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 .
DETAILED ACTION
a. 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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 07/14/2026 has been entered.
Claims 1-9 in the present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, are being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
- claims 1, 5, and 6 are amended
b. This is a first action on the merits based on Applicant’s claims submitted on 06/12/2026.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 04/13/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Regarding Independent claims 1, 5, and 6 previously rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103, Applicant's arguments, see “CATT may conceivably be understood as teaching the use of user equipment in obtaining TA values. See CATT, Introduction. CATT describes one TA obtained via a random access procedure. See id. at Section 2.1. However, no portion of CATT describes transmissions performed after acquisition. In fact, CATT is silent on a missed or failed transmission of any kind, let alone an action taken when a transmission is missed or fails. Given the silence of CATT in this regard, it logically follows that CATT necessarily cannot render obvious limitation (i).” on page 7, filed on 06/12/2026, with respect to non patent literature document "Discussion on the Enhancement of TA Acquisition for E-CID," 3GPP R2-123588, August 13th-17th, 2012 ("CATT"), and in view of U.S. Patent No. 10,051,422 ("Kumar"), have been fully considered but not persuasive.
CATT clearly discloses transmissions performed after TA acquisition (“To ensure the eNB always get valuable measurement results, and since the UE could report UE Rx-Tx time difference of PCell at any time (i.e. mitigating transmission quality degradation after obtaining an updated TA measurement), it is proposed that the UE reports both UE Rx-Tx time difference measurement results of PCell and SCell if SCell is configured to be measured. If eNB receives both measurement results of PCell and SCell, it could select measurement result of one cell which has good quality to report (i.e. performing UL retransmission based on updated TA value), or report multiple location information to E-SMLC. This can leave to eNB implementation. And if the SCell is inactive which leads the measurement inaccurate or unreliable, it could report the measurement result of PCell only. Then the network could report the positioning measurement results of PCell to E-SMLC.” Proposal 2, section2.2 and furthermore “2) The TA measurement accuracy is mainly affected by the measurement bandwidth and the channel quantity. If the TA value can be obtained on different serving cells, considering the accuracy, eNB can select the serving cell with better channel quality and/or larger bandwidth to obtain more accurate TA value.” section 2.2).
The CATT’s reference, as combined with the Kumar’s reference, discloses each and every limitation of the present claims, and therefore render the claims 1, 5, and 6 obvious. The Examiner respectfully disagrees with the applicant’s arguments that the Examiner fails to establish a prima facie case of obviousness MPEP § 2141. Claims 1, 5, and 6 are still being rejected on the same grounds for rejection as before.
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 of this title, 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.
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
Claims 1-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over CATT NPL “Discussion on the Enhancement of TA Acquisition for E-CID”, 3GPP R2-123588, August 13th-17th, 2012 (hereinafter “CATT”), in view of Kumar et al., US Patent 10051422 (hereinafter “Kumar”).
Regarding claim 1 (Currently Amended)
CATT discloses a terminal (“UE” on page 1, Introduction):
controls one or more random access procedures (“TA Type2: eNB obtains the Timing Advance via non-contention based random access procedure.” On page 1, section 2.1); “-For TA Type 2, since non-contention based RA procedure is supported on SCell, network can obtain the TA value on SCell via the non-contention based RA procedure.” On page 1, section 2.2; “To obtain TA Type2, it can be obtained by triggering non-contention based random access procedure on SCell.” On page 1, Proposal 1, section 2.2);
acquires, on the basis of the one or more random access procedures, a plurality of information related to a plurality of timing advances (i.e. “TA group”) corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of base stations (“With the introduction of Multi-TA mechanism, eNB can obtain more than one TA value of one UE.” On page 1, Introduction), each of the plurality of timing advances (“In R11 CA, multi-TA mechanism is introduced. The primary TA group includes PCell. And other TA groups are referred to as secondary TA group. For serving cells in one TA group, the same timing reference cell and the same Timing Advance value are used.” On page 1, section 2.1) or transmission/reception points (“eNB” on page 1, Introduction); and
performs an uplink (UL) transmission on the basis of at least one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances (“With the introduction of multi-TA mechanism, it is feasible for network to obtain the TA value of SCells:
- For TA Type 1, since the multiple UL timings are maintained between network and UE, UE and eNB can obtain multiple Rx-Tx time differences on SCells;” on page 1, section 2.2).
wherein, in response to a UL transmission failure, the transmitter performs a UL retransmission (“To ensure the eNB always get valuable measurement results, and since the UE could report UE Rx-Tx time difference of PCell at any time (i.e. mitigating transmission quality degradation after obtaining an updated TA measurement), it is proposed that the UE reports both UE Rx-Tx time difference measurement results of PCell and SCell if SCell is configured to be measured. If eNB receives both measurement results of PCell and SCell, it could select measurement result of one cell which has good quality to report (i.e. performing UL retransmission based on updated TA value), or report multiple location information to E-SMLC. This can leave to eNB implementation. And if the SCell is inactive which leads the measurement inaccurate or unreliable, it could report the measurement result of PCell only. Then the network could report the positioning measurement results of PCell to E-SMLC.” Proposal 2, section2.2) on the basis of a different one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances (“In LTE LCS, there are two ways to obtain TA (TADV):
1) TA Type1: UE reports the UE Rx-Tx time difference of PCell via RRC signaling. eNB calculates the TA according to the UE Rx-Tx time difference and the eNB Rx-Tx time difference measured by itself.
TADV = (eNB Rx-Tx time difference) + (UE Rx-Tx time difference)
2) TA Type2: eNB obtains the Timing Advance via non-contention based random access procedure.
TADV = eNB Rx-Tx time difference” section 2.1., and furthermore “2) The TA measurement accuracy is mainly affected by the measurement bandwidth and the channel quantity. If the TA value can be obtained on different serving cells, considering the accuracy, eNB can select the serving cell with better channel quality and/or larger bandwidth to obtain more accurate TA value.” section 2.2).
CATT does not specifically teach the hardware components of a terminal such as a controller, a receiver, and a transmitter; and wherein the receiver acquires the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances through one random access procedure.
In an analogous art, Kumar discloses a method for obtaining estimated location of a mobile device (“a mobile device may obtain a plurality of timing advance parameters based, at least in part, on frames transmitted from the mobile device to a plurality of base stations on uplink channels to the plurality of base stations” [Abstract]) wherein the mobile device (“FIG. 6 is a schematic diagram of a mobile device 800 according to an embodiment. UE 100, mobile device 300 and/or mobile device 400…” col 14, rows 18-19) comprising:
a controller (“General-purpose processor(s) 811” col. 14, row 49; Fig. 6);
a receiver (“wireless transceiver 821 which is capable of transmitting and receiving wireless signals” col 14, rows 23-24; Fig. 6);
wherein the receiver acquires the plurality of information (“Block 504 may select a timing advance parameter based on a signal transmitted in an uplink channel to a particular base station from among the plurality of timing advance parameters obtained at block 502. As pointed out above in connection with block 502, the selected timing advance parameter may be based, at least in part, on signals transmitted (e.g., Random Access Preamble) to a base station of a particular cell other than a primary cell (e.g., as part of a RACH procedure)” Col. 11, lines 27-35) related to the plurality of timing advances through one random access procedure (“Furthermore, multiple timing advance parameters may be obtained by transmission by a mobile device of signals to multiple different base stations on the multiple different uplink channels (e.g., in an LET Random Access Procedure (RACH)).” Col. 8, lines 28-32)
a transmitter (“wireless transceiver 821 which is capable of transmitting and receiving wireless signals” col 14, rows 23-24; Fig. 6);
Before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify CATT’s method for TA acquisition for E-CID to include Kumar’s method for obtaining a plurality of timing advance parameters using E-CID, in order to efficiently provide an estimated location of a mobile device (Kumar [Abstract]). Thus, a person of ordinary skill would have appreciated the ability to incorporate Kumar’s method for obtaining a plurality of timing advance parameters using E-CID into CATT’s method for TA acquisition for E-CID since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Regarding claim 2
CATT, as modified by Kumar, previously discloses the terminal according to claim 1,
CATT further discloses wherein when the controller (as taught by Kumar) performs transmission or reception to or from at least one of the plurality of base stations or transmission/reception points (“eNB can obtain multiple Rx-Tx time differences on SCells” on page 1, section 2.2), the controller performs control to adjust a value of at least one of the plurality of timing advances (“The way of TA acquisition will be more flexible. TA value of either PCell or SCell can help network to calculate UE’s locations, which would bring more flexibility to eNB implementation and can reduce the RACH load for positioning on PCell. The TA measurement accuracy is mainly affected by the measurement bandwidth and the channel quantity [1]. If the TA value can be obtained on different serving cells, considering the accuracy, eNB can select the serving cell with better channel quality and/or larger bandwidth to obtain more accurate TA value.” On page 1, section 2.2).
Regarding claim 3
CATT, as modified by Kumar, previously discloses the terminal according to claim 1,
CATT further discloses wherein in a given time unit (i.e. “UL timings”), the transmitter (as taught by Kumar) performs a plurality of UL transmissions, each of the plurality of UL transmissions corresponding to a respective one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances (“With the introduction of multi-TA mechanism, it is feasible for network to obtain the TA value of SCells:
- For TA Type 1, since the multiple UL timings are maintained between network and UE, UE and eNB can obtain multiple Rx-Tx time differences on SCells;” on page 1, section 2.2) .
Regarding claim 4
CATT, as modified by Kumar, previously discloses the terminal according to claim 1,
CATT further discloses wherein the controller (as taught by Kumar) determines position measuring by using at least two or more of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances (“Since TA+AOA is one E-CID method for UE positioning, obtaining more than one TA value of one UE would provide the opportunity to acquire more accurate UE location information” on page 1, Introduction; “TA+AoA positioning is one of Enhanced Cell-ID positioning methods. It calculates UE location based on the position of serving cell, the Angle of Arrival, and the distance between UE and serving cell which is obtained by Timing Advance.” On page 1, section 2.1).
Regarding claim 5 (Currently Amended)
A radio communication method for a terminal, the radio communication method comprising:
controlling one or more random access procedures;
acquiring, on the basis of the one or more random access procedures, a plurality of information related to a plurality of timing advances, each of the plurality of timing advances corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of base stations or transmission/reception points; and
performing an uplink (UL) transmission on the basis of at least one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances; and
in response to a UL transmission failure, performing a UL retransmission on the basis of a different one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances,
wherein the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances is acquired through one random access procedure.
The scope and subject matter of method claim 5 is drawn to the method of using the corresponding apparatus claimed in claim 1. Therefore method claim 5 corresponds to apparatus claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used in claim 1 rejection above.
Regarding claim 6 (Currently Amended)
Kumar discloses a base station (“First device 902, second device 904 and third device 906 may be representative of any device, appliance or machine” col 16, rows 36-37) comprising:
a controller (“Processing unit 920” col 17, row 12; Fig. 7) that controls one or more random access procedures (as aforementioned in claim 1 discussion with CATT teaching);
a transmitter (“a communication interface 930” col 17, row 45; Fig. 7) that transmits, on the basis of the one or more random access procedures, a plurality of information related to a plurality of timing advances (as aforementioned in claim 1 discussion with CATT teaching); and
a receiver (“a communication interface 930” col 17, row 45; Fig. 7) that receives an uplink (UL) transmission transmitted from a terminal on the basis of at least one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances (as aforementioned in claim 1 discussion with CATT teaching),
wherein the transmitter transmits the plurality of information (“Block 504 may select a timing advance parameter based on a signal transmitted in an uplink channel to a particular base station from among the plurality of timing advance parameters obtained at block 502. As pointed out above in connection with block 502, the selected timing advance parameter may be based, at least in part, on signals transmitted (e.g., Random Access Preamble) to a base station of a particular cell other than a primary cell (e.g., as part of a RACH procedure)” Col. 11, lines 27-35) related to the plurality of timing advances through one random access procedure (“Furthermore, multiple timing advance parameters may be obtained by transmission by a mobile device of signals to multiple different base stations on the multiple different uplink channels (e.g., in an LET Random Access Procedure (RACH)).” Col. 8, lines 28-32), and
Kumar does not specifically teach wherein, in response to a UL transmission failure, the receiver receives a UL retransmission transmitted from the terminal on the basis of a different one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances.
In an analogous art, CATT discloses wherein, in response to a UL transmission failure, the transmitter performs a UL retransmission (“To ensure the eNB always get valuable measurement results, and since the UE could report UE Rx-Tx time difference of PCell at any time (i.e. mitigating transmission quality degradation after obtaining an updated TA measurement), it is proposed that the UE reports both UE Rx-Tx time difference measurement results of PCell and SCell if SCell is configured to be measured. If eNB receives both measurement results of PCell and SCell, it could select measurement result of one cell which has good quality to report (i.e. performing UL retransmission based on updated TA value), or report multiple location information to E-SMLC. This can leave to eNB implementation. And if the SCell is inactive which leads the measurement inaccurate or unreliable, it could report the measurement result of PCell only. Then the network could report the positioning measurement results of PCell to E-SMLC.” Proposal 2, section2.2) on the basis of a different one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances (“In LTE LCS, there are two ways to obtain TA (TADV):
1) TA Type1: UE reports the UE Rx-Tx time difference of PCell via RRC signaling. eNB calculates the TA according to the UE Rx-Tx time difference and the eNB Rx-Tx time difference measured by itself.
TADV = (eNB Rx-Tx time difference) + (UE Rx-Tx time difference)
2) TA Type2: eNB obtains the Timing Advance via non-contention based random access procedure.
TADV = eNB Rx-Tx time difference” section 2.1., and furthermore “2) The TA measurement accuracy is mainly affected by the measurement bandwidth and the channel quantity. If the TA value can be obtained on different serving cells, considering the accuracy, eNB can select the serving cell with better channel quality and/or larger bandwidth to obtain more accurate TA value.” section 2.2).
Before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Kumar’s method for obtaining a plurality of timing advance parameters using E-CID, to include CATT’s method for TA acquisition for E-CID, in order to efficiently provide an estimated location of a mobile device (CATT [Proposal 1, section 2.2]). Thus, a person of ordinary skill would have appreciated the ability to incorporate CATT’s method for TA acquisition for E-CID into Kumar’s method for obtaining a plurality of timing advance parameters using E-CID since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Regarding claim 7
The terminal according to claim 2, wherein in a given time unit, the transmitter performs a plurality of UL transmissions, each of the plurality of UL transmissions corresponding to a respective one of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances.
The scope and subject matter of method claim 7 is drawn to the method of using the corresponding apparatus claimed in claim 3. Therefore method claim 7 corresponds to apparatus claim 3 and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used in claim 3 rejection above.
Regarding claim 8
The terminal according to claim 2, wherein the controller determines position measuring by using at least two or more of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances.
The scope and subject matter of method claim 8 is drawn to the method of using the corresponding apparatus claimed in claim 4. Therefore method claim 8 corresponds to apparatus claim 4 and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used in claim 4 rejection above.
Regarding claim 9
The terminal according to claim 3, wherein the controller determines position measuring by using at least two or more of the plurality of information related to the plurality of timing advances.
The scope and subject matter of method claim 9 is drawn to the method of using the corresponding apparatus claimed in claim 4. Therefore method claim 9 corresponds to apparatus claim 4 and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used in claim 4 rejection above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHUONG M NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-8184. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00am - 6:30pm.
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/CHUONG M NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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