA (a second receiver) [0073]. Shellhammer et al further teaches in figure 7, the MU-PPDU format includes in the preamble 702 a Legacy long Training (L-LTF 710) but fails to explicitly teach “a mid signal (MID-SIG) preamble. However, WANG et al teaches a mid-SIG field may be inserted in the middle of the A-PPDU to enable the receiver to decode/combine the data [0268]. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have included the MID-SIG in the preamble of Shellhammer et al to enable the receiver to decode/combined the data. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Claims 8, 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shellhammer et al PG PUB 2022/0385437 in view of LI et al PG PUB 2025/0365609.
Re Claim 8, Shellhammer et al teaches the AP generating the second PPDU (the second component PPDU) directed to the STA (the receiver). Shellhammer et al fails to teaches the second PPDU includes “an abbreviated preamble comprising…a second length field that indicates a length of the second PPDU.”. However, WANG et al teaches the second PPDU may include a short preamble field (an abbreviated preamble) which includes a L-SIG field (a second length field) that indicates a length of the second PPDU [0277]. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have modified the second preamble in Shellhammer et al with the short preamble to reduce overhead in decoding the second PPDU. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Re Claim 9, LI et al teaches the L-SIG field indicating the length of the PPDU, the length includes a number of symbols in a data field of the PPDU.’
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Shellhammer et al PG PUB 2022/0385437 in view of LIU et al U.S. Patent # 8,665,966.
Re Claim 10, Shellhammer et al fails to explicitly teach “wherein lengths of respective data fields….of PPDUs are identical…generating a second component PPDU…without a preamble…”. LIU et al teaches when all of the data portions have the same length, the VHT-TFs in the second PPDU is omitted with the first PPDU includes the VHT-TF (See col. 22, lines 16-45). By combining the teachings, when the lengths of the respective data field of plurality of PPDU are identical and the length information is indicated in the first preamble of the first PPDU, one skilled in the art would have been motivated have omitted the duplicate information in the subsequent preamble to reduce overhead. In this case, the preamble in the second PPDU can be omitted. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 11 and 16-17 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
Re Claim 11, prior art fails to teach a presence of the plurality of fields in the abbreviated preamble is signaled in the MID-SIG preamble as claimed.
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/ANDREW LEE/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2475