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
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(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) 1-8, 10, 11, 17, 19-21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by “BSR over 2-step RACH” (R2-21003263) to Asia Pacific Telecom (hereinafter D1).
Re: Claim(s) 1, 19, 20
D1 discloses a random access method, performed by a terminal, and comprising: (Section 2 – method performed by UE disclosed)
determining whether the terminal satisfies a triggering condition for random access in response to determining that a Buffer Status Report (BSR) is triggered by the terminal; and triggering a random access process in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for random access (Section 2, Proposal 1 – if a BSR has been triggered and there is no available UL-SCH resource … if there is not pending SR, the UE should directly initiate a 2-step RA procedure).
D1 further discloses:
A communication device comprising a processor and memory (See Section 2, method performed by a UE. Processor and memory are inherent to a UE) corresponding to the method of claim 1, as required by claim 19; and
A computer-readable storage medium (See Section 2, method performed by a UE. Memory is inherent to a UE) corresponding to the method of claim 1, as required by claim 20.
Re: Claim(s) 2, 21
D1 discloses wherein triggering the random access process in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for random comprises: determining whether there are available Uplink Shared Channel (UL-SCH) resources for new transmission; and triggering the random access process in response to determining that there are no available UL-SCH resources for new transmission (Section 2, Proposal 1 – if a BSR has been triggered and there is no available UL-SCH resource … if there is not pending SR, the UE should directly initiate a 2-step RA procedure).
Re: Claim(s) 3
D1 discloses wherein in response to determining that there are available UL-SCH resources for new transmission, triggering the random access process in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for random access comprises: determining whether the UL-SCH resources satisfy a Logical Channel Priority (LCP) mapping restriction condition of a Logical Channel (LC) that triggers the BSR; and triggering the random access process in response to determining that the UL- SCH resources do not satisfy the LCP mapping restriction condition of the LC that triggers the BSR (Section 2, first box – 1>2>3>4 – if the UL-SCH resources available for a new transmission do not meet the LCP mapping restrictions … ).
Re: Claim(s) 4
D1 discloses wherein the terminal is configured with a configured uplink grant resource, and triggering the random access process in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for random access comprises: determining a status of a logical channel scheduling request mask of a LC that triggers the BSR; and triggering the random access process in response to determining that the status of the logical channel scheduling request mask of the LC that triggers the BSR is false (Section 2, first box – 1>2>3>4 – if the MAC entity is configured with configured uplink grant(s) and the Regular BSR was triggered for a logical channel for which logicalChannelSR-Mask is set to false … ).
Re: Claim(s) 5
D1 discloses triggering a Scheduling Request (SR) in response to determining that the terminal does not satisfy the triggering condition (Section 2, first box).
Re: Claim(s) 6
D1 discloses wherein triggering the SR in response determining that the terminal does not satisfy the triggering condition comprises: determining whether there are available Uplink Shared Channel (UL-SCH) resources for new transmission; and triggering the SR in response to determining that there are no available UL- SCH resources for new transmission (Section 2, first box – 1>2>3>4 – if there is no UL-SCH resources available for a new transmission … ).
Re: Claim(s) 7
D1 discloses wherein in response to determining that there are available UL-SCH resources for new transmission, triggering the SR in response determining that the terminal does not satisfy the triggering condition comprises: determining whether the UL-SCH resources satisfy a Logical Channel Priority (LCP) mapping restriction condition of a Logical Channel (LC) that triggers the BSR; and triggering the SR in response to determining that the UL-SCH resources do not satisfy the LCP mapping restriction condition of the LC that triggers the BSR (Section 2, first box – 1>2>3>4 – if the UL-SCH resources available for a new transmission do not meet the LCP mapping restrictions … ).
Re: Claim(s) 8
D1 discloses wherein the terminal is configured with a configured uplink grant resource, and triggering the SR in response determining that the terminal does not satisfy the triggering condition: determining a status of a logical channel scheduling request mask of a LC that triggers the BSR; and triggering the SR in response to determining that the status of the logical channel scheduling request mask of the LC that triggers the BSR is false (Section 2, first box – 1>2>3>4 – if the MAC entity is configured with configured uplink grant(s) and the Regular BSR was triggered for a logical channel for which logicalChannelSR-Mask is set to false … ).
Re: Claim(s) 10
D1 discloses wherein the triggering condition for random access comprises a triggering condition for two-step random access (Section 2 – Proposal 1).
Re: Claim(s) 11
D1 discloses wherein triggering a random access process in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for random access comprises: triggering a two-step random access process in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for two-step random access (Section 2 – Proposal 1).
Re: Claim(s) 17
D1 discloses wherein the BSR is a regular BSR (Section 2, first box – 1>2>3>4 – if the MAC entity is configured with configured uplink grant(s) and the Regular BSR was triggered for a logical channel for which logicalChannelSR-Mask is set to false … ).
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) 9, 12, 13 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of “Enhancements on RACH in NTN” (R2-2101833) to Asia Pacific Telecom (hereinafter D2).
Re: Claim(s) 9
D1 discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 1 above.
D1 does/do not appear to explicitly disclose wherein the triggering condition for random access comprises at least one of: a LC that triggers the BSR is configured to allow a random access process or a two-step random access process to be triggered in response to determining that the BSR is triggered; the LC that triggers the BSR is configured to disable an uplink Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) retransmission; a quality of service of the LC that triggers the BSR does not satisfy a specified quality of service; a terminal-specific round-trip delay of the terminal in a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) does not satisfy a delay condition; a distance between the terminal and at least one of a satellite, a reference point, and a base station in the NTN does not satisfy a distance condition; and at least one of a time-domain and frequency-domain compensation performed by the terminal satisfies a compensation requirement.
However, attention is directed to D2 which discloses said limitation (Page 2, Proposal 2 and preceding paragraphs – one criterion for RA type selection can rely on the distance [between the UE and the satellite).
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 D1 invention by employing the teaching as taught by D2 to provide the ability for triggering a particular random access type based upon distance between a terminal and a satellite. The motivation for the combination is given by D2 (Introduction).
Re: Claim(s) 12
D1 discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 1 and 10 above.
D1 does/do not appear to explicitly disclose triggering a four-step random access process or a SR in response to determining that the terminal does not satisfy the triggering condition for two-step random access.
However, attention is directed to D2 which discloses said limitation (Page 2, Proposal 2 and preceding paragraphs – one criterion for RA type selection can rely on the distance [between the UE and the satellite).
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 D1 invention by employing the teaching as taught by D2 to provide the ability to condition the selection of a RA type based upon distance between a terminal and a satellite. The Examiner notes that this would imply that 4-step RA is selected for certain distances (e.g. below a certain distance) and 2-step RA is selected for certain distances (e.g. above a certain distance) since the goal of using 2-step RA is to reduce round trip delays in NTN (see Id.) The motivation for the combination is given by D2 (Introduction).
Re: Claim(s) 13
D1 discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 1 and 10 above.
D1 does/do not appear to explicitly disclose wherein the triggering condition for two-step random access comprises at least one of: a LC that triggers the BSR is configured to trigger a two-step random access process in response to determining that[[when]] the BSR is triggered; the LC that triggers the BSR is configured to disable an uplink Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) retransmission; a quality of service of the LC that triggers the BSR does not satisfy a specified quality of service; a channel quality does not satisfy a quality condition; a terminal-specific round-trip delay of the terminal in a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) does not satisfy a delay condition; a distance between the terminal and at least one of a satellite, a reference point, and a base station in the NTN does not satisfy a distance condition; at least one of a time-domain and frequency-domain compensation performed by the terminal satisfies a compensation requirement; and the terminal is configured with resources for two-step random access.
However, attention is directed to D2 which discloses said limitation (Page 2, Proposal 2 and preceding paragraphs – one criterion for RA type selection can rely on the distance [between the UE and the satellite).
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 D1 invention by employing the teaching as taught by D2 to provide the ability to condition the selection of a RA type based upon distance between a terminal and a satellite. The Examiner notes that this would imply that 4-step RA is selected for certain distances (e.g. below a certain distance) and 2-step RA is selected for certain distances (e.g. above a certain distance) since the goal of using 2-step RA is to reduce round trip delays in NTN (see Id.) The motivation for the combination is given by D2 (Introduction).
Claim(s) 14, 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of US 20220053575 A1 to He; Linhai et al.
Re: Claim(s) 14
D1 discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 1, 10, and 11 above.
D1 further discloses wherein the terminal is in a disconnected state, and triggering the two-step random access process in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for two-step random access comprises: triggering the two-step random access process, in response to determining that the terminal satisfies the triggering condition for two-step random access (Section 2, Proposal 1 – if a BSR has been triggered and there is no available UL-SCH resource … if there is not pending SR, the UE should directly initiate a 2-step RA procedure).,
D1 does/do not appear to explicitly disclose the additional condition that an access class for triggering random access satisfies a target condition; or otherwise, triggering a four-step random access process, in response to determining at least one of: the terminal does not satisfies the triggering condition for the two-step and the access class for triggering random access does not satisfy the target condition.
However, attention is directed to He which discloses said limitation (0078-0079 - The base station 604 may periodically send (e.g., broadcast) information associated with operating on the cell provided by the base station 604 … the configuration information 610 may indicate whether the base station 604 supports performing a two-step RACH procedure. In some aspects, the configuration information 610 may indicate that the base station 604 supports the two-step RACH procedure for one or more UE access classes. 0081-0082 - The UE 602 may receive and decode the configuration information 610 and may subsequently perform a RACH attempt based at least in part on the configuration information 610. For example, at 612, the UE 602 determines whether to perform a two-step RACH procedure (e.g., the two-step RACH procedure 510 of FIG. 5) or a four-step RACH procedure (e.g., the four-step RACH procedure 410 of FIG. 4) based at least in part on the configuration information 610, including the one or more parameters … In certain aspects, the configuration information 610 may indicate that the base station 604 supports the two-step RACH procedure for one or more UE access classes. In certain such examples, if an access class associated with the UE 602 is not indicated as supported by the configuration information 610, the UE 602 determines, at 612, to perform the four-step RACH procedure … if the configuration information 610 indicates that the base station 604 supports the two-step RACH procedure (and/or if the access class associated with the UE is indicated as being supported by the base station 604 for performing the two-step RACH procedure), then the UE 602 may perform a second check to determine whether an estimated link quality between the UE 602 and the base station 604 is satisfactory to perform the two-step RACH procedure).
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 D1 invention by employing the teaching as taught by He to provide the ability to decide to perform a 2-step or 4-step RACH procedure based upon the access class(es) configured by the network. The motivation for the combination is given by He (0004).
Re: Claim(s) 15
D1 in view of He discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 14 above.
D1 does/do not appear to explicitly disclose wherein the target condition comprises at least one of: determining according to a broadcast message from a base station that the access class is configured to adopt two-step random access; and determining by an Access Stratum of the terminal according to an instruction from a Non-Access Stratum that the access class is configured to adopt two-step random access.
However, further attention is directed to He which discloses said limitation (0078-0079 - The base station 604 may periodically send (e.g., broadcast) information associated with operating on the cell provided by the base station 604 … the configuration information 610 may indicate whether the base station 604 supports performing a two-step RACH procedure. In some aspects, the configuration information 610 may indicate that the base station 604 supports the two-step RACH procedure for one or more UE access classes. 0081-0082 - The UE 602 may receive and decode the configuration information 610 and may subsequently perform a RACH attempt based at least in part on the configuration information 610. For example, at 612, the UE 602 determines whether to perform a two-step RACH procedure (e.g., the two-step RACH procedure 510 of FIG. 5) or a four-step RACH procedure (e.g., the four-step RACH procedure 410 of FIG. 4) based at least in part on the configuration information 610, including the one or more parameters … In certain aspects, the configuration information 610 may indicate that the base station 604 supports the two-step RACH procedure for one or more UE access classes. In certain such examples, if an access class associated with the UE 602 is not indicated as supported by the configuration information 610, the UE 602 determines, at 612, to perform the four-step RACH procedure … if the configuration information 610 indicates that the base station 604 supports the two-step RACH procedure (and/or if the access class associated with the UE is indicated as being supported by the base station 604 for performing the two-step RACH procedure), then the UE 602 may perform a second check to determine whether an estimated link quality between the UE 602 and the base station 604 is satisfactory to perform the two-step RACH procedure).
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 D1 invention by employing the teaching as taught by He to provide the ability to decide to perform a 2-step or 4-step RACH procedure based upon the access class(es) configured by the network. The motivation for the combination is given by He (0004).
Claim(s) 16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over D1 in view of He as applied to claim 14 above, and further in view of D2.
Re: Claim(s) 16
D1 in view of He discloses those limitations as set forth in the rejection of claim(s) 14 above.
D1 in view of He does/do not appear to explicitly disclose wherein the triggering condition for two-step random access comprises at least one of: a quality of service of a LC that triggers the BSR does not satisfy a specified quality of service; a channel quality does not satisfy a quality condition; a terminal-specific round-trip delay of the terminal in a Non-Terrestrial Network (NTN) does not satisfy a delay condition; a distance between the terminal and at least one of a satellite, a reference point, and a base station in the NTN does not satisfy a distance condition; at least one of a time-domain and frequency-domain compensation performed by the terminal satisfies a compensation requirement; and determining according to a broadcast message from a base station that there are available resources for two-step random access.
However, attention is directed to D2 which discloses said limitation (see as analyzed in the rejection of claim 13).
Conclusion
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/KASHIF SIDDIQUI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415