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.
Claims 1-6 and 9-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Booij (US 2018/0356520 A1; search report) and Connellan (US 2019/0113966 A1; search report).
Regarding claims 1 and 10-11, Booij teaches a method of measuring a position by a first user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising:
reporting capability information related to the first UE [[0005] transmitting device further includes one or more control devices configured to select the first or second acoustic signals based at least in part on one or more operating capabilities of one or more mobile units associated with the real-time locating system];
reporting state information related to the first UE [[0022] determine a location, orientation and/or direction of one or more mobile units. The location, orientation, and/or direction of a mobile unit can be relative with respect to a subject area.; [0068] by providing timing information with the RF beacon signal, one of the four unknowns is resolved-thereby simplifying the complexity of the real-time location system by reducing the number of unknowns to three.];
receiving first setting information related to position measurement [[0017] first and second acoustic signals can include identifying information associated with the transmitting device and/or location information indicating a location of the transmitting device within a particular subject area. For instance, the location data can indicate a location of the transmitting device within a particular room of a building.];
receiving sound wave signals from two or more devices based on the first setting information [[0041] transmitting device may include two or more transducers, each configured to transmit acoustic signals having different frequencies. The acoustic signals may include identifying information associated with the transmitting device, and/or location information associated with the transmitting device; [0025] location, orientation, and/or direction of the mobile unit can be determined based at least in part on a time of flight (TOF), time difference of arrival (TDOA), angle of arrival (AOA), etc. using trilateration, multilateration, triangulation, or other suitable technique. In some implementations, the location, orientation, and/or direction of a mobile unit can be determined based at least in part on one or more position sensors implemented within or otherwise associated with the mobile unit. For instance, such information can be determined or refined using one or more accelerometers, gyroscopes, inertial measurement units, etc. located within the mobile unit, for instance, using suitable sensor fusion techniques];
calculating a time difference of arrival between the sound wave signals [[0038] mobile unit 204 can determine the location, orientation, and/or direction using any suitable positioning techniques, such as by measuring the TOA, TDOA, TOF, etc. of the acoustic signals and using multilateration, trilateration, triangulation, etc]; and
measuring a position of the first UE based on the time difference of arrival [[0044] location orientation and/or direction of the mobile unit can be determined using any suitable techniques, such as by measuring the TOA, TDOA, TOF, etc. of the acoustic signals and using multilateration, trilateration, triangulation, etc].
(claim 10 recites transmitting information but is otherwise identical to claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasons [[abstract] system includes one or more transmitting devices and one or more mobile devices.])
(claim 11 recites an RF transceiver and receive sound wave signals from two or more devices based on the first setting information but is otherwise identical to claim 1 and is therefore rejected for similar reasons [[0005] transmitting device further includes one or more control devices configured to select the first or second acoustic signals based at least in part on one or more operating capabilities of one or more mobile units associated with the real-time locating system; [0019] beacon data may also include information involving timing of the transmissions be it RF, ultrasonic or other.; [0038] triangulation])
Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Connellan teaches wherein the capability information includes information about performance of a microphone included in the first UE [[0088] switching between sensors can be done based on other conditions than occlusion. For example, one sensor may be experiencing more noise, such as reflections off a nearby object.; [0175] transducer and/or microphone switching can be a dynamic process. For instance, an echo-mapped environment and/or echo history can be used to switch from a first transducer to a second transducer when a detected position of the HMD relative to the controller tends to result in greater measurement inaccuracies ( e.g., due to echo overlapping) when using the first transducer as compared to the second], and wherein the first setting information includes information about a frequency band of the sound wave signals [[0172] pulse whitening technique allows for a very efficient use of the operating frequency band. It is normally applicable to wide-band ultrasound transmissions. The operating ultrasound frequency band is often determined by the physical properties of the transducer/microphone ( e.g. sensitivity). In order to use the whole spectrum of frequencies within the operating ultrasound band and maximize the SNR at the receiving end of the system, the pulse whitening may be applied] and a sound wave multiplexing type [[0008] detected emissions can be propagated according to one of a time-division-multiplexing (TDM) scheme, frequency-division-multiplexing (FDM) scheme, or a code-division-multiplexing (CDM) scheme. The subset of the detected emissions can correspond to emissions received from less than the total number of remote emitters], determined based on at least one of the capability information or the state information [[0189] ultrasound tracking system can have an adaptability technique that, when the signal detection conditions are permissive (e.g., frequency band is not polluted, SNR is strong, correlation peak is strong), the system can switch to the FDM mode to provide a higher report rate by firing multiple transducers simultaneously. On the other hand, when successful signal detection is difficult (e.g., strong perturbation within the frequency band, low SNR, weak correlation peak, etc.), the system can switch to a more robust TDM mode providing a lower report rate, but still maintaining tracking integrity.; [0190]].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to combine the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the transducer and/or microphone adaptive switching as taught by Connellan so that tradeoffs can be made between multiplexing methods using estimates of weak/strong signals, weak/strong correlations, report rate, tracking integrity (Connellan) [[0189]].
Regarding claims 2 and 12, Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Connellan teaches the method of claim 1 and the system of claim 11, wherein the state information includes a movement speed of the UE [[0159] each method can be appropriately weighted such that envelope detection may receive more weighting (e.g., relative influence on the TOF calculation) during periods of detected movement greater than a threshold speed ( e.g., > 10 emfs) and correlation detection may receive more weighting during detected periods of movement less than the threshold speed] and noise information measured based on the microphone [[0166] signal-to-noise (SNR) analysis/correlation can be used to perform peak analysis. An SNR of the received ultrasound signal can be analyzed in order to assess the receive conditions of a given channel and provide the ToF quality estimation. This can also be applied to correlation peak analysis.].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to combine the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the transducer and/or microphone adaptive switching as taught by Connellan so that tradeoffs can be made between multiplexing methods using estimates of weak/strong signals, weak/strong correlations, report rate, tracking integrity (Connellan) [[0189]].
Regarding claim 3, Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Connellan teaches the method of claim 2, wherein the setting information includes information about one sound wave multiplexing type, determined based on the noise information [[0166] signal-to-noise (SNR) analysis/correlation] and movement speed included in the state information [[0159] detected periods of movement less than the threshold speed], among a plurality of multiplexing types, and wherein the multiplexing types include a time-division multiplexing (TDM) type, a frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) type, and a code-division multiplexing (CDM) type [[0008][0189][0190]].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to combine the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the transducer and/or microphone adaptive switching as taught by Connellan so that tradeoffs can be made between multiplexing methods using estimates of weak/strong signals, weak/strong correlations, report rate, tracking integrity (Connellan) [[0189]].
Regarding claim 4, Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Connellan teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the setting information does not include information about a multiplexing type of the FDM type, based on the state information including noise information having noise intensity equal to or greater than a first threshold value [[0159][0166]].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to combine the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the transducer and/or microphone adaptive switching as taught by Connellan so that tradeoffs can be made between multiplexing methods using estimates of weak/strong signals, weak/strong correlations, report rate, tracking integrity (Connellan) [[0189]].
Regarding claim 5, Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Connellan teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the setting information includes information about a multiplexing type determined as the CDM type [[0008][0189][0190]], based on the state information including the noise information having noise intensity equal to or greater than a first threshold value and including the movement speed equal to or greater than a first threshold speed [[0166] signal-to-noise (SNR) analysis/correlation] and movement speed included in the state information; [0159] detected periods of movement less than the threshold speed].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to combine the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the transducer and/or microphone adaptive switching as taught by Connellan so that tradeoffs can be made between multiplexing methods using estimates of weak/strong signals, weak/strong correlations, report rate, tracking integrity (Connellan) [[0189]].
Regarding claim 6, Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Connellan teaches the method of claim 3, wherein a multiplexing type of the sound wave signals is determined as the FDM type or the CDM type [[0008][0189][0190]], based on the state information including the movement speed equal to or greater than a first threshold speed [[0166] signal-to-noise (SNR) analysis/correlation] and movement speed included in the state information; [0159] detected periods of movement less than the threshold speed].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to combine the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the transducer and/or microphone adaptive switching as taught by Connellan so that tradeoffs can be made between multiplexing methods using estimates of weak/strong signals, weak/strong correlations, report rate, tracking integrity (Connellan) [[0189]].
Regarding claim 9, Booij teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising receiving second setting information including information about service zones related to position measurement based on the sound wave signals and including position information of the two or more devices in each service zone, wherein the state information is reported based on the first UE entering one of the service zones [[0066] however, the universe of possible codes may be large, which raises the difficulty of decoding the transmitted code, particularly in an environment having multiple echoes and other difficulties. The RF beacon signal may include an indication of the identity of the beacon device that in turn may be used to provide an indication of the subset of codes that are active in the local area. Thus, by virtue of the RF beacon signal, a mobile communications device (such as an iPhone or a location tag) may determine a course indication of its location and thereby be able to discern which subset of acoustic codes are in use in a particular area. Learning the subset of acoustic codes that are in use in a particular area thereby benefits the decoding process by reducing the universe of potential codes that are candidate codes for decoding.].
Claim 7 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Booij (US 2018/0356520 A1) and Connellan (US 2019/0113966 A1) as applied to claim 3 above, and further in view of Golsch (US 2019/0116556 A1).
Regarding claim 7, Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Golsch teaches the method of claim 3, wherein the capability information further includes information about performance of a processor of the first UE [[abstract] time difference of arrival information; [prior art claim 1] one of received signal strength indicator information, angle of arrival information, and time difference of arrival information for the at least one communication signal sent from the portable device to the control module; [prior art claim 6] main processing module includes a first processor, the wireless communication module includes a second processor, and the first processor is faster than the second processor; [prior art claim 14] main processing module includes a first processor, the wireless communication module includes a second processor, and the first processor is faster than the second processor, the wireless communication module being configured to perform establishing the secure wireless communication connection with the portable device, the main processing module is configured to perform determining the location of the portable device based on the measured signal information, the method further comprising going into a sleep mode, with the main processing module, in response to the portable device leaving a wireless communication range of the wireless communication module].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to modify the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the time difference of arrival determination using a first or second processor with faster processing as taught by Golsch so that power savings may be obtained (Golsch) [[abstract]].
Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Booij (US 2018/0356520 A1), Connellan (US 2019/0113966 A1), and Golsch (US 2019/0116556 A1) as applied to claim 7 above, and further in view of Cheng (US 2019/0274130 A1).
Regarding claim 8, Booij does not explicitly teach and yet Cheng teaches the method of claim 7, wherein a multiplexing type of the sound wave signals is determined as the CDM type [[0051] air interface in the radio access network 200 may utilize one or more multiplexing and multiple access algorithms to enable simultaneous communication of the various devices; [[0086] ranging based location service session and isolate the radio specific resource management from a core network. A radio access network (RAN) node (e.g., a base station or gNB) may allocate radio resources for use in V2X ranging and map that to the Internal ID of the UE.], based on the setting information including the performance of the processor of the first UE equal [[0074] one or more processors … processor as utilized in a scheduling entity] to or greater than a first threshold performance [[0007] connection request indicates that the UE supports a ranging based location service session. The first RAN node receives an Internal identifier (ID) for identifying information, associated with the UE, between the first RAN node and a core network during the ranging based location service session. The first RAN node allocates radio resources, associated with the Internal ID, to the UE for performing a ranging operation in the ranging based location service session involving a plurality of devices including the UE].
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art prior to the effective filing date of the invention to combine the time difference of arrival ranging as taught by Booij, with the allocation of ranging resources as taught by Cheng so that the ranging session is isolated from other scheduled functions (Cheng) [[0055]].
Conclusion
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/JONATHAN D ARMSTRONG/Examiner, Art Unit 3645
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