DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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 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.
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 of this title, 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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2015/0087241 A1 (Van Wiemeersch), in view of US 2021/0083794 A1 (Agarwal) and in further in view of US 7,952,519 B1 (Nielsen), and US 2013/0033381 A1 (Breed).
Regarding Claims 1, 8 and 15:
A method of preventing a theft of a vehicle, comprising: measuring a strength of an observed signal received at the vehicle, the observed signal being within a selected radio frequency band; measuring a quality of the observed signal within the selected radio frequency band; calculating a correlation coefficient between the strength of the observed signal and the quality of the observed signal; attempting to establish a heartbeat signal via a cellular network when the correlation coefficient meets a selected coefficient threshold; determining the observed signal to be a jamming signal when the heartbeat signal is not established; and controlling the vehicle to execute a preventative action for preventing the theft of the vehicle when the observed signal is determined to be the jamming signal (Van Wiemeersch: Figs. 1-4, a RF jamming detection and mitigation system and method that comprises a vehicle and server; the vehicle and server communicate wirelessly; par. 16, system 100 may detect occurrences of RF jamming and take measures to prevent a possible theft as well as record, mitigate, and alert of the occurrence; par. 25-33, the system detects jamming through the signal strength and duration vs. their respective threshold; par. 41, At block 420, the controller 110 may implement a pre-established jamming mitigation measure maintained in the database 125. For example, if a jamming event probability is detected... the vehicle could perform an automatic lock event. Additionally or alternatively, detection of departure may trigger the vehicle 105 security alarm system to arm…, i.e., through hardware actuatrors).
Van Wiemeersch does not explicitly on simultaneously measuring a quality of the observed signal. However, Agarwal teaches (Agarwal par. 53: "A transmission with a high PDCCH radio signal strength indicator (RSSI) and low DMRS signal to noise ratio (SNR) may indicate that jammer or non-benign entity (e.g., a PDCCH jammer, etc.) is present. As such, in some embodiments, the wireless device may be configured to receive the PDCCH and DMRS, determine a radio signal strength indicator (RSSI) for the received PDCCH, determine a signal to noise ratio (SNR) for the DMRS...")
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Van Wiemeersch with simultaneously measuring a quality of the observed signal as further taught by Agarwal. The advantage of doing so is to increase the reliability of jammer detection and prevent false positives caused by natural signal loss.
Van Wiemeersch does not teach explicitly on calculating a "correlation coefficient" between them. However, Nielsen teaches calculating a mathematical correlation coefficient between signal metrics to detect if an observed signal is a jamming/spoofing signal (Nielsen: Col. 9 lines 28-65: "While the general processing would consider the singular values of the data matrix X or eigen values of XX.sup.H a special case of this would be to determine the pairwise correlation between two data vectors. This pairwise correlation can be quantified based on the standard numerical estimate of the correlation coefficient given as..." and Col. 11 lines 14 - 58: "Pairs of channel gain signal sample sequences can be stored as a time sequence. And, as an output of the GNSS receiver, these pairs can be correlated resulting in a numerical estimation of the correlation coefficient as described above. The correlation coefficients can then be compared against a threshold.")
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Van Wiemeersch with calculating a "correlation coefficient" between two signal metrics as further taught by Nielsen. The advantage of doing so is to apply a statistical calculation of a numerical correlation coefficient to the measured metrics (strength and quality) to mathematically evaluate the deviation indicating a jamming signal.
Van Wiemeersch determines jamming directly from RF interference, Breed teaches utilizing periodic scheduled messages (a heartbeat) over a network (cellular/SMS/internet), wherein failure to establish or receive this heartbeat signal triggers the determination that the vehicle is being stolen/jammed (Breed: par. 297-303, Each message sent by the vehicle can contain its ID, the destination for the message and at least an error code… Occasionally the message can be blocked and thus not reach the remote site when expected... Thus, a key feature of this preferred implementation of this invention is to assume that there is a theft-in-progress whenever an expected message is not received...”; par. 366-367, the transmissions from the trailer are very frequent... If the transmissions cease either after or before an event has been detected then both the remote site and the driver are alerted by the monitoring software. Thus, the monitoring site and driver are alerted within seconds of an attempted theft).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Van Wiemeersch with utilizing periodic scheduled messages (a heartbeat) over a network as further taught by Breed. The advantage of doing so is to definitively trigger anti-theft preventative actions only when the cellular heartbeat signal is unable to be established, thereby confirming an active theft/jamming condition before deploying aggressive vehicle mitigations.
Regarding Claim 2, Van Wiemeersch as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, further comprising calculating the correlation coefficient when the strength of the observed signal is greater than a strength threshold and the quality of the observed signal is less than a quality threshold (Agarwal par. 53, determine that a jammer or non-benign network entity is present in the network in response to determining that the PDCCH RSSI satisfies the first threshold (e.g., that the signal strength is high) and the DMRS SNR does not satisfy the second threshold (e.g., that the signal quality is not high enough)", where applying the correlation calculation of Nielsen to the triggering conditions of Agarwal renders this limitation obvious).
Regarding Claim 3, Van Wiemeersch as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 2, further comprising determining the observed signal to be the jamming signal when the correlation coefficient is positive (Nielsen: Col. 9 lines 28-65: FIG. 7 shows a plot of the samples of the magnitude of r.sub.i for the various SV signals generated by the spoofing jammer. Note that the magnitude of r.sub.i are obviously highly correlated…Table 1 Correlation coefficient determined for the set of transmitted spoofing signals... [shows positive correlations ranging from 0.94 to 0.99]).
Regarding Claim 4, Van Wiemeersch as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 3, further comprising attempting to establish a heartbeat signal with a remote location when the correlation coefficient is positive and performing the preventative action when the vehicle is unable to establish the heartbeat signal with the remote location (Breed: e.g., par. 366, the transmissions from the trailer are very frequent... If the transmissions cease either after or before an event has been detected then both the remote site and the driver are alerted by the monitoring software; Van Wiemeersch: par. 41, the controller 110 may implement a pre-established jamming mitigation measure).
Regarding Claim 5, Van Wiemeersch as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the correlation coefficient is a Pearson Correlation Coefficient (Nielsen: Col. 9 lines 28-65, This pairwise correlation can be quantified based on the standard numerical estimate of the correlation coefficient given as...eq. 21, where using the standard Pearson correlation coefficient is an obvious mathematical selection taught explicitly by Nielsen).
Regarding Claim 6, Van Wiemeersch as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 5, further comprising determining the correlation coefficient using strength values and quality values within a moving window (Nielsen: Fig. 2 and Col. 5 and lines 48 - 64, The despread signals, x.sub.i(t) are collected over a snapshot interval of t.epsilon.[0,T]... this interval is divided into M subintervals each of duration .DELTA.T...).
Regarding Claim 7, Van Wiemeersch as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the preventative action is at least one of: (i) turning off an engine of the vehicle; (ii) inhibiting ignition of the engine; (iii) commencing a video recording device at the vehicle; (iv) commencing an audio recording device at the vehicle; (v) generating an alarm at the vehicle; and (vi) placing an upper limit on a speed of the vehicle (Van Wiemeersch: e.g., par. 40-41, the alert response may involve a vehicle 105 based indicator in which the door light-emitting diode (LED) lights flash or the horn begins to chirp… detection of departure may trigger the vehicle 105 security alarm system to arm...).
Regarding Claims 9-14 and 16-20, all limitations are taught by Claims 2-7. Therefore, Claim 9-14 and 16-20 are rejected for the same reasons as Claim 2-7.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHITONG CHEN whose telephone number is (571) 270-1936. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:30am - 5pm.
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/ZHITONG CHEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649
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