Patent Application 18183724 - MOBILE HYBRID RADIO RECEIVER SERVICE FOLLOWING - Rejection

Patent Application 18183724 - MOBILE HYBRID RADIO RECEIVER SERVICE FOLLOWING

Title: MOBILE HYBRID RADIO RECEIVER SERVICE FOLLOWING SOURCE SELECTION

Application Information

• Invention Title: MOBILE HYBRID RADIO RECEIVER SERVICE FOLLOWING SOURCE SELECTION
• Application Number: 18183724
• Submission Date: 2025-05-14T00:00:00.000Z
• Effective Filing Date: 2023-03-14T00:00:00.000Z
• Filing Date: 2023-03-14T00:00:00.000Z
• National Class: 455
• National Sub-Class: 003010
• Examiner Employee Number: 91509
• Art Unit: 2649
• Tech Center: 2600

Rejection Summary

• 102 Rejections: 0
• 103 Rejections: 1

Cited Patents

No patents were cited in this rejection.

Office Action Text

    DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA . 
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 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.
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 of this title, 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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over JP 2013138367 A (Kano), in view of US 20150079916 A1 (Wolf) and in further view of US 20180183536 A1 (Kelder) and US 20170272143 A1 (Kroeger).
Regarding Claims 1,  14-17 and 19:
19. A non-transitory computer readable medium encoded with instructions that, when executed by a processor of a hybrid radio receiver configured to recover audio content separately from a broadcast radio signal and from a wireless network connection, cause the processor to perform: at periodic intervals, collecting values of a metric that indicates audio quality of the audio content in the broadcast radio signal and, at each interval, performing: computing a first average of how many of N values of the metric exceed a first threshold, and computing a second average of how many of the N values exceed a second threshold that is greater than the first threshold; obtaining a first average decision and a second average decision to indicate whether the first average and the second average exceed a third threshold, respectively; and deriving a switching decision to use either the broadcast radio signal or the wireless network connection as a source of audio content based on a previous source decision, the first average decision, and the second average decision; and selecting the source of audio content based on the switching decision (Kano: Fig. 1, a system configuration that receives signal from both broadcast signal from antenna 11 and a network terminals I1 and I2 are connected to an interface to a network, e.g., wired LAN or a wireless LAN; Figs. 2-5, a quality estimation unit calculates both qualities, e.g., signal-to-noise SN and/or Bit Error Rate BER, and selects accordingly, where the quality info is referenced to a threshold value).
Kano does not teach explicitly on quality info is derived from fluctuations of  reception metrics over time. However, Wolf teaches (Wolf: e.g., [0020] “quality assessment on fluctuations of the time interval lying between the reception of successive data packets of the audio signals”).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Kano with quality info is derived from fluctuations of  reception metrics over time as further taught by Wolf. The advantage of doing so is to provide a mechanism to mitigate signal fluctuations due to device movements, e.g., vehicle (Wolf: Background).
Kano does not teach explicitly on using an average quality metric to select. However, Kelder teaches (Kelder: e.g., Fig. 6 and [0079]-[0083], estimating both signal data average quality metrics, and select accordingly. It is noted that setting a threshold to measure minimum acceptable quality is known). 
. It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Kano with using an average quality metric to select as further taught by Kelder. The advantage of doing so is to provide a mechanism to mitigate data loss due to device movements, e.g., devices are out of range (Kelder: Background).
Kano does not teach explicitly on an adaptive threshold value. However, Kroeger teaches (Kroeger: [0021]-[0025] and [0034], “dynamically adjust the adaptive blend thresholds. As used in this description, an adaptive threshold is a threshold having a value that can be changed (e.g., adjusted or adapted) based on measured signals or calculated operating parameters”).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Kano with using an average quality metric to select as further taught by Kroeger. The advantage of doing so is to provide a mechanism for blending of analog and digital pathways in digital radio receivers based on adaptive thresholds while enhance audio quality (Kroeger: Background).
Regarding Claim 2, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein deriving includes deriving the switching decision based on the previous switching decision and the fluctuation indicators to introduce hysteresis into the switching decision (Wolf: e.g., [0026], reducing threshold to prevent switching back and forth due to the receiver movement, which is equivalent to introduce hysteresis).
Regarding Claim 3, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein: deriving the fluctuation indicators includes: computing a first fluctuation indicator based on a first number of times the reception metric crosses a first threshold during a time period; and computing a second fluctuation indicator based on a second number of times the reception metric crosses a second threshold that is greater than the first threshold during the time period; and deriving the switching decision includes deriving the switching decision based on the first fluctuation indicator, the second fluctuation indicator, and the previous switching decision (Wolf: e.g., [0020] “quality assessment on fluctuations of the time interval lying between the reception of successive data packets of the audio signals”).
Regarding Claim 4, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 3, wherein deriving the switching decision includes: when the previous switching decision is to use the wireless network connection, and the first fluctuation indicator and the second fluctuation indicator each does not exceed a fluctuation threshold, deriving the switching decision to use the broadcast radio signal (Wolf: e.g., [0027]-[0028] selection process may prefer one transmission path over other when both indicators are similar).
Regarding Claim 5, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 4, wherein deriving the switching decision includes: when the previous switching decision is to use the broadcast radio signal, and the first fluctuation indicator and the second fluctuation indicator each exceed the fluctuation threshold, deriving the switching decision to use the wireless network connection (Wolf: e.g., [0027]-[0028] selection process may prefer one transmission path over other when both indicators are similar).
Regarding Claim 6, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 3, wherein deriving the switching decision includes: when the previous switching decision is to use the broadcast radio signal, the first fluctuation indicator either exceeds or does not exceed a threshold, and the second fluctuation indicator exceeds a fluctuation threshold, following the previous switching decision (Wolf: e.g., [0027]-[0028] selection process may prefer one transmission path over other when both indicators are similar).
Regarding Claim 7, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 6, wherein deriving the switching decision includes: when the previous switching decision is to use the wireless network connection, and at least one of the first fluctuation indicator and the second fluctuation indicator exceeds the threshold, following the previous switching decision (Wolf: e.g., [0027]-[0028] selection process may prefer one transmission path over other when both indicators are similar).
Regarding Claim 8, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the audio content includes audio and metadata (Keno: Fig. 1, adding time stamp, convert audio codec among others to transport stream data, where a time stamp is one of metadata).
Regarding Claims 9 and 18, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein deriving the switching decision includes deriving the switching decision without using received signal strength indicator (RSSI) values for the broadcast radio signal (Kano: Fig. 2, Bit-Error-Rate)..
Regarding Claim 10, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the reception metric is derived from the audio content recovered from the broadcast radio signal (Kano: Fig. 1, audio signals are from broadcast and internet either wired or wireless).
Regarding Claim 11, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the broadcast radio signal includes a frequency modulated (FM) broadcast signal (Kelder: [0025], FM).
Regarding Claim 12, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein the wireless network connection includes a cellular or WiFi connection (Kano: Fig. 1, WIFI is one of connections; Wolf: Fig. 1, interface 1 via a cellular mobile network).
Regarding Claim 13, Kano as modified further teaches:
The method of claim 1, wherein deriving the fluctuation indicators includes deriving the fluctuation indicators based on parameters having values that are programmable and that influence how often the switching decision performs switching between the broadcast radio signal and the wireless network connection, and the method further comprises: receiving update values for the parameters over the wireless network connection and updating the parameters with the update values to adjust how often the switching decision performs the switching between the broadcast radio signal and the wireless network connection (Kroeger: [0021]-[0025] and [0034], “dynamically adjust the adaptive blend thresholds. As used in this description, an adaptive threshold is a threshold having a value that can be changed (e.g., adjusted or adapted) based on measured signals or calculated operating parameters”).
Regarding Claim 20, Kano as modified further teaches:
The non-transitory computer readable medium of claim 19, further comprising instructions to cause the processor to perform, at each interval: obtaining a current first value decision that indicates whether a current value of the metric exceeds the first threshold, wherein computing the first average includes computing the first average as a first moving average of the current first value decision and previous first value decisions; and obtaining a current second value decision that indicates whether the current value exceeds the second threshold, wherein computing the second average includes computing the second average as a moving average of the current second value decision and previous second value decisions (Kroeger: [0021]-[0025] and [0034], it is noted that moving average is known method of calculating an average value). 
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHITONG CHEN whose telephone number is (571) 270-1936.  The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:30am - 5pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Yuwen Pan can be reached on 571-272-7855.  The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ZHITONG CHEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649