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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1-3, 12, 19-21, 29, and 30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by MANOLAKIS US 20250240825.
Regarding claim 1, 19, 29, and 30, MANOLAKIS teaches an apparatus for wireless communication at a user equipment (UE),
comprising (fig. 5):
one or more memories; and
one or more processors coupled to the one or more memories, configured to:
transmit a first message comprising a first indication associated with a timing advance command (TAC) granularity (transmitting, by a UE to a network node (e.g., gNB 318, FIG. 3), a first random access preamble with pre-compensation that includes at least one of a frequency adjustment and a time adjustment, [0044]);
receive a second message comprising a TAC configuration associated with the TAC granularity (the performing one or more adjustments may include the UE performing, based on the received random access procedure message, [0044]); and
transmit to a non-terrestrial network (NTN) node, a third message based on the TAC configuration (based on the received random access procedure message, one or more adjustments to improve time and/or frequency synchronization between the user device and the network node via the serving satellite for transmission of a second random access preamble, [0044]). See also [0055]).
Regarding claims 2, 20, receive a fourth message comprising a second indication of a set of TAC granularities,
wherein, to transmit the first message, one or more processors are configured to:
transmit the first message in response to receiving the fourth message (as shown above the UE may repeatedly perform frequency adjustments and time adjustments by transmitting random access preamble with pre-compensation).
Regarding claim 3, 21, wherein the fourth message comprises a system information block (SIB) comprising the second indication (SIB, [0037]).
Regarding claim 12, a transceiver coupled to the one or more processors, wherein, to transmit the third message,
one or more processors are [[is]] configured to:
transmit, via the transceiver, the third message to the non terrestrial network (NTN) NTN node (satellite, [0044]).
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) 4 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MANOLAKIS as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of TURTINEN US 20210168749.
MANOLAKIS is silent on one or more processors are further configured to:
select the TAC granularity from the set of TAC granularities.
TURTINEN teaches on one or more processors are further configured to:
select the TAC granularity from the set of TAC granularities ([0063]).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the system of MANOLAKIS by select the TAC granularity from the set of TAC granularities, as shown by TURTINEN. This modification would benefit the system by enabling the UE to select an optimal TAC granularity.
Claim(s) 5, 6, 11, 22, 23, 28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MANOLAKIS as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Xu US 20240292468.
Regarding claims 5, 22, MANOLAKIS is silent on the fourth message comprises a scaling factor associated with a second TAC granularity.
Xu teaches receiving a message comprising a scaling factor associated with a TAC granularity ([0109] According to some embodiments of the present application, the UE may obtain a scaling factor for adjusting the TA, wherein the scaling factor is predefined in the UE, received in a RRC signaling or in a SIB).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the system of MANOLAKIS by the fourth message comprises a scaling factor associated with a second TAC granularity, as suggested by Xu. This modification would benefit the system by enabling the UE to select an optimal TAC granularity.
Regarding claim 11, 28, Xu makes obvious the limitations since Xu teaches calculating a timing advance based on a configuration table ([0042]).
Regarding claims 6 and 23, the limitations are obvious in view of the rejection to claim 5.
Claim(s) 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over MANOLAKIS as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Park US 20090238366.
MANOLAKIS is silent on the second message comprises at least one of:
a downlink (DL) medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE) comprising the TAC configuration;
a DL radio resource control (RRC) message comprising the TAC configuration; downlink control information (DCI) comprising the TAC configuration; or
a random access response (RAR) uplink (UL) grant comprising the TAC configuration.
Park teaches a random access response (RAR) uplink (UL) grant comprising the TAC configuration ([0122] In this case, TAC information, UL grant information and temporary C-RNTI information, as shown in FIG. 7, are contained in the delivered MAC random access response message (MAC RAR)).
Therefore it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to modify the system of MANOLAKIS by a random access response (RAR) uplink (UL) grant comprising the TAC configuration, as shown by Park. This modification would benefit the system by providing a proven, reliable method to provide TAC configuration of the UE.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 7-10, 14-18, and 24-27 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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/RONALD B ABELSON/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2476