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 .
Priority
All claims searched with priority date of provision application filing date of 07/20/2020.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 4/25/2026 has been entered.
Claims 17-20 remain pending. Claim 17 and 19 are amended.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 4/25/2026 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 17-20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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) 17-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as anticipated by or, in the alternative, under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over US 20180306897 A1 Xue; Jiantao et al. in view of US 10306408 B2 Zhu; Wei et al.
Consider Claims 17 and 19
Xue teaches A method of wireless communication of and a use equipment (UE) (Xue Fig. 2 “UE”), comprising:
a transceiver, and a processing system coupled to the transceiver (Xue Fig. 2 “UE”; Fig. 22, [0275] “the user equipment includes a processor 910, a receiver 920, a transmitter 930, a memory 940, and a bus system 950.”) and configured to:
measuring a downlink reference signal time difference (DL-RSTD) (Xue Fig. 2 S103 Calculate an RSTD1 ), with respect to a first transmit reception point (TRP) (Xue Fig. 2 “First base station”), and a second TRP (Xue Fig. 2 “Second base station”), based on positioning reference signals (PRSs) received from the first TRP and the second TRP (Xue Fig. 2 first and second positioning signals S101, S102; [0004] “PRS” );
transmitting the DL-RSTD (Fig. 7, ¶188 S501 and ¶44-45 “the obtaining, by a network device, a first time difference of arrival RSTD1 includes: [0045] receiving, by the network device, the first time difference of arrival RSTD1 reported by the UE, where the RSTD1 is obtained through calculation by the UE based on a first positioning signal sent by a first base station and a second positioning signal sent by a second base station”; See Also ¶186 “The UE reports the RSTD3 to the base station or the network device…” Examiner note: broad limitation tx destination unspecified) and a sounding reference signal (SRS) (Xue [004] “..sounding reference signals (SRS) that are sent simultaneously by the UE to different base stations and transmitted in an uplink direction…”); and
receiving a relative time difference ([0063] sending, by the network device, the target TAE to the UE or another UE.; Examiner note: broad limitation rx source unspecified) indicating a synchronization error between the first TRP and the second TRP (¶5 “different base stations have different local oscillators, or because of another reason, different absolute times are generated. As a result, signals generated from or signals received by antenna ports of the base stations are not absolutely time-synchronized. This is referred to as a time alignment error (TAE).”) responsive to the transmitting (¶35 “calculating, by the network device, a time alignment error TAE based on the RSTD1 and the RSTD2” and ¶38 “. . . using the difference as the target TAE”); wherein the relative time difference is calculated based on the transmitted DL-RSTD and another quantity (¶35 “calculating, by the network device, a time alignment error TAE based on the RSTD1 and the RSTD2” and ¶38 “. . . using the difference as the target TAE”; Examiner note: broad limitation calculating entity unspecified).
Xue does not explicitly teach the another quantity being an uplink measurement of the transmitted SRS arriving at the first TRP and the second TRP.
Zhu teaches wherein the relative time difference is calculated (Zhu C2L5-18 “determining, by the positioning server, a relative RSTD according to the RSTD, where the relative RSTD indicates a difference between an RSTD between the i.sup.th positioning node and the (i+1).sup.th positioning node and a first mobile terminal in the two mobile terminals and an RSTD between the i.sup.th positioning node and the (i+1).sup.th positioning node and a second mobile terminal in the two mobile terminals. . .”) based on the an uplink measurement of the transmitted SRS arriving at the first TRP and the second TRP (Zhu C2L18-32 “. . .in a first possible implementation of the first aspect. . . receiving, by the positioning server, times of arrival ToAs that are of uplink pilot signals and that are sent by the M positioning nodes, where the ToAs of the uplink pilot signals are obtained by the M positioning nodes by separately measuring the uplink pilot signals sent by the two mobile terminals; and determining, by the positioning server, an RSTD between the i.sup.th positioning node and the (i+1).sup.th positioning node and the j.sup.th mobile terminal in the two mobile terminals according to the ToAs of the uplink pilot signals.”)
Zhu also teaches wherein the relative time difference is calculated based on the transmitted DL-RSTD (Zhu C2L33-45 “in a second possible implementation of the first aspect. . . separately receiving, by the positioning server, an RSTD that is between the i.sup.th positioning node and the (i+1).sup.th positioning node and the j.sup.th mobile terminal in the two mobile terminals and that is separately sent by the two mobile terminals, where the RSTD is obtained by the two mobile terminals by separately measuring downlink pilot signals sent by the M positioning nodes.”)
It would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art, to modify the invention of Xue to include the noted teachings of Zhu in order to “provide a positioning method, a positioning server, and a positioning system, to eliminate a positioning error brought by a TAE, improve positioning precision, and accurately position multiple mobile terminals at a time.” (Zhu C1L40-60).
Consider Claims 18 and 20
Xue teaches The method of claim 17, further comprising: sending the relative time difference to a serving base station (Xue Fig. 2 S105; [0147]-[0150]UE “reports the TAE to a network device..”).
Pertinent Prior Art(s)
The prior art made of record though not relied upon in the current rejection is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
US 20170111880 A1 PARK; Jonghyun et al. (IDS reference)
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US 20190045477 A1 Edge; Stephen William
Fig. 6, ¶92 “UE 105 may also measure an RSTD between gNBs 110-1 and 110-3 and RSTDs between other pairs of gNBs 110. In some embodiments, each of the RSTDs measured at stage 670 is between the serving gNB 110-1 and another gNB 110 (e.g. gNB 110-2 or gNB 110-3). UE 105 then returns the RSTDs measured at stage 670 to the serving gNB 110-1 at stage 675—e.g. in an RRC message” ¶113 “At block 860, the first base station sends location information for the UE to a location-capable device, where the location information is based at least in part on the first RTD, the first RTT, and the first RSTD.” Fig. 8
US 20160291128 A1 Persson; Magnus et al.
US 20230262645 A1 CHUANG; Chiao-Yao et al.
US 20170289947 A1 Zaidi; Ali et al.
Conclusion
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/UMAIR AHSAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2647
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