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
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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.
4. Claim(s) 1-3, 5-10 and 12-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jain (US 2022/0295483 A1) in view of Mueck et al. (US 2025/0212193 A1).
Regarding claims 1, 8 and 15, Jain et al. disclose a method/ a system/ one or more non-transitory computer-readable media containing, in any combination, computer program code that, when executed by operation of a computer system, performs operations comprising:
identifying one or more frequency bands causing spectral leakage that impacts an ultra-wideband (UWB) network device (see pars. 0041-0042: For example, concurrent reception of UWB signals from an anchor 104 over the wireless communication channel 106 and transmission of cellular LTE signals over the wireless communication channel 114 can cause mutual or non-mutual interference, leading to transmission/reception errors and data loss. This interference can be caused by, for example, overlapping frequency bands of signals transmitted/received over the wireless communication channels 106, 114, harmonics of signals transmitted/received over the wireless communication channels 106, 114 (such as a 3.sup.rd harmonic frequency of a cellular LTE signal transmitted over the wireless communication channel 114 interfering with reception of an UWB signal over the wireless communication channel 106), or combinations of them, among others; To reduce interference, the wireless device 102 includes a slot allocation engine 116 configured to allocate time slots, for example, for reception of UWB signals over the communication channel 106);
receiving a synchronization schedule from the UWB network device (see par. 0056 and fig. 4A: data in the form of UWB signals are received from the anchor 104 assigned to slot 1 (e.g., as shown by the shaded slot 1). Since the UWB data in slot 1 is received concurrently with transmission of LTE data in shaded subframe 404, the reception of the UWB data is corrupted by the LTE transmission (and vice versa) as shown by bolded block 406; Par. 0060: the slot allocation engine 116 receives a UWB reception schedule 552 (e.g., receiver timing, expected receptions, etc.) from the wireless communications circuitry 400b, and a LTE transmission schedule 554 (e.g., transmit timing, expected transmissions, etc.) from the wireless communications circuitry 400a. In practice, the LTE transmission schedule may only be known by the wireless device 102 shortly (e.g., a few milliseconds) before the transmissions occurs);
analyzing the synchronization schedule to determine one or more timings for one or more UWB transmissions (see par. 0061: Based on the UWB reception schedule 552 and the LTE transmissions schedule (whether it be a full transmission schedule or information indicative of a fixed or semi-fixed transmission schedule, such as an indication of the LTE-TDD configuration), the slot allocation engine 116 determines whether UWB reception slot(i) overlaps with a LTE transmission subframe. In some examples, the slot allocation engine 116 aligns the receive/transmit timings prior to doing the comparison. If the slot allocation engine 116 determines that UWB reception slot(i) overlaps with a LTE transmission subframe (and therefore would likely cause interference), it considers the next slot (e.g., slot(i+1)). On the other hand, if the slot allocation engine 116 determines that there is no overlap between UWB reception slot(i) and a LTE subframe, the slot allocation engine 116 allocates (e.g., reserves) the slot for the anchors 104. In this example, the slot allocation engine 116 has determined that slot 2 (currently allocated to anchor 2) is free of overlap, and thus allocates slot 2 for the anchors 104 (e.g., anchor 1, which is currently assigned to slot 1 but is expected to transmit UWB data to the wireless device 102 that will interfere with the LTE transmission occurring during slot 1).
Jain et al. do not disclose puncturing one or more Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) transmissions within the one or more frequency bands to avoid interference with the one or more UWB transmissions. Mueck et al. teach puncturing one or more Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) transmissions within the one or more frequency bands to avoid interference with the one or more UWB transmissions (see par. 0064: the radio signal source device 304 may temporarily suspend use of a frequency band that is causing interference 138 with the wireless digital key 204. For example, the radio signal source device 304 may continue operations without using the UWB frequency band for some time period or implement puncturing techniques in the UWB frequency band to reduce or eliminate interference 138).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective the filling date of claimed invention (AIA ) to modify the above teaching “puncturing one or more Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) transmissions within the one or more frequency bands to avoid interference with the one or more UWB transmissions” of Mueck et al. to the method/ a system/ one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of Jain et al. in order to reduce or eliminate interference.
Regarding claims 2 and 9, Jain et al. also teach and show wherein the UWB network device comprises a UWB anchor (see fig. 3A).
Regarding claims 3, 10 and 18, Jain et al. also teach wherein the synchronization schedule indicates one or more expected timings for transmitting one or more synchronization messages by the UWB network device (see par. 0062: Since the anchors 104 have fixed slots for their entire software lifecycle, the anchor allocation engine 118 can, for example, reinitialize the software of the anchor 104 to allocate or assign it a new time slot. In this example, the anchor allocation engine 118 has allocated slot 2 to anchor 1 to allow for clear reception of the expected UWB data, as shown by the bolded box 558. The anchor allocation engine 118 has also allocated slot 1 to anchor 2 to prevent interference with the LTE transmission occurring during that time slot).
Regarding claims 5, 12 and 17, Jain et al. also teach receiving a notification, from the UWB network device, indicating a UWB tag transmission (see par. 0056 and fig. 4A: data in the form of UWB signals are received from the anchor 104 assigned to slot 1 (e.g., as shown by the shaded slot 1). Since the UWB data in slot 1 is received concurrently with transmission of LTE data in shaded subframe 404, the reception of the UWB data is corrupted by the LTE transmission (and vice versa) as shown by bolded block 406). Jain et al. do not teach puncturing the one or more WLAN transmissions within the one or more frequency bands to avoid interference with the UWB tag transmission. Mueck et al. teach puncturing the one or more WLAN transmissions within the one or more frequency bands to avoid interference with the UWB tag transmission (see par. 0064: the radio signal source device 304 may continue operations without using the UWB frequency band for some time period or implement puncturing techniques in the UWB frequency band to reduce or eliminate interference 138).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective the filling date of claimed invention (AIA ) to modify the above teaching “puncturing the one or more WLAN transmissions within the one or more frequency bands to avoid interference with the UWB tag transmission” of Mueck et al. to the method/ a system/ one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of Jain et al. in order to reduce or eliminate interference.
Regarding claims 6, 13 and 19, Mueck et al. also teach wherein puncturing the one or more WLAN transmissions within the one or more frequency bands comprises disabling the one or more frequency bands so that no data is transmitted during the UWB transmissions (see par. 0064: the radio signal source device 304 may temporarily suspend use of a frequency band that is causing interference 138 with the wireless digital key 204. For example, the radio signal source device 304 may continue operations without using the UWB frequency band for some time period or implement puncturing techniques in the UWB frequency band to reduce or eliminate interference 138).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective the filling date of claimed invention (AIA ) to modify the above teaching “puncturing one or more Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) transmissions within the one or more frequency bands to avoid interference with the one or more UWB transmissions” of Mueck et al. to the method/ a system/ one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of Jain et al. in order to reduce or eliminate interference.
Regarding claims 7, 14 and 20, Mueck et al. also teach wherein puncturing the one or more WLAN transmissions within the one or more frequency bands comprises modifying a preamble of the one or more WLAN transmissions to make the one or more WLAN transmission less detectable during the UWB transmissions (see par. 0146: In one embodiment, the digital key 938, digital key 940, and/or digital key 942 may encode a preamble signal in response to a beacon signal from UE 910, UE 912, UE 914, and/or the base station 908. In this case, the UE 910, UE 912, UE 914, and/or the base station 908 may decode a preamble from the digital key 938, digital key 940, and/or digital key 942 in response to the beacon signal).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective the filling date of claimed invention (AIA ) to modify the above teaching “puncturing the one or more WLAN transmissions within the one or more frequency bands comprises modifying a preamble of the one or more WLAN transmissions to make the one or more WLAN transmission less detectable during the UWB transmissions” of Mueck et al. to the method/ a system/ one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of Jain et al. in order to get access to (non-public) information on the exact channel and signal parameters being used for specific digital car keys.
Claim(s) 4, 11 and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jain (US 2022/0295483 A1) in view of Mueck et al. (US 2025/0212193 A1) and further in view of Wang (US 2016/0037520 A1).
Regarding claims 4, 11 and 16, Jain and Mueck et al do not mention adjusting a WLAN schedule based on the one or more punctured WLAN transmissions; and communicating the adjusted WLAN schedule to a client device. However, adjusting a WLAN schedule based on the one or more punctured WLAN transmissions; and communicating the adjusted WLAN schedule to a client device are well known in the art as taught by Wang (see par. 0064: the apparatus 505 may receive an LTE/LTE-A schedule, identify potentially conflicting frequencies used in both WLAN communications and LTE/LTE-A communications, and dynamically adjust, on a packet-by-packet basis, the frequencies used for WLAN transmission so as to reduce the chance of interfering with LTE/LTE-A reception. Additionally, the apparatus 505 may notify an access point of the potentially conflicting frequencies so that the access point can transmit WLAN communications using non-interfering frequencies).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective the filling date of claimed invention (AIA ) to modify the above teaching “adjusting a WLAN schedule based on the one or more punctured WLAN transmissions; and communicating the adjusted WLAN schedule to a client device. However, adjusting a WLAN schedule based on the one or more punctured WLAN transmissions; and communicating the adjusted WLAN schedule to a client device” of Wang to the method/ a system/ one or more non-transitory computer-readable media of Jain et al. in order to reduce or eliminate interference.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to DAVID Q NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-7844. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 7:00 AM - 3:00 PM.
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/DAVID Q NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2643
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