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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 9/02/25 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 9/02/25 have been fully considered but they are moot due to the fact that all independent claims have been significantly amended, to which a new ground rejection is made below.
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 31-52 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 (US 20190208575 A1) in view of Mishra (US 20200128414 A1), further in view of Zhu (“Node.js Scalability Investigation in the Cloud”, CASCON 18, 2018).
For claim 31, D1 discloses a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) ([0012] “Cloud-RAN”) implemented at least partially using at least one node, the at least one node configured to:
determine a hardware configuration available to implement at least some components and configuration of the C-RAN (FIG. 2 or 3, where C-RAN hardware configuration is determined); and
determine, based on at least the hardware configuration, (FIG. 2 or 3 and the associated text, such as “[0061] The UL1 360 may be configured to send frequency-domain information over the fronthaul link 335 to the LL1 330”) indicating any of the following:
a number of processor cores needed to implement the C-RAN using the hardware configuration (combination of FIG. 2 and FIG. 6, CPU 670 of UL 600 which is one of UL 251 and UL 255, and the associated text, such as “[0037] In order for the scheduler to determine scheduling decisions compatible with the capacity provided by the UL1, the UL1 may also offer a suitable API for determining a fronthaul capacity from a set of scheduling decisions. Other aspects of the API may include determining one or more scheduling parameters that fulfill the capacity requirements (e.g., a number of resource blocks)”); and
a channel configuration for the C-RAN to use when exchanging radio frequency (RF) signals with a plurality of user equipment (UEs) (FIG. 2, C-RAN exchanging RF signals with UEs/LL1 221-227).
D1 is silent but Mishra, in the same field of endeavor of C-RAN, discloses self-configuration decision ([0172] “Parallel Wireless's SON functions are located at our HNG, and therefore will be an integrated part of our vRAN solution. It is a multi-technology platform facilitate all three elements of SON; self-configuration, self-organization and self-optimization …”). OOSA would have been motivated to apply the teaching of Mishra above to the C-RAN of D1 to yield a predictable result of optimization.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to OOSA before the effective filing date of the application to combine D1 and Mishra for the benefit of configuration optimization ([0172] of Mishra).
D1 in view of Mishra is silent on wherein the number of processor cores is determined based on, at least, a respective number of processor cores needed to process each of a plurality of channels for a wireless interface. However, OOSA would have known that the number of processors impacts the load of processing (e.g., the number of processors increases is needed for the increase of load). For example, Zhu discloses it (“Scalability: Scalability is a measure of a system’s capacity to handle workloads, as hardware resources are added [20]. Relative capacity as the ratio of the capacity with p processors to the capacity with one processor [11]. From a web application’s perspective, relative capacity is defined via the maximum throughput in terms of the number of requests handled within a time-frame, while an acceptable response time is maintained. Additionally, scalability models express relative capacity as a function of the number of processors.”, 2nd page, 2nd column, 1st para). OOSA would have been motivated to apply the teaching of Zhu above to the C-RAN of D1 in view of Mishra to yield a predictable result of getting sufficient resources for load processing.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to OOSA before the effective filing date of the application to combine D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu for the benefit of getting sufficient resources for load processing. (2nd page, 2nd column, 1st para of Zhu).
Claim 42 is rejected because it is a claim of the method that is performed by C-RAN of claim 31 and has the same subject matter.
As to claims 32 and 43, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 31 and 42, wherein the at least one node is further configured to determine additional self-configuration decisions that indicate whether the available hardware configuration supports the following in light of the hardware configuration: a particular RF bandwidth (Mishra: [0197] “… The bandwidth requirements of a classical FH link are proportional to the product of radio bandwidth, number of antennas, and quantization resolution …”), a particular duplexing scheme (D1: [0006] “… An eNB communicates with a UE using a pair of carrier frequencies, one for uplink (UL) and one for downlink (DL), if using Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), or using a single carrier frequency for both UL and DL if using Time Division Duplex (TDD) …”), a particular number of MIMO layers (“[0169] Parallel Wireless believes Massive MIMO technology is a promising technology in order to address future 5G requirements for higher spectral efficiency and utilizing mmWave for access networks. Full-Dimension MIMO (FD-MIMO) targets the systems utilizing up to 64 antenna ports at the transmitter side has been already defines in 3GPP”), a particular number of RUs, a particular number of UEs transmitting in each timing slot, a particular number of UEs that can be attached to the C-RAN at once (D1 and Mishra indicate not supporting these limitations because neither D1 nor Mishra discloses them). The motivation of combining D1 and Mishra is the same as stated in the corresponding independent claims.
As to claims 33 and 44, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 31 and 42, further discloses: wherein the hardware configuration indicates any of the following: a number of processing cores available in the at least one node, a clock frequency of the processing cores, a make of a central processing unit (CPU) in the at least one node, an amount of memory available in the at least one node (D1: FIG. 6 shows CPU 670 and memory 675 in node UL1 600, and also suggests a clock frequency of the processing cores since operation of CPU requires a clock frequency), Ethernet bandwidth supported in the at least one node (D1: [0050] “… dedicated local links to two or more LL1a 221, 223, such as 1000Base-T Ethernet links …”), operating system implemented in the at least one node ([0095] “… the computational load in the first and/or second apparatus may vary over time due to scheduling of operations by an operating system, varying tasks/threads assigned to the apparatuses …”), virtualization support in the at least one node (D1: [0046] “… The L2 module may be referred to as a virtual network function (VNF) … L2 271 and UL1 251 may be implemented as separate software functions on a single computer, either in a common environment or on separate virtual machines”), Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) configuration of the at least one node, and hardware acceleration supported in the at least one node (Mishra: [0099] “ … our next generation DU and CU with PCIe (3.x, 16 lanes) comfortably support these transport requirements …”). The motivation of combining D1 and Mishra is the same as stated in the corresponding independent claims.
As to claims 34 and 45, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 31 and 42, D1 further discloses: wherein the channel configuration indicates any of the following: an RF bandwidth (D1: [0030] “… the bandwidth requirements on that communication path and may be dynamically controlled based on the loading on the system …”), a number of radio resources allocated over a slot duration ([0103] “… And since downlink physical channels (e.g., CRS, PDCCH, PDSCH, or the like) with different constellations, spatial schemes, and the like are intermixed within the same period (a basic reference time (e.g., a slot in the 3GPP terminology) …”), a duplexing scheme, a number of MIMO layers, a number of RUs to support, a number of UEs per slot ([0103] “… And since downlink physical channels (e.g., CRS, PDCCH, PDSCH, or the like) with different constellations, spatial schemes, and the like are intermixed within the same period (a basic reference time (e.g., a slot in the 3GPP terminology) …”), and a number of UEs that can be attached to the C-RAN at once (FIG. 2 sows UEs 221-227 attached to C-RAN 200). The motivation of combining D1 and Mishra is the same as stated in the corresponding independent claims.
As to claims 35 and 46, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 31 and 42, D1 further discloses: wherein the self-configuration decision further indicates a number of processor cores needed to implement any of the following processing: Physical Downlink Shared Channel (PDSCH), a Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH), scheduling, and a Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH), a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH), a Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH), a Sounding Reference Signal (SRS), a Physical Broadcast Control Channel (PBCH), a Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS), a Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS), a Cell Specific Reference Signal (CS-RS), a Tracking reference Signal, a Demodulation Reference Signal (DMRS), and a Phase Tracking Reference Signal ([0103] “… And since downlink physical channels (e.g., CRS, PDCCH, PDSCH, or the like) with different constellations, spatial schemes, and the like are intermixed within the same period (a basic reference time (e.g., a slot in the 3GPP terminology) …”).
As to claims 36 and 47, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 31 and 42, D1 further discloses: wherein the self-configuration decision further indicates which containers will run on which processing cores and nodes (FIG. 3 shows selecting DL container 344 or UL container 346).
As to claims 37 and 48, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 31 and 42, D1 further discloses: wherein the at least one node is further configured to assign a priority to each of a plurality of containers implementing the C-RAN based on latency constraints of processes implemented by the respective container, each container implementing at least one process ([0013] “… The fronthaul link 135 may be referred to as being “fiber-grade” indicating that it is high speed and low latency with minimal jitter …” in view of FIG. 2).
As to claims 38 and 49, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 37 and 49, D1 further discloses: wherein different processes implemented by a same container are assigned different priorities based on the latency constraints of the different processes (“[0125] It may be convenient to force a specific order, or priority, among the DRs. Specifically, if two DRs map to colliding tones, a priority is needed to determine …”).
As to claims 39 and 50, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 37 and 49, D1 further discloses: wherein the at least one node is further configured to add or remove one or more of the containers based on any of the following: UE demand, demand on RAN workload, available resources at a given time for each container, and the priority of the container ([0007] “… a UE may be handed over to neighbor eNBs, depending on radio conditions and traffic load …”, [0033] “… Said capacity may be expressed in terms of number of bytes per subframe, bytes per second, or as a limitation in terms of scheduling (e.g., number of resources blocks, tones, layers, constellation order, antennas, or the like). …” and [0197], [0125] as cited above).
As to claims 40 and 51, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 37 and 49, D1 further discloses: wherein the at least one node is further configured to assign a higher priority to each container implementing at least one process subject to real-time constraints than for each container implementing at least one process not subject to real-time constraints (suggested by “[0125] It may be convenient to force a specific order, or priority, among the DRs. Specifically, if two DRs map to colliding tones, a priority is needed to determine …” and [0042] “Said real-time parameters may include clock correction parameters, split parameters (e.g., 7-1 vs 7-2), synchronization parameters, fronthaul in-order/out-of-order processing parameters, suitable buffer sizes (function of the fronthaul static quality or network topology), or the like”).
As to claims 41 and 52, D1 in view of Mishra and Zhu discloses claims 40 and 51, D1 further discloses: wherein the at least one node is further configured to add at least one PUSCH process in response to UE demand increasing ([0009] “… The PHY layer functions also include reception of uplink physical layer channels, such as physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH), physical uplink control channel (PUCCH), physical random access channel (PRACH) and sounding reference signal (SRS). …”).
Conclusion
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/JIANYE WU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462