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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 08/08/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 2 and 13 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 2 and 13 in line 2, replace” inactivate the bandwidth limitation”, by “inactivate the limited bandwidth”;
Claims 2 and 13 in line 2, replace” inactivation of the bandwidth limitation”, by “inactivation of the limited bandwidth”;
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.
In 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied 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.
Claims 1, 3, 8-10, 12 and 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schnieders; Dominik (2022/0132529 as submitted in IDS), Schnieders hereinafter, in view of Bai et al. (2024/0004715), Bai hereinafter.
Re. claims 1 and 10, Schnieders teaches a computer-implemented method for handling bandwidth of a wireless communication link for a vehicle (Fig. 1-4 & ¶0006 - Edge computing architectures will help to prioritize what data needs to remain on the edge to be processed by the vehicle's onboard computing power or by any computing device nearby the vehicle and what data should be relayed back to data centers for analysis. Fig. 1-4 & ¶0006/¶0008/¶0041/¶0044), and a computer system for handling bandwidth (Fig. 1-4 & ¶0006/¶0008/¶0041/¶0044) of a wireless communication link (Fig. 2) for a vehicle (Fig. 1-4 & ¶0006//¶0008/¶0041/¶0044), wherein the computer system (. Fig. 1-4 & ¶0006/¶0008/¶0041/¶0044) comprises processing circuitry (¶0106) configured to: determine which state a latency critical system of the vehicle is in (Fig. 1-4 & ¶0006 - Edge computing architectures will help to prioritize what data needs to remain on the edge to be processed by the vehicle's onboard computing power or by any computing device nearby the vehicle and what data should be relayed back to data centers for analysis. Fig. 1-4 & ¶0008 - By co-locating servers and computing resources in versatile edge facilities located in both high traffic areas and more far-flung areas with limited bandwidth access, companies can ensure that their autonomous vehicles are able to access the data they need with minimal latency to make decisions quickly. Fig. 1-4 & ¶0039 - latency critical applications, such as driver assistance systems with the exchange of surroundings models, remote rendering and streaming of AR (artificial reality) and VR (virtual reality) applications, VR360 applications, offloading of computer vision algorithms for drones, vehicles, robots, etc. underlie the normal scheduling. The occurring variance with respect to the mean latency and the jitter impede or even hinder the use of latency critical applications via the radio. Further, a static prioritization or static allocation of resources would reduce the spectrum efficiency and, thus, increase the costs for such latency critical applications. Fig.1-4 & ¶0041 - the at least one latency critical application determines in real time on the basis of a present operations status of the at least one latency critical application at least some of the following context data: separated for uplink and downlink: a currently required latency, a maximum required latency, a currently required minimum throughput, maximum error rate, priority, desired duration or number of desired transmissions of this configuration (i. e. for data transfer in the current operations status of the application). Fig. 1-4 & ¶0044 - The at least one latency critical application determines in real time dependent on its current status the mean latency needed at this current point in time, the maximum latency, the data rate needed at this current point in time and further status dependent parameters.); and when the latency critical system is determined to be in an active state (Fig.1-4 & ¶0041 - the at least one latency critical application determines in real time on the basis of a present operations status of the at least one latency critical application at least some of the following context data: separated for uplink and downlink: a currently required latency, a maximum required latency, a currently required minimum throughput, maximum error rate, priority, desired duration or number of desired transmissions of this configuration (i. e. for data transfer in the current operations status of the application). Fig. 1-4 & ¶0044 - The at least one latency critical application determines in real time dependent on its current status the mean latency needed at this current point in time, the maximum latency, the data rate needed at this current point in time and further status dependent parameters),
Yet, Schnieders does not expressly teach determine to limit the bandwidth of the wireless communication link between the vehicle and a wireless communication network such that at least a part of the limited bandwidth is reserved for the latency critical system in active state and a non-latency critical system is at least partly limited from consuming the limited bandwidth.
However, in the analogous art, Bai explicitly discloses determine to limit the bandwidth of the wireless communication link between the vehicle and a wireless communication network such that at least a part of the limited bandwidth is reserved for the latency critical system in active state and a non-latency critical system is at least partly limited from consuming the limited bandwidth (Fig. 1A – Fig.3 & ¶0034 - The control modules 20 of the onboard vehicle data management subsystem 12 include a serial data communication adapter (SDCA) 30, a vehicle data processing module (VDPM) 32, a vehicle cache management module (VCMM) 34, and an intelligent data transmission pipe selection module 36. Fig. 1A – Fig.3 & ¶0035 - The SDCA 30 contains one or more applications 28 or computer code portions that, when executed, convert vehicle 11 serial data into data formats understood and accepted by application tasks executed within the VDPM 32 via data up and/or down sampling, filtering, threshold testing, and data fidelity processing. The VDPM 32 executes applications 28 or computer code portions that may be uploaded from the back-office computational subsystem 14 to support application tasks. Application tasks are used to develop data insights for back-office computational subsystem 14 tasks through processing data and fusing together various different types of vehicle 11 data such as vehicle telemetry, telematics, infotainment data and the like. In several aspects, the VCMM 34 is embedded hardware that executes applications 28 or computer code portions that store, cache, and manage certain delay-tolerant vehicle 11 serial data in large volumes. That is, some vehicle 11 data, such as vehicle 11 dynamics data relating to safety system performance, active vehicle 11 handling, or other such real-time response-required systems are not delay-tolerant. Accordingly, such non-delay-tolerant vehicle 11 serial data is given computational and communications priority over delay-tolerant system 10 data where appropriate. Delay-tolerant data may relate to non safety-critical systems and can be transmitted between the onboard vehicle computational subsystem 12 and back-office computational subsystem 14 continuously, periodically, or the like. For example, delay-tolerant data may be transmitted only periodically in situations where communications bandwidth limitations require that non-delay-tolerant data be prioritized for communication, such as in a physical location where wireless communications means (e.g. LTE, WiFi, or the like) have poor signal quality. The intelligent data pipe selection module 36 determines which underlying data communication channel is appropriate to transmit vehicle 11 data from the VCMM 34 to the back-office computational subsystem 14 based on application task requirements.).
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Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine Schnieders’s invention of a system and a method for real time adaptation of a latency critical application in a wireless communication system to include Bai’s invention of a system and a method for cloud coordinated vehicle data in a vehicle control and communications system, because it provides a new and improved system and method for coordinated vehicle data collection that allows for platform and vehicle flexibility, upgradability on both the vehicular end and the remote end of the system, and which operate on preexisting hardware as well as new hardware while maintaining or decreasing the cost of manufacture, assembly, and operation. (¶0001-¶0003, Bai)
Re. claims 3 and 12, Schnieders and Bai teach claims 1 and 10.
Schnieders further teaches wherein multiple latency critical systems of the vehicle are in active state, wherein the method comprises: determining, by the processing circuitry a priority associated with each of the latency critical systems that are in active state; and determining, by the processing circuitry to apply the bandwidth limitation to the latency critical systems in increasing priority order. (See ¶0134-¶0137 along the table, see snapshot below).
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Re. claim 8, Schnieders and Bai teach claim 1.
Schnieders further teaches wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to determine the state of the latency critical system based on state information obtained from the latency critical system. (Fig. 1-4 & ¶0134 - The possible operating points B1, B2, . . . , BM for each application A_1, A_2, . . . , A_N are defined beforehand by a developer. The operating points B1, B2, . . . , BM generally differ from application to application, i.e. generally each application A_1, A_2, . . . A_N has its own set of operating points. For the sake of convenience, the operating points for all applications are designated by B1, B2, . . . , BM. The same applies to the parameters P1, P2, . . . PK. The aim of such determination of operating points is to perform a substitution of uncontrollable errors and states due to changed latency and throughput by a controlled reduced user experience. Also, see table below.)
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Re. claim 9, Schnieders and Bai teach claim 1.
Schnieders further teaches a vehicle comprising the computer system of claim 1 and a latency critical system. (See ¶0006-0008, ¶0013-¶0014, ¶0039, ¶0046, ¶0056).
Re. claim 14, Schnieders and Bai teach claim 1.
Schnieders further teaches a computer program product comprising program code for performing, when executed by a processing circuitry (Fig. 1-4 & ¶0106), the method of claim 10.
Re. claim 15, Schnieders and Bai teach claim 1.
Schnieders further teaches a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium comprising instructions, which when executed by a processing circuitry (Fig. 1-4 & ¶0106), cause the processing circuitry to perform the method of claim 10
Claims 2, 6, 11 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Schnieders, in view of Bai, further in view of Esswie et al. (2024/0022964), Esswie hereinafter.
Re. claims 2 and 11, Schnieders and Bai teach claims 1 and 10.
Yet, Schnieders and Bai do not expressly teach when the latency critical system is determined to be in an inactive state, determining, by the processing circuitry, to inactivate the bandwidth limitation or to continue with the inactivation of the bandwidth limitation.
However, in the analogous art, Esswie explicitly discloses when the latency critical system is determined to be in an inactive state, determining, by the processing circuitry, to inactivate the bandwidth limitation or to continue with the inactivation of the bandwidth limitation. (Fig. 1-17 & ¶0070 - a single BWP for a carrier may be active at a given time and communications for a UE 115 may be restricted to one or more active BWPs. Fig. 1-17 & ¶0112 - If UE 115C makes such a determination that a violation level corresponding to the use that UE 115C is making of the resource is lower than the violation level received in the first-stage SCI transmitted by UE 115B at act 420, UE 115C may stop, or halt, using the resource. Fig. 1-17 & ¶0113 - At act 435, UE 115A may prepare the critical payload (e.g., packets that have been buffered at UE 115A an amount of time approaching a latency criterion associated with the packets) for transmission using the resource that UE 115C stopped, or halted, use of at act 430.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine Schnieders’s invention of a system and a method for real time adaptation of a latency critical application in a wireless communication system and Bai’s invention of a system and a method for cloud coordinated vehicle data in a vehicle control and communications system to include Esswie’s invention of latency and reliability improvements for sidelink service in a wireless communication system, because it provides an improved sidelink channel reliability and latency in multi-device multi-capability sidelink deployments in the wireless communication system. (¶0057, Esswie)
Re. claims 4 and 13, Schnieders and Bai teach claims 1 and 10.
Yet, Schnieders and Bai do not expressly teach wherein the bandwidth limitation comprises one or more of: a bandwidth threshold that the bandwidth consumption should not exceed; and/or disabling upload and/or download of data having a size above a size threshold.
However, in the analogous art, Esswie explicitly discloses wherein the bandwidth limitation comprises one or more of: a bandwidth threshold that the bandwidth consumption should not exceed (Fig. 1-17 & ¶0104 - Turning now to FIG. 2B, the figure illustrates environment 201 where, compared to environment 200 shown in FIG. 2A, user equipment 115H and 1151 are now part of group 220 and may be conducting a communication session with radio access network node 105 that comprises critical traffic that may have a low latency requirement or a high reliability requirement. Since user equipment 115H and 1151 are now part of group 220, radio access network node 105 may transmit to user equipment 115H and 1151 configuration 205 which may comprise an indication for user equipment 115H and 1151 to use bandwidth part 260 to communicate with the radio access network node. However, after user equipment 115H and 1151 become part of group 220, BWP 260 may become more heavily used/loaded such that static resources corresponding to BWP 260 may not satisfactorily support traffic characteristic requirements (e.g., latency, reliability or other QoS requirement) corresponding to group 220. Accordingly, radio access network node 105 may transmit to at least one user equipment of group 220 a bandwidth part resource assignment indication 210 indicative that the radio access network node has granted a grant of sharable resource(s) 270 to at least one user equipment of group 220. Radio access network node 105 may determine to assign sharable resource 270 to bandwidth part 260 and to suspend, or revoke, the grant, or assignment, of shareable resources 270 to bandwidth part 255 based on traffic characteristics corresponding to user equipment of group 215, for example, the traffic corresponding to group 215 being best effort traffic, and based on traffic corresponding to group 220 being critical traffic (e.g., traffic having a low latency requirement or a high reliability requirement). Fig. 1-17 & ¶0105 - dynamic BWP bandwidth assignment 400. A RAN node may first determine a lightly loaded BWP having a resource utilization ratio below a predefined threshold. For example, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (“URLLC”) BWP 330 may be a lightly loaded BWP due to the sporadic URLLC traffic arrivals at a transmitter. Also, examiner interprets that only of the claimed limitation to be mapped as because of the presence “and/or”.); and/or disabling upload and/or download of data having a size above a size threshold.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine Schnieders’s invention of a system and a method for real time adaptation of a latency critical application in a wireless communication system and Bai’s invention of a system and a method for cloud coordinated vehicle data in a vehicle control and communications system to include Esswie’s invention of latency and reliability improvements for sidelink service in a wireless communication system, because it provides an improved sidelink channel reliability and latency in multi-device multi-capability sidelink deployments in the wireless communication system. (¶0057, Esswie)
Re. claim 6, Schnieders and Bai and Esswie teach claim 4.
Yet, Schnieders and Bai do not expressly teach wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to dynamically set the bandwidth threshold based on available bandwidth or predicted bandwidth.
However, in the analogous art, Esswie explicitly discloses wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to dynamically set the bandwidth threshold based on available bandwidth or predicted bandwidth. (Fig. 1-17 & ¶0117 - FIG. 8, at act 810, on condition of RAN node 105 determining a light loading of source BWP resources (e.g., a resource utilization below a predefined threshold), and determining a high loading, or an overloading, of a target BWP (e.g., a resource utilization being above a predefined threshold), the RAN node may determine BWP resource sharing information, or a sharable resource pattern, corresponding to sharable bandwidth part resources to be dynamically reassigned from the source BWP to the target BWP.)
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of the ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to combine Schnieders’s invention of a system and a method for real time adaptation of a latency critical application in a wireless communication system and Bai’s invention of a system and a method for cloud coordinated vehicle data in a vehicle control and communications system to include Esswie’s invention of latency and reliability improvements for sidelink service in a wireless communication system, because it provides an improved sidelink channel reliability and latency in multi-device multi-capability sidelink deployments in the wireless communication system. (¶0057, Esswie)
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 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.
Claim 5 - wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to determine the bandwidth threshold by: performing N simulations of the vehicle’s bandwidth consumption, wherein the N simulations are performed for M number of predefined bandwidth thresholds, and wherein N and M are positive integers; logging latency data for each simulation N; determining a maximum latency amongst the logged latency data; and if the maximum latency for simulation N is lower than a latency threshold, determining the bandwidth threshold to be the predefined bandwidth threshold used in simulation N.
Claim 7- wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to: monitor latency during the vehicle’s bandwidth consumption; determine to reduce the bandwidth threshold when the monitored latency is above a latency threshold; and to determine to increase the bandwidth threshold when the monitored latency is constant or reduced.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
IEEE Selective Redundant MP-QUIC for 5G Mission Critical Wireless Applications; Author: Rasmus S. Mogensen et al. Nokia Bell Labs, Aalborg, Denmark; Date of Conference: 28 April 2019 - 01 May 2019; See Sections I-V.
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/MOHAMMED S CHOWDHURY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2467
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