Prosecution Insights
Last updated: April 19, 2026
Application No. 18/610,234

WIRELESS SECURE COMMUNICATION METHOD USING RECONFIGURABLE INTELLIGENT SURFACE-NON-ORTHOGONAL MULTIPLE ACCESS UNDER COMPLEX CHANNEL CONDITIONS

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
Mar 19, 2024
Examiner
ELMEJJARMI, ABDELILLAH
Art Unit
2462
Tech Center
2400 — Computer Networks
Assignee
Taiyuan University Of Science And Technology
OA Round
1 (Non-Final)
81%
Grant Probability
Favorable
1-2
OA Rounds
2y 10m
To Grant
99%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 81% — above average
81%
Career Allow Rate
305 granted / 377 resolved
+22.9% vs TC avg
Strong +28% interview lift
Without
With
+27.8%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
2y 10m
Avg Prosecution
23 currently pending
Career history
400
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
4.2%
-35.8% vs TC avg
§103
49.3%
+9.3% vs TC avg
§102
21.3%
-18.7% vs TC avg
§112
15.4%
-24.6% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 377 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
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 . Claims 1-7 are submitted for examination. Claim Objections Claims 1-2 and 4-5 are objected to because of the following informalities: In claims 1 and 4 “outrage probability” should be “outage probability”. Claims 2 and 5 recite “SIC” and “PDF and CDF” respectively. These acronyms should be defined (spelled out) at least in the first instances in the claims. Appropriate correction is required. Specification The disclosure is objected to because of the following informalities: in the specification “outrage probability” should be “outage probability”. Appropriate correction is required. The abstract of the disclosure is objected to because in the abstract “outrage probability” should be “outage probability”. A corrected abstract of the disclosure is required and must be presented on a separate sheet, apart from any other text. See MPEP § 608.01(b). Allowable Subject Matter Claims 3-7 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 and overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112 set forth in this Office action. 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 1-2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over NPL1 (“Impact of Residual Hardware Impairment on the IoT Secrecy Performance of RIS-Assisted NOMA Networks”, 2021), in view of NPL2 (“Cascaded k-m Fading Channels with Colluding and Non-Colluding Eavesdroppers: Physical-Layer Security Analysis” 2021). Regarding claim 1, the cited reference NPL1 discloses a wireless secure communicationmethod using reconfigurable intelligent surface-non-orthogonal multiple access (RIS-NOMA) under complex channel conditions, wherein the RIS-NOMA refers to a RIS-NOMA communication system (Section II discloses E-RHI-RIS-NOMA system…which consists of one base station(BS), one RIS, which consists of N RUs, two legitimate receivers (Dn, near the user, and Dm, far user), and one eavesdropper(Eve). BS communicates with two legitimate users at the same time and frequency through a RIS. Due to long-distance or major obstacles) comprises: a base station (BS), a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), a legitimate NOMA user, and an eavesdropper (Eve) (See Fig. 1 below); PNG media_image1.png 288 440 media_image1.png Greyscale the legitimate NOMA user comprises a legitimate remote user Dm and a legitimate near user Dn, and the base station communicates with the RIS; the RIS communicates with the legitimate NOMA user; the Eve intercepts a signal transmitted by the RIS; an arbitrary channel link obeys K-u shadow fading; each node in the RIS-NOMA communication system encounters a residualhardware impairment (RHI) (Section II and Fig. 1 above, Section II further discloses the channel coefficients of the BS to i-th RU, the i-th RU to destination Dk(k € {n;m} and the i-th RU to Eve are denoted by hsi, gidk and gie, respectively. And all the channels follow independent Rayleigh fading); the method comprising: 1) calculating a signal to interference plus distortion noise ratio (SIDNR) for the legitimate NOMA user and the eavesdropper in the presence of RHI in the RIS-NOMA communication system (Section III discloses that since in NOMA, users with poor channel state, larger power is allocated when transmitting information, so Dn first decodes the message of weaker Dm. Consequently, the signal interference plus distortion noise ratio (SIDNR) for Dn to detect xm can be obtained). NPL1 further discloses in section III (sub-section B) that the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the Dn and Dm are displayed and the probability density function (PDF) of the En and Em are displayed where APPENDIX B (page 42590) discloses calculate the probability density functions (PDFs) of En and Em, we need to obtain their CDF firstly. However, NPL1 does not explicitly teach 2) approximating a probability density function and cumulative distribution function for the k-u shadow fading;3) calculating an outrage probability of the legitimate NOMA user and an intercept probability of the eavesdropper; and 4) transforming a calculation of the outrage probability of the legitimate NOMA user and the intercept probability of the eavesdropper into solving a cumulative distribution function of equivalent channel coefficients of corresponding joint channels, whereby measuring physical layer secure transmission performance of the system. In an analogous art NPL2 teaches 2) approximating a probability density function and cumulative distribution function for the k-u shadow fading (Section 2.1 Pages 3-4 discloses that Z N follows cascaded k-u fading with the following probability density function (PDF): PNG media_image2.png 66 522 media_image2.png Greyscale the cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the RV Z N is given by: PNG media_image3.png 76 522 media_image3.png Greyscale ); 3) calculating an outrage probability of the legitimate NOMA user and an intercept probability of the eavesdropper (Section I page 2 discloses outage probability (OPsec) and intercept probability (Pint)); and 4) transforming a calculation of the outrage probability of the legitimate NOMA user and the intercept probability of the eavesdropper into solving a cumulativedistribution function of equivalent channel coefficients of corresponding joint channels, whereby measuring physical layer secure transmission performance of the system (Section 2.1.6 page 8, the intercept probability measures the intercept capabilities of theeavesdropper instead. This aids in comprehending the security implications of both channels. Page 10 discloses that the probability of an outage in the security of the transmitted messages is higher as the eavesdropper channel’s circumstances improve by increasing the average received SNR). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to incorporate the method of NPL2 where security must be addressed in all types of networks, particularly with the tremendous number of connections and services planned in 5G and beyond. Regarding claim 2, the combination of NPL1 and NPL2 discloses all limitations of claim 1. NPL1 further discloses PNG media_image4.png 869 645 media_image4.png Greyscale PNG media_image5.png 726 649 media_image5.png Greyscale (Page 42586 discloses PNG media_image6.png 404 487 media_image6.png Greyscale ). PNG media_image7.png 702 472 media_image7.png Greyscale Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ABDELILLAH ELMEJJARMI whose telephone number is (571)270-1656. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri: 8AM-5PM EST. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Yemane Mesfin can be reached on (571)272-3927. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300. 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. Respectfully submitted, /ABDELILLAH ELMEJJARMI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462
Read full office action

Prosecution Timeline

Mar 19, 2024
Application Filed
Feb 21, 2026
Non-Final Rejection — §103 (current)

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Study what changed to get past this examiner. Based on 5 most recent grants.

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Prosecution Projections

1-2
Expected OA Rounds
81%
Grant Probability
99%
With Interview (+27.8%)
2y 10m
Median Time to Grant
Low
PTA Risk
Based on 377 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allow rate.

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