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 § 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 1-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huang (US 20220286194 A1) in view of Schmidt (US 20160302089 A1).
For claim 8, Huang discloses a communication method used in a communication system including a station apparatus, a first access point apparatus communicating with the station apparatus, and one or more access point apparatuses other than the first access point apparatus (The system shown in FIG. 1, including n stations STA 1-STA n, n AP devices AP 1 to AP n), the communication method comprising:
establishing, by the station apparatus, an association with the first access point apparatus (FIGs. 1-3, each shows association between a station and one or more APs);
receiving, by the station apparatus, frames transmitted by multiple access point apparatuses including the first access point apparatus (FIGs. 1-14 and the associated text, such as suggested by “[0111] Step 401: In a process in which an AP device authenticates a STA device, the AP device sends a target packet to the STA device”);
transmitting, by the station apparatus, a wireless management frame (“[0112] … the STA device may send an association request (Association Request) frame to the AP device …” and “[0121] The association request frame sent by the STA device to the AP device may include a first information element (information element, IE), and the first information element may include a MAC address of the first SAP …”),
transmitting, by the station apparatus, the wireless management frame as a solicited frame in a case that the received signal quality information is requested from the first access point apparatus (FIGs. 11-12 and the associated text, such as “[0181] … FIG. 12. The stream steering element may include fields such as … a traffic information (Traffic info) field” and “[0134] In addition, the switching threshold indication information indicates the STA device to perform AP switching when signal quality decreases to a first threshold. The first threshold may be preset. When the signal quality decreases to the first threshold, it indicates that the signal quality is poor. … the signal quality may be measured by using a received signal strength indicator (Received Signal Strength Indication, RSSI) value. …”; note that the management frame transmitted by the station is in response to the requested from AP, and therefor is a solicited frame); and
performing, by the station apparatus, at least one of a first method or a second method in a case that the received signal quality information is not requested from the first access point apparatus (“[0205] The switching threshold indication information indicates the STA device to perform AP switching when signal quality decreases to a first threshold, ...”), the first method including issuing, from an MLME to an SME, a primitive including the received signal quality information (FIG. 14 and the associated text, such as “[0188] … the ML device has three independent antennas, …, each network interface separately uses one antenna, and each network interface has its own MAC, MAC layer management entity (MAC layer management entity, MLME), station management entity (STA management entity, SME), … When two network interfaces are enabled, each network interface has its own MAC, MLME, and SME, …”), and the second method including transmitting the wireless management frame as an unsolicited frame (“[0206] Optionally, for any one of the plurality of APs, an access policy of the AP includes at least one of a service policy or timeout information. [0207] The service policy indicates a highest AC or a TID of a data packet that is allowed by the AP to transmit, and the timeout information indicates the STA device to perform AP switching when the STA device does not receive, within preset duration, a data packet that is of a highest AC or a TID and that is allowed by the AP to transmit.”, the management frame is transmitted in response to a timeout, therefore is a an unsolicited frame).
Huang does not specifically state but Schmidt, in the same field of endeavor of wireless communication, discloses: the wireless management frame including received signal quality information generated by measuring each of the frames transmitted by the multiple access point apparatuses as a measured object (claim 16 “The apparatus of claim 12, wherein the bin IE comprises at least one of: a UE distribution compute parameter that indicates whether the eNB is to measure or perform computations related to a UE distribution, … a received signal power indicator or received signal quality indicator of UEs in each bin …”; claim 16 depends on claim 12, which in turn depends on claim 1, also citing “”periodically perform bin measurements on signals …”, suggesting signal quality information is measured object). OOSA would have been motivated to apply the teaching of Schmidt regarding IE above the IE in the management frame by Huang to yield a predictable result of providing received signal strength information.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to OOSA before the effective filing date of the application to combine Huang and Schmidt for the benefit of providing the value of RSSI ([0134] of Huang).
Claim 1 is rejected because it is a claim of Station apparatus included in the wireless communication system specified by claim 8.
Claim 7 is rejected because it is a claim of AP apparatus included in the wireless communication system specified by claim 8.
As to claim 2, Huang in view of Schmidt discloses claim 1, Huang further discloses: wherein performing the first method and the second method is indicated in a primitive from the SME to the MLME of the station apparatus (FIG. 14 and the associated text, such as “[0188] … the ML device has three independent antennas, …, each network interface separately uses one antenna, and each network interface has its own MAC, MAC layer management entity (MAC layer management entity, MLME), station management entity (STA management entity, SME), … When two network interfaces are enabled, each network interface has its own MAC, MLME, and SME, …”).
As to claim 3, Huang in view of Schmidt discloses claim 1, Huang further discloses: wherein the received signal quality information includes at least one of an RSSI, an SNR, an SINR, or a CQI of the multiple access point apparatuses (“[0134] In addition, the switching threshold indication information indicates the STA device to perform AP switching when signal quality decreases to a first threshold. The first threshold may be preset. When the signal quality decreases to the first threshold, it indicates that the signal quality is poor. … the signal quality may be measured by using a received signal strength indicator (Received Signal Strength Indication, RSSI) value. …” in view of the parent claim). Huang also discloses RSSI and SNR (“[0037] … a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) or any appropriate quantity that characterizes received signal power at the UE 102. In some embodiments, the received signal quality can be a received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), carrier-to-interference (C/I) ratio or any appropriate quantity that characterizes received signal quality at the UE 102.”)
As to claim 4, Huang in view of Schmidt discloses claim 1, Huang further discloses: wherein the received signal quality information includes capability information of the multiple access point apparatuses (“[0032] In another possible implementation, one of the two ML devices is the STA device, and the other ML device is the AP device. The multi-band element in the FST frame sent by the AP device to the STA device includes a multi-band connection capability field, the multi-band connection capability field includes a non-collocated AP indication bit, and the non-collocated AP indication bit indicates whether multi-link aggregation with an AP that belongs to another physical device is supported.”).
As to claim 5, Huang in view of Schmidt discloses claim 1, Huang further discloses: wherein content of the received signal quality information included in the solicited frame and content of the received signal quality information included in the unsolicited frame are different from each other (“[0134] … the signal quality may be measured by using a received signal strength indicator (Received Signal Strength Indication, RSSI) value.”, and [181], [0206]- [0207] in view of the parent claim for the solicited frame and unsolicited frame).
As to claim 6, Huang in view of Schmidt discloses claim 1, Huang further discloses: wherein the received signal quality information includes traffic requirement information of a higher layer (“[0205] The switching threshold indication information indicates the STA device to perform AP switching when signal quality decreases to a first threshold, and the STA association restriction indicates a type of a STA that is allowed to be associated with each of the plurality of APs.”; note that “type of STA” information suggests higher layer information).
Conclusion
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/JIANYE WU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462
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