Prosecution Insights
Last updated: October 02, 2026
Application No. 18/689,697

WAVEFORM DETECTION INTERFACE

Non-Final OA §103
Filed
Mar 06, 2024
Priority
Sep 10, 2021 — provisional 63/242,677 +1 more
Examiner
AHN, SAM K
Art Unit
2633
Tech Center
2600 — Communications
Assignee
Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson
OA Round
3 (Non-Final)
86%
Grant Probability
Favorable
3-4
OA Rounds
10m
Est. Remaining
97%
With Interview

Examiner Intelligence

Grants 86% — above average
86%
Career Allowance Rate
292 granted / 341 resolved
+23.6% vs TC avg
Moderate +11% lift
Without
With
+11.3%
Interview Lift
resolved cases with interview
Typical timeline
3y 4m
Avg Prosecution
8 currently pending
Career history
346
Total Applications
across all art units

Statute-Specific Performance

§101
13.5%
-26.5% vs TC avg
§103
40.0%
+0.0% vs TC avg
§102
17.7%
-22.3% vs TC avg
§112
20.8%
-19.2% vs TC avg
Black line = Tech Center average estimate • Based on career data from 341 resolved cases

Office Action

§103
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 . Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114 A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 8/31/2026 has been entered. Response to Arguments Applicant's arguments filed 8/31/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicants argue that amended independent claims 1 and 11 are not disclosed or suggested by Diener, Boutaud and Chai. The Office respectfully disagrees. The applicants appear to take on the interpretation that Diener’s NSI 70 is equivalent to or has been interpreted as the claimed “application.” However, the rejection interpreted “application” as application program or 94 in Fig.6. NSI 70 and other components at the lower level may be intelligent access point (note [0157]). Diener further teaches the amended limitation as follows: exchange user plane information between the application and the waveform detector (measured properties of detected pulses, 6020, 6030 in Fig.13, note [0357]) the application (94 in Fig.6, note [0154]) including at least one of a radio transceiver (TRX) function, a baseband processing function, a radio unit, a distributed unit and a digital Li lower physical layer function comprised in a base station (note [0357] “…the network management application 94 may be executed by the network management station 1090 that is located in a central monitoring or control center (telephone service provider, cable Internet service provider, etc.) coupled to the sensor devices, APs, etc., as well as the devices which it controls (e.g., APs) via a wide area network (WAN) connection, e.g., the Internet, a dedicated high speed wired connection, or other longer distance wired or wireless connection”) hence meets at least the claimed “distributed unit” of distributing data or signals to the sensor devices, Aps, via WAN or internet connection. 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. The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows: 1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art. 2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue. 3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. 4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness. Claim(s) 1-4, 9-14, 19 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Diener US 2004/0028003 A1 (Diener) in view of Boutaud EP 3067764 (Boutaud) and Chai et al. US 2021/0241108 (Chai). Claim(s) 1-4, 9-14, 19 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2004/0028003 A1 (Diener). Regarding claim 1, Diener teaches a waveform detection interface between a wireless application and a waveform detector (note that the instant specification defines waveform to mean a set of pulses on page 4, lines 24-25, and Diener also teaches detection of pulses, Pulse Detector 23 in Fig.7; wireless application note [0246 application program called Network Management Software, 94 in Fig.6 or application program; also see Applications Service in Fig.29, note [0488] wireless applications; also see Fig.36), the waveform detection interface comprising processing circuitry configured to: exchange management plane information between the application and the waveform detector, the management plane information including capability information related to waveform detection (between 94 in Fig.6 and 20 thru 70 in Fig.6 exchange information related to “capacity rating”, capacity or capability in the frequency band is available, carrying capacity of the entire frequency, note [0378]); exchange control plane information between the application and the waveform detector, the control plane information including configuration information related to a configuration of the waveform detector (pulse event test, information related to configuration of pulses, short or long pulses, note [0357]); and exchange user plane information between the application and the waveform detector (measured properties of detected pulses, 6020, 6030 in Fig.13, note [0357]) the application (94 in Fig.6, note [0154]) including at least one of a radio transceiver (TRX) function, a baseband processing function, a radio unit, a distributed unit and a digital Li lower physical layer function comprised in a base station (note [0357] “…the network management application 94 may be executed by the network management station 1090 that is located in a central monitoring or control center (telephone service provider, cable Internet service provider, etc.) coupled to the sensor devices, APs, etc., as well as the devices which it controls (e.g., APs) via a wide area network (WAN) connection, e.g., the Internet, a dedicated high speed wired connection, or other longer distance wired or wireless connection”) hence meets at least the claimed “distributed unit” of distributing data or signals to the sensor devices, Aps, via WAN or internet connection. Although Diener teaches all as explained above, Diener does not explicitly teach that the exchange of the limitations above are between the wireless application and the waveform detector. Diener does teach, in Fig. 6, the wireless application (94 in Fig.6) and the waveform detector (elements 70 and below in Fig.6). One of ordinary skilled in the art would recognize that the components in Fig.6 are interoperable in that all information related to processing of signals will be exchanged within the necessary components in Fig.6. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to recognize that the information explained above would be exchanged between the wireless application and the waveform detector for the purpose of effectively maintaining the performance of devices and networks of devices operating in frequencies of unlicensed band (note [0019]). However, Diener does not explicitly teach the control plane information including pulse metadata for at least one of correlation of detected pulses and training of an artificial intelligence algorithm (NOTE: applicant’s argument on p.13 states specification on p.32, lines 9-15 supports this limitation and on page 13 lines 1-2 of the argument further supports the interpretation that “at least one of correlation of detected pulse AND training of an artificial intelligence” is interpreted herein to mean “at least one of correlation of detected pulse OR training of an artificial intelligence.” This interpretation is consistent with MPEP 2111.01(I) in that plain meaning should be given unless such meaning is inconsistent with the specification, wherein the specification on page 32 describes “…pulse meta data (for correlation of detected pulses OR training of machine learning / AI algorithms)…”). Boutaud teaches, in a similar field of endeavor, a control plane information including pulse metadata (data storage including meta data related to pulse signals and suggests that such can be used in industrial automation systems, note [0115]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Boutaud into the system of Diener of wherein the control plane information would include meta data related to pulse signals for the purpose of improving sensor management components (note [0115]). While Diener in view of Boutaud teaches all as recited in the claim, do not explicitly teach that the meta data is used for training of an artificial intelligence algorithm. Chai teaches meta data is used for training of an artificial intelligence algorithm (see 101, 102, 103, 105 and 106 input data to train AI, 110 in Fig.1, and note [0124 – 0127] metadata used for training; deep neural network (DNN) training metadata for AI training, [0056]). As a result, one of ordinary skilled in the art would recognize that other systems with data can be further improved through the implementation of AI and that metadata can be used to train it. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Chai in the system of Diener and Boutaud for the purpose of improving the performance of artificial neural networks (note [0002]). Regarding claim 2, Diener further teaches wherein the control plane information includes pulse configuration information to configure the waveform detector to detect a set of at least one pulse characteristic in a signal to be processed by the application (detect pulse characteristic of short or long pulses, note [0357]). Regarding claim 3, Diener further teaches wherein the at least one pulse characteristic includes at least one of a pulse width, a pulse-chirp frequency range and pulse power (detect pulse characteristic of short or long pulses, note [0357], wherein one of ordinary skilled in the art would recognize that short or long pulses would have different pulse width, capacity of the entire frequency, note [0378], and note [0091] pulse event data including power associated with the detected pulse). Regarding claim 4, Diener further teaches wherein the control plane information includes waveform configuration information to configure the waveform detector to detect a waveform characteristic (again, note that the instant specification defines waveform to mean a set of pulses on page 4, lines 24-25, waveform or set of pulses of ‘short pulses’ or ‘long pulses’, note [0357]). Regarding claim 9, Diener further teaches wherein the user plane information includes an instruction to invoke the waveform detector (Start Pulse Detector Test in Fig.13). Regarding claim 10, Diener further teaches wherein the user plane information includes I and Q sample information (note [0283] of numSampleIntervals and avgSampleDurationMs). And although Diener does not explicitly teach that the sample information includes I and Q samples, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate as such because I and Q are just another well-known format of representing input signals. Other well-known formats of samples may be called in-phase and quadrature, real and imaginary, and amplitude and phase. The advantage of using I and Q samples over others may be for the purpose of easy computations for certain systems. Regarding claim 11, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 1. Regarding claim 12, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 2. Regarding claim 13, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 3. Regarding claim 14, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 4. Regarding claim 19, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 9. Regarding claim 20, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 10. Claim(s) 6-8 and 16-18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Diener US 2004/0028003 A1 (Diener) in view of Boutaud EP 3067764 (Boutaud) and Chai et al. US 2021/0241108 (Chai) and in further view of Miller US 2004/0023674. Regarding claim 6, Diener in view of Boutaud and Chai teaches all as applied to claim 1. Diener further teaches wherein the user plane information includes event information concerning at least one of a pulse detection event (detect pulse characteristic of short or long pulses, note [0357]) and a waveform detection event (detect pulse characteristic of short or long pulses, note [0357]). However, Diener does not further teach wherein the event information further including an indication of event detection confidence. Miller teaches in a similar field of endeavor of detecting pulses operating in an unlicensed frequency bands where an event of pulse detection includes confidence level based on classification of the signals (note [0121]). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Miller into the system of Diener for the purpose determining that the signal classification holds over time (note [0121]). Regarding claim 7, Diener in view of Miller teaches all as applied to claim 6. Diener further teaches wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to perform post-processing of the event information (post-processing of event management based on graphs and histograms, note [0377]) Regarding claim 8, Diener in view of Miller teaches all as applied to claim 7. Diener further teaches wherein the post-processing includes at least one of a correlation of past event information with the event information (post-processing of event management based on graphs and histograms, note [0377]) and machine learning based at least in part on the event information (machine learning is interpreted herein to mean post-processing of event management based on graphs and histograms, note [0377]). Regarding claim 16, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 6. Regarding claim 17, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 7. Regarding claim 18, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 8. Claim(s) 5 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Diener US 2004/0028003 A1 (Diener) in view of Boutaud EP 3067764 (Boutaud) and Chai et al. US 2021/0241108 (Chai) and in further view of Bertagna US 2010/0039308. Regarding claim 5, Diener in view of Boutaud and Chai teaches all as applied to claim 4. However, Diener does not explicitly teach wherein the waveform characteristic includes at least one of a number of bursts, burst duration and a number of pulses per burst. Bertagna teaches wherein the waveform characteristic includes at least one of a number of bursts, burst duration and a number of pulses per burst (see Table 3 of waveform parameters represented in pulse width, PRI, Pulses per Burst, Number of Bursts, Total Duration, and DFS Spec.). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to incorporate the teaching of Bertagna into the system of Diener of characterizing the waveform as pulses per burst for the purpose of effectively detecting radar having a time-varying waveform (note [0089-0096]). Regarding claim 15, the claim is rejected as applied to claim 5. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to SAM K. AHN whose telephone number is (571)272-3044. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday, 9-5PM. 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. 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. /SAM K AHN/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2633
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Prosecution Timeline

Mar 06, 2024
Application Filed
Feb 20, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103
May 18, 2026
Response Filed
May 29, 2026
Final Rejection mailed — §103
Aug 31, 2026
Request for Continued Examination
Sep 01, 2026
Response after Non-Final Action
Sep 04, 2026
Non-Final Rejection mailed — §103 (current)

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Prosecution Projections

3-4
Expected OA Rounds
86%
Grant Probability
97%
With Interview (+11.3%)
3y 4m (~10m remaining)
Median Time to Grant
High
PTA Risk
Based on 341 resolved cases by this examiner. Grant probability derived from career allowance rate.

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