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 1/15/2025 was filed in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the 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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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 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.
Claim(s) 1-3 and 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by US 2010/0180173 A1 by Batra et al. (provided by applicant, hereafter referred to as Batra).
Regarding claim 1, Batra teaches A receiving device for supporting hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) (see at least ¶ [0002]; “Embodiments of the invention are directed, in general, to communication systems and, more specifically, a hybrid-ARQ (HARQ) with a scrambler.”), the receiving device being configured to:
receive from a transmitting device (see at least ¶ [0025]; “FIG. 3 is illustrative of a receiver 300 which is built to work with the transmitter illustrated in FIG. 1.”) an indication of the scrambling seed (see at least Fig. 2 and ¶ [0023]; “Referring now to FIG. 2, which is illustrative of a scrambling operation 200. For a given seed 225, the LFSR 237 generates a pseudo-random sequence that is used by exclusive or (XOR) 217 to scramble the data 215.”) and then separately receive from the transmitting device at least one scrambled and encoded data unit that are separate from the indication of the scrambling seed, respectively (see at least ¶ [0023], [0082], and [0042]; the scrambler seed is transmitted within the header);
descramble the scrambled and encoded data unit based on a scrambling seed determined from the indication of the scrambling seed to obtain the encoded data unit (see at least ¶ [0026]; “The receiver needs to have knowledge of scrambling seed 225 (which is usually transmitted in the header or can be derived from other known information) which was used by the transmitter for scrambling. The receiver uses the seed 225 to initialize the LFSR 237 and generate the de-scrambling sequence.”); and
decode the encoded data unit using forward error correction (FEC) decoding (see at least ¶ [0034]; “The signal used for de-scrambling must also be modified by passing it through the FEC 630.”).
Regarding claim 2, Batra teaches the receiving device according to claim 1. In addition, Batra teaches further configured to:
send to the transmitting device an acknowledge (ACK) message, and/or a not acknowledge (NACK) message, regarding at least one data unit that was correctly and/or incorrectly decoded (see at least ¶ [0007]; “One common method that is used to assure that all packets are delivered correctly is called automatic-repeat request (ARQ). In this method, the receiving device sends either an acknowledgement (ACK) or a negative-acknowledgement (NACK) to the transmitting device regarding the decode-status of the packets. If the transmitting device receives a NACK or times out waiting for the ACK/NACK, it will then retransmit that packet.”);
receive from the transmitting device, based on decoding of at least one data unit being failed, a further indication of a scrambling seed and then a scrambled and encoded retransmission of the failed data unit that are separate from the further indication of the scrambling seed;
descramble the scrambled and encoded retransmission of the failed data unit based on a scrambling seed determined from the further indication of the scrambling seed to obtain the encoded retransmission of the failed data unit;
decode encoded retransmission of the failed data unit using forward error correction (FEC) decoding to obtain the retransmission of the failed data unit; and soft combine the retransmission of the failed data unit with the failed data unit (see at least ¶ [0007]; “One common method that is used to assure that all packets are delivered correctly is called automatic-repeat request (ARQ). In this method, the receiving device sends either an acknowledgement (ACK) or a negative-acknowledgement (NACK) to the transmitting device regarding the decode-status of the packets. If the transmitting device receives a NACK or times out waiting for the ACK/NACK, it will then retransmit that packet.”).
Regarding claim 3, Batra teaches the receiving device according to claim 1. In addition, Batra teaches further configured to: decode the received indication of the scrambling seed separately from a received scrambled and encoded data unit (see at least ¶ [0023], [0082], and [0042]; the scrambler seed is transmitted within the header).
Regarding claim 5, Batra teaches the receiving device according to claim 1. In addition, Batra teaches further configured to: extract the indication of the scrambling seed from a physical layer (PHY) preamble, from a signal A (SIG-A) field or a signal B (SIG-B) field that are received from the transmitting device (see at least ¶ [0023]; “For a side-stream scrambler, an initialization seed may need to be specified and seed communicated in the PHY header.”).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
In the 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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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 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.
The factual inquiries 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.
Claim(s) 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Batra as applied to claim 1 above, in view of US 2012/0237036 A1 by Dabak et al. (hereafter referred to as Dabak).
Regarding claim 4, Batra teaches the receiving device according to claim 1.
Batra does not appear to specifically disclose further configured to: derive the indication of the scrambling seed from determined bits of one or more signaling fields received from the transmitting device.
In the same field of endeavor, Dabak teaches derive the indication of the scrambling seed from determined bits of one or more signaling fields received from the transmitting device (see at least ¶ [0022]-[0023]; “Since the additional complexity of indicating the scrambling seed for the scrambler by adding bits in the header is not significant as it adds minimal overhead and a minimal decoding load, the scrambler field in the header can comprise more than 2 bits to allow more different scrambling code patterns to be used.”).
It would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to modify Batra with Dabak in order to decrease the likelihood of an error.
Conclusion
10. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to NATASHA W COSME whose telephone number is (571)270-7225. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30-4.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ayman Abaza can be reached at 571-270-0422. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/NATASHA W COSME/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2465
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