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 .
Applicant’s Response to the Non-Final Office Action
The non-final Office action (NFOA) described that claim 2 recited allowable subject matter. See NFOA at 8. The applicant has amended the independent claims to include limitations that are similar to those found in previous claim 2, and submits that the claims are now in condition for allowance. See Remarks at 10. The examiner disagrees.
Previous claim 2 recited “correcting the one or more CSI impairments based on radio frequency (RF) chain order correction, automatic gain control (AGC) compensation, phase error correction, and resampling of the CSI.” Due to the word “and”, the claim required correcting CSI impairments based on all of the four methods that are recited in the claim. The independent claims have been amended to include a similar limitation, but have replaced this “and” with the word “or.” The broadest reasonable interpretation of these claims only requires correcting CSI impairments using one of the four methods. These claims are of broader scope than previous claim 2, and the indication that previous claim 2 recited allowable subject matter does not apply to amended claims 1, 11, and 16.
The applicant argues that the Li reference that was relied upon in the NFOA does not anticipate the amended claims. See Remarks at 11-12. The examiner disagrees. Li discloses processing CSI information by “recovering true phase information from the phase information of the CSI by correcting synchronisation errors between the transmitter of the signal (the target 405) and the receiver (access point 410) at which the CSI was collected regarding their clocks and/or timings. This allows the true phase of subcarriers of the CSI to be recovered.” Li ¶ 72. The POSITA would understand this to describe a form of “phase error correction” that is equivalent to what the amended independent claims now recite. Therefore Li anticipates these claims. See the updated § 102 rejections below.
The assertion of official notice that was made in the rejection of claims 3-6, 10, 14, 17, and 21 was not traversed, rendering the asserted subject matter admitted prior art. See MPEP 2144.03(C).
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(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.
Claims 1, 11, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) and 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Li, US 20220007139.
Claim 1: Li discloses a method comprising:
sending one or more frames to one or more transceivers to initiate a process of frame exchanges (Transmitters in the system initiate transmission of signal, i.e., initiate a process of frame exchanges. ¶29.);
receiving, based on the frame exchanges, channel state information (CSI) having one or more CSI impairments; processing the CSI to adjust the one or more CSI impairments of the CSI to generate a plurality of cleaned CSI metrics (CSI parameters are received based on the transmission of the signals. ¶31. Localization parameters are extracted based on the CSI signals. ¶71. The CSI has impairments such as noise and synchronization errors, which are processed to produce cleaned CSI metrics, such as amplitude and phase information. ¶¶ 31-32 and 72-73.) by correcting the one or more CSI impairments based on phase error correction (Based on the phase information of the CSI, the true phase information of the subcarriers of the CSI is recovered by correcting synchronization errors. ¶ 72. This describes correcting the CSI based on a phase error correction); and
estimating a velocity of a user using the plurality of cleaned CSI metrics (Location and velocity of the target is estimated based on the cleaned CSI metrics. ¶¶ 11-18 and 80. The description of receiving and “cleaning” the CSI information in ¶¶ 69-73 relates to training the neural network. However, the POSITA would understand that when determining a target’s location and velocity, this same process is followed. For example, ¶31 describes that “localization parameters” that enable the velocity to be estimated include “one or more parameters of channel state information (CSI) (such as the amplitude and/or phase of one or more specific subcarriers).” See also ¶80. To obtain the amplitude and phase information, the POSITA would understand that the raw CSI information must be filtered and “cleaned” as described in ¶¶ 32 and 71-73.).
Claim 11: see rejection of claim 1. Li discloses a velocity tracking system, comprising: one or more transceivers; and an inference engine comprising a processor, the processor configured to cause the inference engine to perform the method of claim 1. See Li Fig. 1 and its description. Here, the inference engine is the device that operates the run-time model. See e.g. ¶¶25-26 and 80.
Claim 16: see rejection of claims 1 and 11.
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 3 and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Malkin, US 20240187833.
Claims 3 and 21: Li fails to disclose that estimating the velocity of the user using the plurality of cleaned CSI metrics comprises combining the cleaned CSI metrics to obtain the velocity estimate based on direct current (DC) offset removal, wavelet denoising, and wavelet transform to maintain resolvability in Doppler and time domains.
Malkin discloses, in an RF sensing system, estimating movement information based on DC offset removal, noise reduction, and other pre-processing steps. Malkin ¶¶ 7 and 154.
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Li with teachings in Malkin, the rationale being to produce more accurate velocity estimate. Li-Malkin does not disclose that the velocity estimate is further based on wavelet denoising and transform. However, official notice is taken that these were well known processing steps, and using these steps in the Li-Malkin system would have been obvious in order to produce a velocity estimate of higher accuracy.
Claims 4-6, 10, 14, and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li.
Claim 4: Li does not disclose identifying desired CSI metrics to be included in the CSI received; and sending information indicating the desired CSI metrics to the one or more transceivers. But official notice is taken that this was well known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Therefore it would have been obvious to the POSITA to modify Li to include this, the rationale being to ensure that CSI metrics are received that are most useful when estimating a user velocity. The POSITA would understand that this would increase accuracy of the estimate.
Claims 5 and 17: Li does not disclose that initiating the process of frame exchanges further comprises: indicating one or more of inter-packet transmission times, total duration of a frame exchange sequence, number of frame exchanges to be performed, a bandwidth of frames to be used for transmission, or a combination thereof. But official notice is taken that this was well known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Therefore it would have been obvious to the POSITA to modify Li to include this, the rationale being to provide increase flexibility in how the measurements are made by enabling these parameters to be specified.
Claim 6: Li does not disclose sending a frame of the one or more frames to solicit the desired CSI metrics from the one or more transceivers. But official notice is taken that this was well known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Therefore it would have been obvious to the POSITA to modify Li to include this, the rationale being to ensure that CSI metrics are received that are most useful when estimating a user velocity. The POSITA would understand that this would increase accuracy of the estimate.
Claims 10 and 14: Li does not disclose: before sending one or more frames to one or more transceivers to initiate a process of frame exchanges, determining whether to initiate the process of frame exchanges based on a user input, a sensor measurement, or a predetermined environmental condition. But official notice is taken that this was well known in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. Therefore it would have been obvious to the POSITA to modify Li to include this, the rationale being to enable more control over how and when the measurements are made, thereby conserving resources.
Claims 7-9, 12, 13, 15, and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li in view of Qian, CN 106792505.
Claim 7: Li does not disclose, but Qian discloses: estimating the velocity of the user using the plurality of cleaned CSI metrics further comprises: performing a signal transform process; and performing a path length change rate (PLCR) estimation process using an output from the signal transform process (Qian Fig. 1 and its description. See e.g. the description of step S1 in ¶¶ 22-28 (see pg. 3-4 of the included English translation)).
It would have been obvious to a skilled artisan before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Li with teachings in Qian, the rationale being to produce more accurate velocity estimate.
Claim 8: Li-Qian discloses that estimating the velocity of the user using the plurality of cleaned CSI metrics further comprises: selecting a subcarrier of the plurality of subcarriers as a basis for estimating a PLCR estimation value for one or more transmitter-receiver pair of the one or more transceivers (Qian ¶¶30-32). Qian does not disclose extracting a peak-to-average ratio (PAR) for each of a plurality of subcarriers used for the process of frame exchanges. But Qian teaches selecting a “most energetic” subcarrier having the most relevant information for the measurement. See Qian claim 3, for example. It was well known to use PAR to make this determination. Therefore, to the extent that Qian does not explicitly teach this, it would have been obvious to the POSITA to use this method to determine the most energetic subcarriers, the rationale being to provide a simple method of making this determination.
Claim 9: Li-Qian discloses that estimating the velocity of the user using the plurality of cleaned CSI metrics further comprises: converting the PLCR estimation value for each of one or more transmitter-receiver pairs to a PLCR vector for each of the one or more transmitter-receiver pairs indicating a location of the user; and determining a velocity vector using the PLCR vector for each of the one or more transmitter-receiver pairs (See Fig. 2-8 and their description).
Claims 12 and 19: see rejection of claims 8.
Claims 13 and 20: see rejection of claim 9.
Claims 15 and 18: see rejection of claim 7.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROBERT J HANCE whose telephone number is (571)270-5319. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 11:00am-7:00pm ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Michael Fuelling can be reached at (571) 270-1367. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ROBERT J HANCE/Reexamination Specialist, Art Unit 3992
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