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 .
D1: S. Ben Slimane et al., "Delay Optimization in Cooperative Relaying with Cyclic Delay Diversity’, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, vol. 2008, 736818 (2008)
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) 1, 4, 6, 9, and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 in view of Jalloul US 9397876 and Serravalle US 20140148165.
Regarding claims 1, 6, 9, and 10, D1 discloses a method of operating a first communication node (CN) wherein the first CN is
configurable for transmitting, to a second CN on a radio channel, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), symbols via a first propagation path and a second propagation path (see figure 2; section 1: “cooperative OFDM relaying scheme”),
wherein each OFDM symbol comprises a prefix, in particular a cyclic prefix, wherein transmitting the OFDM symbols via the first propagation path comprises transmitting the OFDM symbols to the second CN via a coverage enhancing device (CED) (section 2: “relay”),
D1 is silent on providing, to the CED, a message indicative of a delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to incident signals,
wherein the first CN selects the delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to the incident signals, to result in an arrival, at the second CN, of a first signal portion transmitted via the first propagation path of a first OFDM symbol which is aligned with an arrival, at the second CN, of a second signal portion transmitted via the second propagation path of a second OFDM symbol. Thus the problem to be solved is a first CN / base station synchronizing the downlink transmission of the first and second CPE / base station.
Jalloul teaches a first base station adjusting the transmission of a second base station in order to achieve synchronization of transmissions to a mobile station (claim 18). Furthermore, Serravalle teaches offloading from a first CN / base station to a second CN / base station (As the second base station cell has the highest overall load, in accordance with normal load balancing rules, the second base station cell determines from the shared loading information that it should offload some connections to the first base station cell, [0077]).
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 D1 by providing, to the CED, a message indicative of a delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to incident signals, wherein the first CN selects the delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to the incident signals, to result in an arrival, at the second CN, of a first signal portion transmitted via the first propagation path of a first OFDM symbol which is aligned with an arrival, at the second CN, of a second signal portion transmitted via the second propagation path of a second OFDM symbol, as suggested by the combination of Jalloul and Serravalle. This modification would benefit the system by both load balancing the transmission of data between two CNs to the CED.
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of D1, Jalloul, and Serravalle as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Hampel US 20170295598.
The combination is silent on obtaining, from the CED, a message indicative of a capability of the first CED to apply a delay to the incident signals.
Hampel teaches obtaining, from the CED, a message indicative of a capability of the first CED to apply a delay to the incident signals (fig. 7, At 725, the relay device 710 may determine a capability configuration that includes a determination of whether there the relay device 710 support forwarding of delay tolerant messages. The relay device 710 may determine that it can support the requested service, as indicated in the service type indicator, [0071]).
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 the combination by obtaining, from the CED, a message indicative of a capability of the first CED to apply a delay to the incident signals, as shown by Hampel. This modification would benefit the system by informing the CN if the CED is capability of supporting transmission with the specified delay.
Claim(s) 1, 4, 6, 9, and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 in view of Ji US 8446893 and Serravalle US 20140148165.
Regarding claims 1, 6, 9, and 10, D1 discloses a method of operating a first communication node (CN) wherein the first CN is
configurable for transmitting, to a second CN on a radio channel, orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), symbols via a first propagation path and a second propagation path (see figure 2; section 1: “cooperative OFDM relaying scheme”),
wherein each OFDM symbol comprises a prefix, in particular a cyclic prefix, wherein transmitting the OFDM symbols via the first propagation path comprises transmitting the OFDM symbols to the second CN via a coverage enhancing device (CED) (section 2: “relay”),
D1 is silent on providing, to the CED, a message indicative of a delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to incident signals,
wherein the first CN selects the delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to the incident signals, to result in an arrival, at the second CN, of a first signal portion transmitted via the first propagation path of a first OFDM symbol which is aligned with an arrival, at the second CN, of a second signal portion transmitted via the second propagation path of a second OFDM symbol. Thus the problem to be solved is a first CN / base station synchronizing the downlink transmission of the first and second CPE / base station.
Ji teaches a first CN / base station synchronizing the downlink transmission of the first and second base stations so that the downlink transmissions to the first and second CPEs will be synchronized (claim 10). Furthermore, Serravalle teaches offloading from a first CN / base station to a second CN / base station (As the second base station cell has the highest overall load, in accordance with normal load balancing rules, the second base station cell determines from the shared loading information that it should offload some connections to the first base station cell, [0077]). Note, Ji teaches the CPEs may be collocated (fig. 1, CPEs may operate in the same vicinity, self-coexistence, col. 4 line 64 – col. 5 line 14, Precise network time synchronization is essential in general TDD systems, especially for Self-Coexistence situations. For example, when two units of Customer Premises Equipment, CPE_a and CPE_b are located in an overlapping cell area between two BSs BS_a and BS_b, col. 1 lines 38-53). Therefore, the Examiner corresponds the single CED of the applicant with the first and second CPEs of Ji.
Thus the combination of Ji and Serravalle makes obvious the limitation providing, to the CED, a message indicative of a delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to incident signals,
wherein the first CN selects the delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to the incident signals, to result in an arrival, at the second CN, of a first signal portion transmitted via the first propagation path of a first OFDM symbol which is aligned with an arrival, at the second CN, of a second signal portion transmitted via the second propagation path of a second OFDM symbol (Ji: wherein the second base station is configured to: obtain a propagation delay between the selected one of the first CPEs served by the first base station and the selected one of the second CPEs served by the second base station; calculate a frame slide by adding the transmission offset and the propagation delay and subtracting the reception offset; and synchronize the first base station and the second base station based upon the calculated frame slide, wherein the obtaining of the propagation delay by the second base station comprises: the one of the first CPEs located in the first cell configured to transmit a second data packet carrying information regarding the geographical location of the one of the first CPEs, and the one of the second CPEs located in the second cell configured to calculate the propagation delay of the data packet in dependence upon the information regarding the geographical location of the transmitter in response to reception of the second data packet, and to transmit the propagation delay to the second base station, claim 10).
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 D1 by providing, to the CED, a message indicative of a delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to incident signals, wherein the first CN selects the delay which is to be applied, by the CED, to the incident signals, to result in an arrival, at the second CN, of a first signal portion transmitted via the first propagation path of a first OFDM symbol which is aligned with an arrival, at the second CN, of a second signal portion transmitted via the second propagation path of a second OFDM symbol, as suggested by the combination of Ji and Serravalle. This modification would benefit the system by synchronizing the data arriving at the final destination between the two paths.
Regarding claim 4, providing, to the second CN, a message indicative of the delay to be applied by the CED. This limitation is obvious in view to the rejection of the combination of D1 and Ji.
Claim(s) 5 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over the combination of D1, Ji, and Serravalle as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Hampel US 20170295598.
The combination is silent on obtaining, from the CED, a message indicative of a capability of the first CED to apply a delay to the incident signals.
Hampel teaches obtaining, from the CED, a message indicative of a capability of the first CED to apply a delay to the incident signals (fig. 7, At 725, the relay device 710 may determine a capability configuration that includes a determination of whether there the relay device 710 support forwarding of delay tolerant messages. The relay device 710 may determine that it can support the requested service, as indicated in the service type indicator, [0071]).
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 the combination by obtaining, from the CED, a message indicative of a capability of the first CED to apply a delay to the incident signals, as shown by Hampel. This modification would benefit the system by informing the CN if the CED is capability of supporting transmission with the specified delay.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 3, 7, and 8 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.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 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.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RONALD B ABELSON whose telephone number is (571)272-3165. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 8:00-4:30.
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/RONALD B ABELSON/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2476