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 .
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) 1-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Parekh et al., US 20110252155 A1 (hereafter referred to as Parekh) in view of Howes et al., US 20140146676 A1 (hereafter referred to as Howes).
Claim 1, Parekh teaches a system (Figure 1), comprising:
an application server (video server 100) configured to:
generate a plurality of data packets (p. 33, “The wireless communication system of FIG. 1 also includes a video server 100, which is the source of the video content.”) to represent a content item (p. 36, “the video server 100 may include a Moving Picture Expert Group (MPEG) encoder to convert an input video into subsequent groups of frames called Groups of Pictures (GOPs).”); and
assigned an indication to a second data packet of the plurality of data packets that the second data packet is dependent on a first data packet of the plurality of data packets (p. 41, “the video server 100 indicates the type of each frame in the Type of Service (ToS) field of a header of each video packet.” And p. 37, “The I-frames are encoded without reference to other frames, and are used as the reference frame for each GOP. Generally, a GOP includes at least one I-frame, and pluralities of P-frames and B-frames, where a plurality of GOPs comprises a scene in a video sequence.”); and
a network device (p. 41, “Then, after the video server 100 encodes the video packets, the video server 100 continuously transmits the video packets over a communication channel to the base station 120, which the base station 120 processes according the frame arrival management scheme discussed below.”) configured to:
determine whether to discard the first data packet according to a timing criteria for receipt of the first data packet by a device (p. 50, “If it is time to check the sub-queues, in step 455, the queue management unit 110 determines if the first frame (an I-frame) in the first sub-queue 102-1 for storing I-frames is delayed more than the maximum delay threshold for I-frames.” “However, if the first I-frame in the first sub-queue 102-1 is delayed more than the corresponding maximum delay threshold; in step 460, the queue management unit 110 discards the first I-frame.”); and
discard the second data packet responsive to discard of the first data packet and according to the indication assigned to the second data packet (p. 50, “Subsequently, in step 465, the queue management unit 110 discards the P-frames and B-frames from the second sub-queue 102-2 and the third sub-queue 102-3, respectively, which are dependent on the discarded first I-frame.”).
Parekh does not specifically assign an indication to a second data packet of the plurality of data packets that the second data packet is dependent on a first data packet of the plurality of data packets. However, in the same field of endeavor, Howes teaches specifically assign an indication to a second data packet of the plurality of data packets that the second data packet is dependent on a first data packet of the plurality of data packets (p. 55, “…[T]he priority determination logic 125 produces additional packet header information 295 (… Redundancy/ Dependency tags) that may be added within the header portions of the network packets in order to provide relationship information needed by the resource management logic 160 for placement of these network packets into appropriate transmit queues.”).
Claim 11 is a device, comprising: a wireless communications interface; and one or more processors similar to the operations of claim 1. Claim 11 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 12 is a device of configured to generate the plurality of data packets for receipt by an application server similar to claim 1 above. Claim 12 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 18 is a method comprising steps similar to the operations of the system of claim 1 above. Claim 18 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 2, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the network device is configured to discard the second data packet responsive to a timing threshold for receipt of the second data packet by the device being exceeded (Parekh, p. 51, “However, if the first P-frame in the second sub-queue 102-2 is delayed more than the corresponding maximum delay threshold, in step 475, the queue management unit 110 discards the P-frame from the second sub-queue 102-2.”).
Claim 13 is a device comprising steps similar to the operations of the system of claim 2 above. Claims 13 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 20 is a method comprising steps similar to the operations of the system of claim 2 above. Claims 20 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 3, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the content item is a video frame, the first data packet is to represent an I-frame of the video frame, and the second data packet is to represent a P-frame of the video frame (Parekh, p. 5, “The method includes determining a type of frame from a header of a video packet received at a transmit buffer. The type of frame is one of an intra-coded frame (I-frame), predictive-coded frame (P-frame), and bidirectionally-predictive-coded frame (B-frame).”).
Claim 14 is a device comprising steps similar to the operations of the system of claim 13 above. Claims 14 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 4, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 3, wherein the plurality of data packets comprise a third data packet representing audio data for the content item, and the application server is to assign an indication to the third data packet, according to the third data packet representing audio data (Howes, p. 52, “It is noted that redundancy and dependency may be determined by redundancy determination logic 270 and dependency determination logic 275 based at least on the analysis of the media frame type - type of media (e.g., video, audio, etc.) associated with the media frame as well as the type of frame (based on the particular coding scheme used).”), that the third data packet is dependent on the first data packet and not dependent on the second data packet.
Claim 5, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the plurality of data packets are a plurality of protocol data unit (PDU) sets (p. 28, “The data transferred over the interconnect may be in accordance with a variety of communication protocols including, but not limited or restricted to those protocols in accordance with WIFiTM, various IEEE 802.11 standards (e.g., IEEE 802.11ac, 802.11n, etc.), or the like.”).
Claim 15 is a device comprising steps similar to the operations of the system of claim 5 above. Claims 15 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 19 is a method comprising steps similar to the operations of claims 3 and 5 above. Claim 19 is rejected on a similar rationale to claims 3 and 5.
Claim 6, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the network device is a radio access network (RAN) device (Parekh, p. 30, “The wireless communication system includes a base station 120 that provides wireless connectivity to an end user 130 over an air interface within the wireless vicinity of the base station 120.”).
Claim 7, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the application server is to encode at least one data packet of the plurality of data packets with a forward error correction (FEC) block (Howes, p. 29, “Each of the terms "media frame" and/or "network packet" denote a different grouping of media (e.g., video, audio, forward error correction "FEC", video enhancement data, etc.), namely a series of bits having a prescribed format.” And p. 36, “a network device 110 that is adapted to receive a sequence of network packets associated with presentation 105 (e.g., multimedia stream including one or more (encoded) media streams of video, audio, FEC, or other types of media) that is routed from a media source 120 over a first communication path 130.”).
Claim 16 is a device comprising steps similar to the operations of the system of claim 7 above. Claims 16 is rejected on a similar rationale.
Claim 8, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the data flow is a quality of service (QoS) flow (Parekh, p. 1, “streaming real-time video in wireless networks usually requires relatively high Quality of Service (QoS) due to the stringent service requirements of video applications.” And p. 49, “Embodiments of the present invention also include a delay management procedure for managing frames stored in the plurality of sub-queues 102 when the frames are delayed for more than a maximum amount of time.”).
Claim 9, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the timing criteria comprise at least one of a discard time (Parekh, p. 50, “If it is time to check the sub-queues, in step 455, the queue management unit 110 determines if the first frame (an I-frame) in the first sub-queue 102-1 for storing I-frames is delayed more than the maximum delay threshold for I-frames.”) or a delay budget.
Claim 10, Parekh-Howes teaches the system of claim 1, wherein the indication comprises an identifier of the first data packet (Howes, p. 55, “The configuration information 290 may be provided to the resource management logic 160 as part of the network packets (e.g. within headers)…” which includes packet header information. “Additionally, … Redundancy/Dependency tags) that may be added within the header portions of the network packets in order to provide relationship information.”).
Claim 17, Parekh-Howes teaches the device of claim 11, wherein the timing criteria correspond to at least one of a latency metric, a jitter metric, or a buffer metric (Parekh, p. 11, “The method may further include discarding a first P-frame from the second sub-queue if the first P-frame is delayed more than a maximum delay threshold for P-frames, discarding the P-frames and the B-frames from the second sub-queue and third sub-queue, …”).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Howes et al., US 20140146677 A1, teaches the priority level for each particular media frame is assigned to each of the one or more network packets in the particular media frame (block 620). This assignment of priority to each network packet of within a media stream enables some network packets to be intentionally dropped to optimize system performance when wireless bandwidth constraints are being approached.
Poola et al., US 20110158146 A1, teaches At step 208, at least one data segment for at least one frame type of the plurality of frame types is dropped from the received data stream. The data segment to be dropped is decided on the basis of the determined number of data segments to be transmitted for each frame type, the functional dependency between the one or more data segments, and the functional dependency between the plurality of frame types.
Neff et al., US 20140143385 A1, teaches a source 102a-e may add a content identifier to indicate the substantive type of content being transmitted, and a network device transporting the content may determine packet handling actions (e.g., drop or forward) based on a priority that may be derived from the content identifier.
Ravindra et al., WO 2010068600 A2, teaches The dropping of the at least one data segment is based on the number of data segments to be transmitted for each frame type, a functional dependency between the one or more data segments, and a functional dependency between the plurality of frame types. Furthermore, the re-packetizer is configured to re-packetize the received packetized data stream based on the dropping of the at least one data segment.
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/Patrice L Winder/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2453