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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 2/11/26 has been entered.
Response to Arguments/Amendments
Applicant's arguments regarding 103 rejection filed 2/11/26 have been fully considered but they are moot due to the fact that all independent have been amended, to which new ground rejections have been made bellow.
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 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 (CN 112118615 A) in view of R2-2101148 (3GPP R2-2101148).
For claim 1, D1 discloses a method for determining power-saving information (p17, 2nd para “… UE can determine the time domain information of the first paging occasion according to the indication information, reduces the blind detection of the paging message, reduces the detection power consumption of the UE”), comprising:
determining, by a terminal device, a plurality of bit fields indicating power-saving information in downlink control information (p7, 2nd full para “… It can be understood that the paging indication information may be a plurality of bit values, the bit value can be the first indication value 1 or the second indication value 0, 1 represents the corresponding paging group needs to receive the paging message, 0 represents the corresponding paging group does not need to receive the paging message.” ; p17, 2nd para “… UE can determine the time domain information of the first paging occasion according to the indication information, reduces the blind detection of the paging message, reduces the detection power consumption of the UE”; and p41, last para extending to next page “… For example, paging indication information included in the control message for scheduling RMSI, … is a cyclic redundancy check (cyclic redundancy check, CRC) scrambled downlink control information (DCI).”; note that paging indication information suggests power-saving and the size of bit fields is the number of groups) based on:
information of terminal device groups corresponding to the power-saving information (claim 1 “… the terminal device receives the paging indication information sent by the network device; the paging indication information is used for indicating whether at least one paging group needs to receive the paging message …”); and
information of paging occasions corresponding to the power-saving information (Abstract “… the terminal device determines the paging occasion of the paging group receiving the paging message of the terminal device according to the paging indication information. …”).
D1 does not specifically state a size of bit fields indicating power-saving information. However, D1 recites in claim 2 “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.”, OOSA would have been motivated to select N as a size of the bits as an obvious try providing power saving information for each group according to MPEP 2143(E).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to OOSA before the effective filing date of the application to provide a size of the bits for the benefit of indicating power-saving information.
Independent claim 9 is rejected because it is the claim of a terminal device that performs the method of claim 1 and has the same subject matter as claim 1.
Independent claim 14 is rejected because it is the claim of a network device that performs the method of claim 1 and has the same subject matter as claim 1.
As to claims 2 and 15, D1 discloses claims 1 and 14, D1 further discloses: wherein the information of the terminal device groups corresponding to the power-saving information comprises at least one of:
a number of the terminal device groups corresponding to the power-saving information (claim 3, “… determining a first paging group number m required to receive a paging message; determining the paging group number n of the terminal device.”; note that paging group provides power saving as explained in the parent claims); or
a bit field size of the power-saving information corresponding to each of the terminal device groups (claim 1, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.”).
As to claim 3, D1 discloses claim 2, D1 further discloses: wherein the size of the bit fields for indicating the power-saving information is a sum of bit field sizes of the power-saving information corresponding to all of the terminal device groups (claim 2, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.” in view of the parent claims).
As to claim 4, D1 discloses claim 2, D1 further discloses: wherein the power-saving information corresponding to each of the terminal device groups has a same bit field size (claim 2, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.”; note that each group has a same bit field size of 1); or
the power-saving information corresponding to each of the terminal device groups has a different bit field size (using a different bit field size for each of the terminal device groups is a design choice which is obvious to OOSA according to MPEP 2143(F)).
Note that each device group either has a same bit field size or has a different bit field size.
As to claims 5 and 16, D1 discloses claims 1 and 14, D1 further discloses: wherein the information of the paging occasions comprises: a number of the paging occasions, or a number of paging occasion groups (claim 2, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.”), or wherein the size of the bit fields for indicating the power-saving information is related to a number of the paging occasions or a number of paging occasion groups corresponding to the power-saving information (claim 2, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.”; note that the smaller the N, the more the power-saving is because each paging group consume power).
As to claims 6, 10, 17 and 18, D1 discloses claims 1, 9, 14 and 16, D1 further discloses: wherein
one bit field of the power-saving information corresponding to each terminal device group corresponds to one paging occasion or one paging occasion group (claim 2, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.” And claim 3 “… terminal device determines the paging occasion of the paging group …”).
As to claims 7 and 19, D1 discloses claims 1 and 14, D1 further discloses: wherein the paging occasions corresponding to the power-saving information are determined by second configuration information transmitted by the network device (p5, 3rd para “… receiving the paging message at the paging occasion of the paging group configuration; and it is necessary to further judge the paging occasion of receiving the paging message according to the paging indication information. That is, in the embodiment of the invention, paging group after receiving the paging indication information, receiving the paging message, the corresponding relation of paging occasion and paging group is not fixed, paging group can flexibly adjust the corresponding relation of the paging occasion and paging group according to the paging indication information. …”); or
the paging occasions corresponding to the power-saving information are indicated by the downlink control information (p41, last para extending to next page “… For example, paging indication information included in the control message for scheduling RMSI, … is a cyclic redundancy check (cyclic redundancy check, CRC) scrambled downlink control information (DCI).”).
As to claims 8 and 20, D1 discloses claims 1 and 14, D1 further discloses: wherein the downlink control information indicates only the power-saving information (p41, last para extending to next page “… For example, paging indication information included in the control message for scheduling RMSI, … is a cyclic redundancy check (cyclic redundancy check, CRC) scrambled downlink control information (DCI).”), or
the downlink control information further indicates first information, the first information being different from the power-saving information (p41, last para extending to next page “… For example, paging indication information included in the control message for scheduling RMSI, … is a cyclic redundancy check (cyclic redundancy check, CRC) scrambled downlink control information (DCI).”; note that CRC is for error detection, different from the power-saving).
As to claim 11, D1 discloses claim 9, D1 further discloses: wherein the information of the paging occasions corresponding to the power-saving information is determined by the network device (claim 1 “… the terminal device receives the paging indication information sent by the network device; the paging indication information is used for indicating whether at least one paging group needs to receive the paging message …” and p17, 2nd para “… UE can determine the time domain information of the first paging occasion according to the indication information, reduces the blind detection of the paging message, reduces the detection power consumption of the UE”).
As to claim 12, D1 discloses claim 9, D1 further discloses wherein the power-saving information indicates whether the terminal device receives a paging message at a target paging occasion before the target paging occasion arrives (claim 2, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.”; note that each of N bits indicates whether a target paging to be arrived).
As to claim 13, D1 discloses claim 9, D1 further discloses wherein the processor is further configured to determine a position of the power-saving information in the downlink control information (p7, 2nd full para “… It can be understood that the paging indication information may be a plurality of bit values, the bit value can be the first indication value 1 or the second indication value 0, 1 represents the corresponding paging group needs to receive the paging message, 0 represents the corresponding paging group does not need to receive the paging message.”, p41, last para extending to next page “… For example, paging indication information included in the control message for scheduling RMSI, … is a cyclic redundancy check (cyclic redundancy check, CRC) scrambled downlink control information (DCI).” and claim 2, “said paging indication information comprises N bits, each bit in said N bits corresponds to a paging group, and said N is the number of paging groups.”; note that the position of a paging group is determine by its position in the N bits, and each bit carries the power-saving information).
Conclusion
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/JIANYE WU/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462