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 1-4 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over ZHU et al PG PUB 2022/0070858 in view of KWON et al PG PUB 2021/0337564.
Re Claims 1 and 17, ZHU et al teaches in figure 4, a Receiver (a first communication apparatus includes a receiver and a circuitry) for receiving a first PPDU 422 and a subsequent PPDU (a second PPDU) [0045] wherein the PPDUs are separated by IFS which can be configured based on propagation delay [0043].
ZHU et al fails to explicitly teach “…determining whether the PHY parameters of the first and second PPDUs are to be used for sensing based on a comparison between the first and second PPDUs and the PHY parameters…”.
However, KWON et al teaches the PPDUs can indicate a plurality of PHY parameters such as AP transmission power, UL Target RSSI and MCS etc [0051] wherein a MCS (a PHY parameter) of the first PPDU is compared with an MCS (a PHY parameter) of the second PPDU to configure a MCS gap corresponding to a SNR difference [0105]. The MCS gap in KWON et al is analogous to the IFS in ZHU et al. By combining the teachings, each PPDU in ZHU et al can be modified to include the plurality of PHY parameters in KWON et al. When, the Receiver in ZHU et al receives the first and second PPDU, in view of KWON et al, PHY parameters in the first and second PPDU can be compared, to determine an optimal MSCs to ensure the arrival of the subsequent PPDU and be adaptive to the changing propagation delays. The optimal MSCs are used “for sensing”. One skilled in the art would art would have been motivated to have compared the first and second PPDU and associated PHY parameters to be adaptive to the propagation delay to improve throughput. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Re Claims 2, 3, 4, ZHU et al teaches in figure 4, the first and second PPDUs are transmitting in first and second time intervals (a first and second time period) wherein the [0043] wherein the second time period being after the first time period, in view of KWON et al, the PPDU includes a PPDU format field [0051] to indicate the second PPDU and the first PPDU to have the same PPDU format; the PPDU also includes fields to indicate PHY parameters [0051] which can be configured to indicate the second PPDU and the first PPDU to have3 the same PHY parameters.
Claims 5, 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over ZHU et al PG PUB 2022/0070858 in view of KWON et al PG PUB 2021/0337564 as applied to Claim 1 above and further in view of SONG et al PG PUB 2013/0188630.
Re Claim 5, ZHU et al in view of KWON et al fails to explicitly teach “determine PPDU based on a PPDU format”. However, SONG et al teaches in figure 4, a PPDU format [0066] used to determine a channel rank based on the channel estimation of the received PPDU format wherein the channel rank of the PPDU format can be used for PPDU benchmarking [0074]. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have determined the “benchmark PPDU” to facilitate reliable connectivity. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Re Claim 11, examiner takes notice the STA can support periodic transmission between another STA (a second communication apparatus). One skilled in the art would have been motivated to perform channel measurement to be adaptive to different channel conditions.
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 12, 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by SONG et al PG PUB 2013/0188630.
Re Claim 12, SONG et al teaches based on a received PPDU (See figure 4) from AP (a first communication device), an STA (a second communication device includes a circuitry and transmitter) generating a feedback PPDU [0068], performing channel estimation based on the received PPDU and transmitting the feedback PPDU to the AP wherein the feedback PPDU can indicate a change in the transmit parameter such as MSC.
Re Claim 16, SONG et al teaches the MAC header of the PPDU [0048] for indicating transmit parameter.
Claims 13, 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over SONG et al PG PUB 2013/0188630 in view of HO et al PG PUB 2021/0076251.
Re Claim 13, SONG et al teaches performing channel estimation based on the PPDU transmitted by the AP (the first communication apparatus) to acquire a channel information [0067] from the STA. The STA can receive another PPDU but fails to explicitly teach the channel measurement is based on “indicating actual transmit parameters”. However, HO et al teaches the STA determine whether actual parameters meet a predetermined threshold [0055]. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to have performed the channel estimation on the actual transmit parameters to improve QoS. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled to have combined the teachings.
Re Claim 14, Examiner takes notice that the PPDU format can include a subfield to indicate a beamformed or a non-beamformed PPDU. One skilled in the art would have been motivated to be adaptive to different PPDU formats.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 6-10, 15 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 6, Prior art fails to teach the circuity of the first communication apparatus to store information related to the benchmark PPDU and compare a PPDU of the second PPDU and determine whether to perform channel estimation as claimed.
Re Claim 15, Prior art fails to teach to store a NDP format during a threshold calculation phase and the further configured to transmit a NDP having a same NDP format as the stored NDP format for a sensing session as claimed.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANDREW LEE whose telephone number is (571)272-3130. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:30AM-5PM ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, KASSIM KHALAD can be reached at 5712703770. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/ANDREW LEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2475