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
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.
Claim(s) 1-14, 19-24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cisco (US 11570684 ) in view of Sabesan (US 7471669).
Regarding claim 1, Cisco discloses a radio communication system comprising a plurality of radio devices configured as a radio mesh network (fig. 1), wherein the radioing. communication system comprises:
a source radio device of the plurality of radio devices; a destination radio device of the plurality of radio devices; and one or more intermediate radio devices of the plurality of radio devices, located sequentially along a communication path through the radio mesh network from the source radio device to the destination radio device (fig. 1), wherein:
the source radio device is configured to transmit a first message by radio through the radio mesh network for receipt by the destination radio device, wherein the first message encodes an identifier of the source radio device (fig. 3, step 306, col. 6 - col. 7, the source node originates a route request packet, and broadcasts the route request packet to neighbors linked directly to the source node; includes a source address for the source node, a destination address for the destination node),
each of the one or more intermediate radio devices of the plurality of radio devices is configured to receive the first message, encode an identifier of the respective intermediate radio device within the first message, and transmit the first message by radio through the radio mesh network along the communication path in a direction towards the destination radio device (fig. 3, step 308, when an MR receives a request packet from a previous MR that forwarded the packet to the MR; the MR appends its address to an accumulated path, the MR broadcasts/forwards the updated request packet to next MRs in mesh network 102),
the destination radio device is configured to receive the first message and decode the respective identifiers of the source radio device and of each of the one or more intermediate radio devices from the first message (fig. 3, step 310, the destination node receives the request packets; the destination node determines which of the accumulated paths are trusted paths. A trusted path is an accumulated path for which all of the MRs along the accumulated path are indicated as being trusted).
the destination radio device is configured to transmit a second message by radio through the radio mesh network for receipt by the source radio device, wherein the second message encodes the respective identifiers of the source radio device and of each of the one or more intermediate radio devices (fig. 3, step 314, the destination node generates a route reply and unicasts/forwards the route reply back to the source node through mesh network 102. The route reply includes a source address for the destination node, a destination address for the source node, and an indication of the preferred path, i.e., the identities of the MRs that define the preferred path); and
each of the one or more intermediate radio devices is configured to receive the second message, decode from the second message a respective identifier of a respective next radio device along the communication path in a direction towards the source radio device, the respective next radio device being one of the one or more intermediate radio devices or the source radio device, and use the respective identifier to transmit the second message by radio to the respective next radio device (fig. 3, step 314, the route reply traverses the MRs of the preferred path in reverse from the order in which they were traversed from the source node to the destination node. Here, each node on the path receives the second message and forwards the message to next downstream node in the reverse path).
Cisco only discloses each intermediate node broadcasts/forwards the updated request packet to next MRs in mesh network 102. When the network is a linear network, that is, all nodes in the network are along one line path, then Cisco is considered disclosing each intermediate node transmits the first message by radio through the radio mesh network along the communication path in a direction towards the destination radio device. To further support this feature, Sabesan discloses each intermediate node transmits the first message by radio through the radio mesh network along the communication path in a direction towards the destination radio device (Sabesan, figs. 3-5, col. 5, a packet is source routed from a source (such as a focal node 14) to a destination (such as a node 10) via a 4 hop route).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing to combine the teachings as given by Cisco with the teachings given by Sabesan. The motivation for doing so would have been to reduce the computation at the first node as well as at intermediate nodes along the communication path (Sabesan, col. 2, 3rd para.).
Claims 19 and 21 are rejected similarly as claim 1.
Regarding claims 2, 22, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of radio devices are configured to route the first message according to a tree-based routing protocol (Sabesan, col. 1, one form of calculation is to construct a tree of shortest paths across the network ).
Regarding claim 3, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of radio devices are configured to transmit the first message only to the one or more intermediate radio devices along the communication path and to the destination radio device (Sabesan, figs. 3-5, col. 5, a packet is source routed from a source (such as a focal node 14) to a destination (such as a node 10) via a 4 hop route).
Regarding claim 4, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 3, wherein the plurality of radio devices are configured to route the first message according to a tree-based routing protocol in which the destination radio device is at a root of the tree (Sabesan, col. 1, one form of calculation is to construct a tree of shortest paths across the network ).
Regarding claim 5, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 3, wherein the destination radio device is a gateway to a further network (Sabesan, fig. 1, node F can be a destination and is a gateway to a further network 20 )
Regarding claims 6, 23, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of radio devices are configured to route the first message by flooding (Cisco, fig. 3, the source node and each intermediate node broadcast the first message, that is, flooding).
Claim 24 is rejected similarly with claims 2 and 6.
Regarding claim 7, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 6, wherein the destination radio device is configured, upon receiving a plurality of copies of the first message, to identify a copy that traversed a smallest number of intermediate radio devices between the source radio device and the destination radio device (Sabesan, col. 1, to construct a tree of shortest paths across the network), or to identify a copy that was received first by the destination radio device, and to encode, in the second message, identifiers of the one or more intermediate radio devices decoded from the identified copy (Cisco, fig. 3, step 314, the destination node generates a route reply and unicasts/forwards the route reply back to the source node through mesh network 102. The route reply includes a source address for the destination node, a destination address for the source node, and an indication of the preferred path, i.e., the identities of the MRs that define the preferred path).
Regarding claims 8, 20, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the destination radio device and the one or more intermediate radio devices each configured to transmit the second message to only one respective radio device (Cisco, fig. 3, step 314, the destination node generates a route reply and unicasts/forwards the route reply back to the source node through mesh network 102. The route reply includes a source address for the destination node, a destination address for the source node, and an indication of the preferred path, i.e., the identities of the MRs that define the preferred path).
Regarding claim 9, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the destination radio device is configured to store data associating the source radio device identifier with the identifiers of the one or more intermediate radio devices in a memory of the destination radio device, and to use the stored data when generating or transmitting the second message (Cisco, step 310, 312) .
Regarding claim 10, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 9, wherein the destination radio device is configured to store the data as an entry in a database, and is configured to store respective identifiers of a plurality of different source radio devices in the database in association with respective sets of identifiers of one or more respective intermediate radio devices for the respective source radio devices (Cisco, fig. 3, the process can be repeated for different source nodes).
Regarding claim 11, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein all of the plurality of radio devices, or all but one of the plurality of radio devices, are configured to act as intermediate radio devices when receiving a message for which the respective radio device is not the destination of the message (Sabesan, fig. 1, node F is a gateway which may not be configured to act as an intermediate node. Normally, a gateway node acts as a source node or destination, but not an intermediate node).
Regarding claim 12, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the one or more intermediate radio devices are a plurality of intermediate radio devices and are configured to encode their respective identifiers as an ordered list within the first message, the ordered list corresponding to an order in which the intermediate radio devices are located along the communication path, and wherein the destination radio device is configured to encode the respective identifiers of the one or more intermediate radio devices as a corresponding ordered list within the second message (Cisco, fig. 3, step 312-314, the destination node generates a route reply and unicasts/forwards the route reply back to the source node through mesh network 102 using the selected path. The route reply includes a source address for the destination node, a destination address for the source node, and an indication of the preferred path, i.e., the identities of the MRs that define the preferred path. The path is the ordered list of within the first message and is used to transmit the second message back to the source node; col. 12; Source MR->MR-1->MR-5->MR-6->MR-11->MR-12->Destination MR).
Regarding claim 13, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the destination radio device is configured to transmit the second message in response to receiving the first message (Cisco, fig. 3, step 314, in response to the original route request packet, the destination node generates a route reply; the route reply traverses the MRs of the preferred path in reverse from the order in which they were traversed from the source node to the destination node).
Regarding claim 14, Cisco and Sabesan disclose the radio communication system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of radio devices are configured to transmit and receive messages according to a version of the DECT-2020 New Radio standard (Cisco, fig. 1, an example wireless mesh network (WMN) configured to implement source routing protocols extended to include attestation methods to establish trust between nodes in the WMN, according to an example embodiment. Note, WMN is a generic network, which can use various type of standards including the DECT-2020 New Radio standard. The routing protocol disclosed by Cisco and Sabesan can be used in a DECT-2020 new radio network).
Conclusion
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/ZHENSHENG ZHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2474
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