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 .
Response to Remarks/Arguments
In the Non-Final Rejection mailed April 11, 2025:
Claim(s) 8, 9, 19, and 20 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by DI GIROLAMO (US 20230014303 A1). Claim(s) 4-6 and 16-18 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over GUO (US 20200029318 A1) in view of CHEN (US 20200275474 A1). Claim(s) 7 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over GUO (US 20200029318 A1) in view of CHEN (US 20200275474 A1) in view of XU (US 20220312241 A1).
Responsive to the Non-Final Rejection, Applicants amended claim(s) 4-6, 8, and 11-20. Applicants also added claim(s) 21-23. The amendments are effective with respect to claim(s) 4-6 and 11-18. Accordingly, the rejection(s) of claim(s) 4-6 and 11-18 under 35 USC 103 are withdrawn and are indicated as allowable below. Independent claim 21 recites substantially the same features as claim 4 and is also indicated as allowable for the same reasoning as claim 4. Claim(s) 22-23 are regarded as allowable by virtue of dependency on claim 21. Reviewing claim(s) 8, 19 and 20, in light of the amendments, the DI GIROLAMO (US 20230014303 A1) has been determined to teach the limitation(s) of said claims. Thus, a rejection under 35 USC 102 is made below for said claims.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claim(s) 8, 19, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 unpatentable over DI GIROLAMO (US 20230014303 A1) in view of ISLAM (US 20250055508 A1).
In regards to claim 8, DI GIROLAMO (US 20230014303 A1) teaches a base station comprising
at least one memory; and
at least one processor coupled with the at least one memory and configured to cause to the base station to (DI GIROLAMO teaches a general structure of a Radio Access Network device such as a base station or serving cell, “[0490] FIG. 26G is a block diagram of an exemplary computing system 90 in which one or more apparatuses of the communications networks illustrated in FIG. 26A, FIG. 26C, FIG. 26D and FIG. 26E as well as NR sidelink discontinuous reception, such as the systems and methods illustrated in FIG. 6 through FIG. 22B described and claimed herein may be embodied, such as certain nodes or functional entities in the RAN 103/104/105…Computing system 90 may comprise a computer or server and may be controlled primarily by computer readable instructions, which may be in the form of software, wherever, or by whatever means such software is stored or accessed. Such computer readable instructions may be executed within a processor 91, to cause computing system 90 to do work…[0496] It is understood that any or all of the apparatuses, systems, methods and processes described herein may be embodied in the form of computer executable instructions (e.g., program code) stored on a computer-readable storage medium which instructions, when executed by a processor, such as processors 118 or 91, cause the processor to perform or implement the systems, methods and processes described herein.”
DI GIROLAMO teaches a base station, serving cell, that performs the following):
receive, on a second radio interface associated with communications between the base station and a first user equipment (UE), assistance information corresponding to a first radio interface associated with communications between the first UE and a second UE, wherein the assistance information comprises (“[0223] At step 251, UE 201 may send information to the serving cell to help the serving cell in configuring the SL DRX. For example, as part of UE Assistance Information. This information may include one or more of the following: 1) number of active SL communications or; 2) indication of the requested DRX parameters. [0224] Number of active SL communications. For each SL communication, the UE may provide an indication if the communication is a unicast, groupcast, or broadcast. For the unicast communication, UE 201 may also provide an identifier of the peer UE (e.g. Layer 1 ID, Layer 2 ID). For the groupcast communication, UE 201 may also provide a group identifier.[0225] Indication of the requested DRX parameters. These parameters may be based on the SL DRX model. For example, UE 201 may provide an indication that it wants SL DRX for a certain resource pool, frequency, sidelink BWP, sidelink service or service type, cast type, or peer UE, etc. UE 201 may also provide an indication as to the amount of discontinuous reception it is requesting. UE 201 may provide specific DRX parameters (See Table 5). Alternatively, UE 201 may provide general DRX guidance. For example, UE 201 may provide an indication that it wants to be in DRX 25% of the time within a period.”);
determine discontinuous reception configuration information for the second radio interface based on the assistance information corresponding to the first radio interface ([0226] At step 252, serving cell 205 determines the SL DRX parameters for UE 201 (See Table 5).); and
transmit the discontinuous reception configuration information on the second radio interface (“[0227] At step 253, serving cell 205 configures the SL DRX for UE 201. This may be through a new RRC message, or carried as a new IE in an existing RRC message. This message may be part of the SL radio bearer (SLRB) configuration.”).
The sidelink configuration feature of DI GIROLAMO differs from that of claim 8, in that DI GIROLAMO is silent on wherein the assistance information comprising the sidelink DRX configuration comprises a superset of multiple sidelink transmission and reception windows. Despite these differences similar features have seen in other prior art involving sidelink configuration. ISLAM (US 20250055508 A1) for example teaches a feature of sending a superset (i.e. from multiple UEs) of UE assistance information is requested and received by a base station (“[0810] Example 14 may include the method of Example 13 or another example herein, wherein the request is included in a downlink control information (DCI) message intended for a group of UEs, wherein the request includes multiple fields and wherein individual fields correspond to different UEs to indicate whether UE assistance information is triggered from the respective UE.”), wherein the UE assistance information, comprises transmission and reception window information (i.e. DRX cycle) (“[0802] Example 6 may include a method comprising: identifying UE assistance information that includes UE preferences for one or more of a timeline parameter, a bandwidth part configuration, an antenna configuration, a DRX configuration, an SCEII/SCG activation/de-activation configuration, PDCCH parameters, or a number of carriers; and transmitting or causing to transmit a message to a gNB to indicate the UE assistance information. [0803] Example 7 may include the method of Example 6, wherein the antenna configuration includes one or more of a number of MIMO layers or antenna panel awareness information. [0804] Example 8 may include the method of Example 6-7 or another example herein, wherein the DRX configuration includes one or more of a preferred inactivity timer, on duration timer, or DRX cycle.”). ISLAM further suggest where the UEs communicate via sidelink (“[0650] In embodiments, the UEs 101 can be configured to communicate using OFDM communication signals with each other or with any of the RAN nodes 111 over a multicarrier communication channel in accordance with various communication techniques, such as, but not limited to, an OFDMA communication technique (e.g., for downlink communications) or a SC-FDMA communication technique (e.g., for uplink and ProSe or sidelink communications), although the scope of the embodiments is not limited in this respect. The OFDM signals can comprise a plurality of orthogonal subcarriers.”)
Thus based upon the teachings of ISLAM it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify sidelink configuration feature of DI GIROLAMO in a manner similar to that of ISLAM such that the assistance information comprising the sidelink DRX configuration comprises a superset of multiple sidelink transmission and reception windows, to thus arrive at claim 8, in order to provide a benefit of additional UE assistance (i.e. collection of sidelink DRX configurations from multiple UEs) information to support the configuration of the sidelink DRX configurations by the base station of DI GIROLAMO.
In regards to claim 19, DI GIROLAMO (US 20230014303 A1) teaches the base station of claim 8, wherein the first radio interface corresponds to a sidelink transmission on a PC5 interface (“[0114]…The term ‘SL connection’ may refer to any transfer of data between a UE and a peer UE. A SL connection may be unicast connection, where the SL communication is between a UE and a peer UE. A SL connection may be groupcast connection, where the SL communication is between a UE and a group of UEs. A SL connection may be broadcast connection, where the SL communication is between a UE and all other UEs. In the case of unicast, the SL connection or SL communication between the two peer UEs also has a PC5-RRC signaling connection, and is part of a PC5 unicast link. It is also possible that SL connection could have mix of different cast types. The terms ‘RRC Connected mode’, ‘RRC Connected state’, ‘Connected Mode’, ‘Connected state’ may be used interchangeably. The terms ‘RRC Idle mode’, ‘RRC Idle state’, ‘Idle mode’, ‘Idle state’ may be used interchangeably. The terms ‘RRC Inactive mode’, ‘RRC Inactive state’, ‘Inactive mode’, or ‘Inactive state’ may be used interchangeably.”).
In regards to claim 20, DI GIROLAMO (US 20230014303 A1) teaches the base station apparatus of claim 8, wherein the second radio interface corresponds to a Uu interface between a-user-equipment (UF) the UE and a base station (“[0500] In a fourth example, a UE that has a Uu interface to its serving cell and the UE may execute operations that may include communicating with SL communication with one or more other peer UEs; receiving a Uu DRX configuration from its serving cell; restarting the drx InactivityTimer upon reception of a SL grant (SCI for sidelink transmission); and extending the active time based on Uu activities related to SL communication. The Uu activities related to SL communication may include: transmission of a sidelink Scheduling Request, transmission of a sidelink buffer status report, or transmission of a sidelink HARQ, among other things.”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 4-6, 11-18, and 21-23 are allowed.
Conclusion
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/TARELL A HAMPTON/Examiner, Art Unit 2476 /AYAZ R SHEIKH/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2476