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 .
Claims 1 to 30 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The references listed in the information disclosure statement submitted on 11-4-2025, 1-15-2026 and 2-3-2026 have been considered by the examiner (see attached PTO-1449).
Election/Restrictions
Claims 13 to 17 and 25 to 30 are withdrawn from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 12-22-2025.
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 7, 18 and 22 to 24 are objected to because of the following informalities: please change “user info” recited on line 5, with ‘user information’.
Appropriate correction is required.
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 to 2, 7, 18 to 19 and 23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Song et al. (USPAP 2024/0283561).
Claims 1 and 18:
Song substantially teaches the claimed invention. Song teaches a method and devices for a wireless communication for WiFi that includes signaling for multiple modulation and coding schemes for a single user, the device comprising: one or more access point (AP) (102) (“first wireless communication) communicating frames (140) to one or more user devices (120) (“second wireless communication device”) in accordance with IEEE 802.11 communication standards (see fig. 1 and par. 0039). Song teaches that the user devices and the AP may include one or more computer systems and includes any suitable processor driven device (see par. 0041). Song teaches that the frames communicated, supports an extremely high throughput (EHT) signal field (EHT-SIG) content channel comprising a common filed (204) and a user specific field (206) (see par. 0051). The user specific field may include 22 bits of a user subfield, with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) field, a tail and padding fields (see par. 0051). Song teaches that the user specific field includes a modulation and coding (MCS) field of 4 bits (see par. 0052).
Song teaches that an Ultra High Reliability (UHR-SIG) uses additional bits for (MCS) such as 6 bits for unequal modulation and the newly added (MCS’s) (see par. 0054). Song teaches that MCS for unequal modulation with unequal patterns and newly added MCS’s may support a number of spatial streams (NSS) subfield wherein 2 spatial streams, 3 spatial streams and 4 spatial streams are (see par. 0054). Song teaches that a user can obtain the number of spatial streams through the NSS subfield and then obtain its equal MCS assignment or unequal modulation/QAM assignment by checking the MCS subfield table corresponding to the obtained NSS (see par. 0055). Song also teaches that new MCS in single user transmission enables low complexity and overhead. Song teaches applying unequal modulation to a single user (SU) transmission over full bandwidth (see par. 0030).
Song teaches that MCS subfield in UHR-SIG needs to be defined to support bit unequal modulation and newly added MCS, wherein the newly added MCSs can have 2 spatial streams, 3 spatial streams or 4 spatial streams. Song teaches that two additional bits in the MCS subfield of UHR-SIG comes from one reserve bit and the 1-bit coding subfield in the user field of the UHR-SIG. Song teaches that in a first option, the coding subfield of 1 bit is utilized to indicate low density parity check (LDPC) or binary convolutional code (BCC) coding (see par. 0060). Song teaches that a functional diagram of a communication station (700) that may be suitable for use as AP or user devices, comprising a memory (708) storing configuration information for the processor to perform the various operations (see par. 0077).
However, Song fails to specifically teach the claimed limitation of: “the subfield comprising at least two bits supporting at least three coding scheme options;” however, this limitation is obvious to the teachings of Song since, Song teaches that features of some embodiments may be substituted for those of other embodiments. Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the subfield of Song to include the claimed limitation of “the subfield comprising at least two bits supporting at least three coding scheme options” because Song teaches that changes can be made to the structural, logical, electrical, process or algorithm of an embodiment. This modification would have been obvious because a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to change the subfield of the invention because Song teaches that the structure or logical or electrical or an algorithm of a wireless communication system having a subfield is modifiable (see par. 0015).
As per claims 2 and 19, Song teaches coding schemes comprising a low-density parity check (LDPC), 2X lifted low density parity check and binary convolutional coding (BCC) (see par. 0035 and 0060).
As per claims 7 and 23, Song teaches that the user specific field (206) includes a beamforming subfield (see fig. 2 and par. 0052). Song teaches that the modulation and coding (MCS) subfield of the user specific filed supports both unequal modulation and newly added MCS’s using an unequal modulation pattern (see par. 0054). Song teaches that single user (SU) transmission includes a Common filed and a User Specific field that utilizes different requirements such as unequal modulation patterns (see par. 0034 et seq.).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3 to 6, 8 to 12, 20-22 and 24 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Chen et al. (USPAP 2021/0045151) discloses physical layer preamble and signaling for wireless communication.
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/Shelly A Chase/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2112