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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 8-16, and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by SUH et al. (US 2022/0060941 A1), hereinafter SUH.
Regarding claim 1, SUH discloses a method performed by a first station (STA) in a wireless LAN system, the method comprising:
generating a Physical layer Protocol Data Unit (PPDU) including a first universal (U)-signal (SIG) field associated with a first bandwidth and a second U-SIG field associated with a second bandwidth (encoding a preamble portion of the PPDU, wherein the encoding further comprises: encoding a first universal signal field (U-SIG), the first U-SIG comprising one or more information bits regarding a payload portion of the PPDU; encoding at least a second U-SIG, the second U-SIG includes identical one or more information bits regarding the payload portion of the PPDU, see ¶ 0010); and
transmitting the PPDU including the first U-SIG field and the second U-SIG field to a second STA (sending the PPDU including the first U-SIG field and the second U-SIG field to STA 104, see figure 1),
wherein the first U-SIG field includes a first punctured channel information field indicating a first puncturing pattern among a plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the first bandwidth (adopting a first binary convolution code (BCC) puncturing pattern for the first U-SIG, see ¶ 0015), and
wherein the second U-SIG field includes a second punctured channel information field indicating a second puncturing pattern among a plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the second bandwidth (adopting a second BCC puncturing pattern for the second U-SIG, wherein the second BCC puncturing pattern is different from the first BCC puncturing pattern, see ¶ 0015).
Regarding claim 8, SUH discloses the first bandwidth is one of a primary 160 MHz or a primary 320 MHz, and the second bandwidth is one of a secondary 320 MHz or a specific 160 MHz within a secondary 320 MHz (the automatic determining of the PPDU may further include automatically determining a MCS scheme of MCS0 using a single spatial stream in non-punctured channels having one of 80 MHz, 160 MHz and 320 MHz bandwidth intended for a single station (STA), see ¶ 0025).
Regarding claim 9, SUH discloses wherein: each of the first punctured channel information field and the second punctured channel information field is set to different values (the first U-SIG comprising one or more information bits regarding a payload portion of the PPDU; encoding at least a second U-SIG, the second U-SIG includes identical one or more information bits regarding the payload portion of the PPDU, see ¶ 0010).
Regarding claim 10, SUH discloses the PPDU includes an OFDMA-based MU PPDU (the wireless network work 100 may be configured to employ orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) techniques, see ¶ 0055).
Regarding claim 11, SUH discloses the first punctured channel information field includes a bitmap representing the first puncturing pattern, and the second punctured channel information field includes a bitmap representing the second puncturing pattern (the first U-SIG comprising one or more information bits regarding a payload portion of the PPDU; encoding at least a second U-SIG, the second U-SIG includes identical one or more information bits regarding the payload portion of the PPDU, see ¶ 0010).
Regarding claim 12, SUH discloses the first bandwidth and the second bandwidth are each 80 MHz, and the PPDU including at least one of a third U-SIG field corresponding to a third bandwidth, a fourth U-SIG field corresponding to a fourth bandwidth, a fifth U-SIG field corresponding to a fifth bandwidth, a sixth U-SIG field corresponding to a sixth bandwidth, a seventh U-SIG field corresponding to a seventh bandwidth, or an eighth U-SIG field corresponding to an eighth bandwidth is transmitted to the second STA (any of the above aspects may further comprise encoding a plurality of U-SIGs in addition to the first and second U-SIG, wherein each of the plurality of U-SIG includes identical one or more information bits regarding the payload portion of the PPDU, see ¶ 0012).
Regarding claim 13, SUH discloses each of the third bandwidth, the fourth bandwidth, the fifth bandwidth, the sixth bandwidth, the seventh bandwidth, and the eighth bandwidth is 80 MHz (the AP 102 and STA 104 may be configured to communicate over various wireless channel bandwidths including bandwidths having center frequencies of about 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, 6 GHz, and bandwidths of 20 MHz, 40 MHz, or 80 MHz, 80+80 MHz, 160 MHz, 160+160 MHz, 320 MHz, 320+320 MHz, 480 MHz (such as 160+160+160 MHz), 640 MHz bandwidths, see ¶ 0063).
Regarding claim 14, SUH discloses the PPDU includes an OFDMA-based MU PPDU (the wireless network work 100 may be configured to employ orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) techniques, see ¶ 0055).
Regarding claim 15, SUH discloses the first STA is a non-access point (AP) STA, and the second STA is an AP STA (sending the PPDU including the first U-SIG field and the second U-SIG field between AP 102 and STA 104, see figure 1).
Regarding claim 16, SUH discloses a first station (STA) in a wireless LAN system, the first STA comprising: at least one transceiver; and at least one processor connected to the at least one transceiver, wherein the at least one processor is configured to:
generate a Physical layer Protocol Data Unit (PPDU) including a first universal (U)-signal (SIG) field associated with a first bandwidth and a second U-SIG field associated with a second bandwidth (encoding a preamble portion of the PPDU, wherein the encoding further comprises: encoding a first universal signal field (U-SIG), the first U-SIG comprising one or more information bits regarding a payload portion of the PPDU; encoding at least a second U-SIG, the second U-SIG includes identical one or more information bits regarding the payload portion of the PPDU, see ¶ 0010); and
transmit the PPDU including the first U-SIG field and the second U-SIG field to a second STA (sending the PPDU including the first U-SIG field and the second U-SIG field to STA 104, see figure 1),
wherein the first U-SIG field includes a first punctured channel information field indicating a first puncturing pattern among a plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the first bandwidth (adopting a first binary convolution code (BCC) puncturing pattern for the first U-SIG, see ¶ 0015), and
wherein the second U-SIG field includes a second punctured channel information field indicating a second puncturing pattern among a plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the second bandwidth (adopting a second BCC puncturing pattern for the second U-SIG, wherein the second BCC puncturing pattern is different from the first BCC puncturing pattern, see ¶ 0015).
Regarding claim 18, SUH discloses a second station (STA) in a wireless LAN system, the second STA comprising: at least one transceiver; and at least one processor connected to the at least one transceiver, wherein the at least one processor is configured to:
transmit, to the first STA through the at least one transceiver, information related to a total bandwidth for physical layer protocol data unit (PPDU) transmission (sending the PPDU including the first U-SIG field and the second U-SIG field between AP 102 and STA 104, see figure 1); and
receive, from the first STA through the at least one transceiver, the PPDU including a first universal (U)-signal (SIG) field related to a first bandwidth among the total bandwidth and a second U-SIG field related to a second bandwidth among the total bandwidth (encoding a preamble portion of the PPDU, wherein the encoding further comprises: encoding a first universal signal field (U-SIG), the first U-SIG comprising one or more information bits regarding a payload portion of the PPDU; encoding at least a second U-SIG, the second U-SIG includes identical one or more information bits regarding the payload portion of the PPDU, see ¶ 0010),
wherein the first U-SIG field includes a first punctured channel information field indicating a first puncturing pattern among a plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the first bandwidth (adopting a first binary convolution code (BCC) puncturing pattern for the first U-SIG, see ¶ 0015), and
wherein the second U-SIG field includes a second punctured channel information field indicating a second puncturing pattern among a plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the second bandwidth (adopting a second BCC puncturing pattern for the second U-SIG, wherein the second BCC puncturing pattern is different from the first BCC puncturing pattern, see ¶ 0015).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-7 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.
Regarding claim 2-5, when reading the claims considering the specification, none of the references of record alone or in combination disclose or suggest the combination of limitations specified in the claim limitation of: the plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the first bandwidth include at least one puncturing pattern defined for the first bandwidth and at least one puncturing pattern defined for a bandwidth less than or equal to the first bandwidth, and the plurality of puncturing patterns corresponding to the second bandwidth include at least one puncturing pattern defined for the second bandwidth and at least one puncturing pattern defined for a bandwidth less than or equal to the second bandwidth.
Regarding claim 6, when reading the claims considering the specification, none of the references of record alone or in combination disclose or suggest the combination of limitations specified in the claim limitation of: the PPDU including the first U-SIG field is transmitted to the second STA in a remaining bandwidth excluding a first specific bandwidth punctured by the first punctured channel information field among the first bandwidth, and the PPDU including the second U-SIG field is transmitted to the second STA in a remaining bandwidth excluding a second specific bandwidth punctured by the second punctured channel information field among the second bandwidth.
Regarding claim 7, when reading the claims considering the specification, none of the references of record alone or in combination disclose or suggest the combination of limitations specified in the claim limitation of: a plurality of U-SIG fields corresponding to each of a plurality of 20 MHz channels constituting a remaining bandwidth excluding a first specific bandwidth punctured by the first punctured channel information field among the first bandwidth are identical to each other, and a plurality of U-SIG fields corresponding to each of a plurality of 20 MHz channels constituting a remaining bandwidth excluding a second specific bandwidth punctured by the second punctured channel information field among the second bandwidth are identical to each other.
Conclusion
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Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Bob A. Phunkulh whose telephone number is (571) 272-3083. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday-Thursday from 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. (first week of the bi-week) and Monday-Friday (for second week of the bi-week).
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor CHARLES C. JIANG can be reach on (571) 270-7191.
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/BOB A PHUNKULH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2412
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