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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-5, 7-28, and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (WO 2020063588 A1), hereinafter “Wang” in view of Xu et. al. (US 2021/0051758 A1), hereinafter “Xu”.
Claims 1, 16, 17, and 23:
Claim 1 is for an apparatus between base station and a remote device, Claim 16 is for a similar device performing similar function as the device of claim 1, claim 17 is for an apparatus of remote device communicating with the device of claim 1, performing functions complimentary to the functions of apparatus of claim 1, and claim 23 is for base station connected to the apparatus of claim 1, performing operations complimentary to operations/method of device of claim 1.
Regarding claim 17, Wang teaches, an apparatus for wireless communication at a remote device ([Abstract] “Embodiments of the present invention provide a drive testing method and device, a drive testing control method and device, an apparatus, and a storage medium.”), comprising: memory; and at least one processor coupled to the memory (“An embodiment of the present invention further provides a device, including: a processor, a memory, a communication unit, and a communication bus;”), the memory and the at least one processor configured to:
receive, in a sidelink message from a relay device, a configuration for minimization of drive test (MDT) measurements of sidelink communication (“This embodiment provides a process for activating and reporting a sidelink drive test configuration by using a Minimization of Drive-tests (MDT) mechanism.”).
Xu does not expressly teach receiving a sidelink message from a relay device, though it teaches that the message is issued by a configuration side, “The drive testing method comprises: a terminal receiving sidelink drive testing configuration information issued by a configuration side” ([abstract]). Regarding configuration side, it discloses, “in this embodiment, the configuration side includes any one of a base station, a relay node, and a roadside unit RSU.”.
In a similar scenario Xu discloses relay user equipment (Fig.9, relay UE 906) for communication between the base station (gNB 908) and remote user equipments (remote UE #1 902 and remote UE #2 904)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to come up with the claimed invention based on use of relay UE of Xu with that of the relay in Wang motivated by use of sidelink communication capability of user equipments and use of measurement results by remote user equipments for sidelink communication.
Wang teaches, transmit the MDT measurements to the relay device (Wang: [Abstract] “reporting the obtained sidelink drive testing information to the configuration side”; configuration side is the relay device as per discussion above.).
Claims 1, 16 and 23 are rejected based on rejection of claim 17 based on functions performed by the devices are complimentary in nature.
Claims 18 and 25:
Regarding claim 18, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 17 (discussed above), wherein the configuration indicates one or more of: at least one sidelink transmission resource pool for the remote device to collect the MDT measurements when in a radio resource control (RRC) idle state or an RRC inactive state (Wang: Embodiment 5: This embodiment provides another way for the idle UE and the inactive UE to obtain sidelink drive test configuration information”; “When the UE is in the idle state or the inactive state, the sidelink measurement is performed), sidelink frequency information, a channel busy ratio (CBR) measurement configuration, or an event trigger for collecting logged MDT measurements (“The method according to claim 3, wherein the measurement-related parameters include at least one of: a channel busy rate CBR threshold used for sidelink resource pool congestion measurement, a delay threshold used for sidelink QoS measurement”).
Regarding claim 25, claim elements are discussed above in claim 18.
Claims 19 and 30:
Regarding claim 19, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 18 (discussed above), wherein the memory and the at least one processor are further configured to:
transmit an availability indication of the logged MDT measurements to the relay device (implied by the disclosure in Wang: “When the sidelink drive test information obtained by the terminal meets the reporting conditions, the terminal needs to report the sidelink drive test information. The reporting process also includes: sending a sidelink drive test information indication to the configuration side”;
receive a request for the logged MDT measurements from the relay device or from a base station via the relay device; and
transmit the logged MDT measurements to the relay device or to the base station via the relay device (Wang: “Sidelink communication drive test information report request; according to the sidelink communication drive test information report request, send the sidelink drive test information to the configuration side.”).
Claim 30 is rejected based on rejection of claim 19.
Regarding claim 8, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 17 (discussed above), wherein the MDT measurements configured by the base station include one or more of:
sidelink signal quantity measurement,
a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) service data unit (SDU) data volume
measurement for sidelink,
an average UE throughput measurement for the sidelink,
a packet delay measurement for the sidelink, or
a packet loss rate measurement for the sidelink (Wang: “M8: sidelink QoS measurement, including at least one of the following: BLER measurement based on the sidelink data channel PSSCH or sidelink control channel PSCCH BLER measurement; based on the sidelink logical channel or sidelink bearer or priority PPPP or reliability PPPR or 5QI data volume data, throughput, packet delay packet delay, packet loss rate packet loss rate or packet discard rate measurement.”).
Claims 20 and 25: Rejected based on rejection of claim 8.
Claims 8, 20, and 25:
Regarding claim 20, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 17 (discussed above), wherein the MDT measurements include one or more of: sidelink signal quantity measurement, a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) service data unit (SDU) data volume measurement for sidelink, an average UE throughput measurement for the sidelink, a packet delay measurement for the sidelink, or a packet loss rate measurement for the sidelink (Wang: “M8: sidelink QoS measurement, including at least one of the following: BLER measurement based on the sidelink data channel PSSCH or sidelink control channel PSCCH BLER measurement; based on the sidelink logical channel or sidelink bearer or priority PPPP or reliability PPPR or 5QI data volume data, throughput, packet delay packet delay, packet loss rate packet loss rate or packet discard rate measurement.”).
Claims 8 and 25 are ejected based on rejection of claim 20.
Regarding claim 21, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 20 (discussed above), wherein the MDT measurements are configured to be measured per Sidelink data radio bearer (SL-DRB) (Wang: M8: sidelink QoS measurement, including at least one of the following: BLER measurement based on the sidelink data channel PSSCH; PSCCH is the sidelink data radio bearer).
Regarding claim 22, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 17 (discussed above), wherein the configuration indicates for the remote device to report the MDT measurements for one or more sidelink transmission resource pools, the MDT measurements including at least one of a sidelink data volume, a sidelink average throughput, a sidelink packet delay, a sidelink packet loss, a sidelink discovery reference signal received power (SD-RSRP), and the configuration indicates for the MDT measurements to be associated with one or more of location information, an additional measurement of a different radio access technology (RAT) than sidelink, or one or more sensor measurements (Wang: M* “BLER measurement based on the sidelink data channel PSSCH or sidelink control channel PSCCH BLER measurement; based on the sidelink logical channel or sidelink bearer or priority PPPP or reliability PPPR or 5QI data volume data, throughput, packet delay packet delay, packet loss rate packet loss rate or packet discard rate measurement.”).
Regarding claim 2, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 1 (discussed above).
Though the combination of Wang and Xu does not expressly teach, wherein the configuration is for a logged MDT procedure at the relay device when the relay device is in a radio resource control (RRC) idle state or an RRC inactive state, the memory and the at least one processor being further configured to: transition from an RRC connected state to the RRC idle state or the RRC inactive state, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art based on the discussion in claim 18, which is applicable to the remote user equipments performing the measurements, to be equally applicable for the relay device too;
Wang teaches, store the MDT measurements associated with the sidelink communication; and transition to the RRC connected state prior to transmitting the report of the MDT measurements (Wang: embodiment 4, “The UE records the sidelink drive test information (i.e, the sidelink drive test measurement result information). When the UE has the reporting conditions (UE willingness or the UE meets the reporting conditions or the UE enters the connected state”; storing is implied by “recording” of the measurement results),”.
Regarding claim 3, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 2 (discussed above), wherein the configuration indicates one or more of: at least one sidelink transmission resource pool for the relay device to collect the MDT measurements when in the RRC idle state or the RRC inactive state, sidelink frequency information, a channel busy ratio (CBR) measurement configuration, or an event trigger for collecting logged MDT measurements (discussed above in claim 18).
Regarding claim 4, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the configuration is for a logged MDT procedure at the remote device when the remote device is in a radio resource control (RRC) idle state or an RRC inactive state, the memory and the at least one processor being further configured to:
receive the MDT measurements from the remote device; and
transmit the MDT measurements from the remote device in the report to the base station (discussed above in claim 17).
Regarding claim 5, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 4 (discussed above), wherein the relay device transmits the MDT measurements from the remote device to the base station without storage (implied by the disclosure in Wang, “The above sidelink drive test willingness information includes: willingness to perform sidelink drive test, willingness to report sidelink drive test information, timely / immediate sidelink drive test willingness, sidelink drive test log record willingness, sidelink drive test unicast / multicast / broadcast communication type willingness”).
Regarding claim 7, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 4 (discussed above), wherein the relay device receives the MDT measurements from multiple remote devices, the memory and the at least one processor being further configured to:
store the MDT measurements from the multiple remote devices while in the RRC idle state or the RRC inactive state (discussed earlier); and
transition to an RRC connected state prior to transmitting the report, wherein the report comprises aggregate MDT measurements for the multiple remote devices (aggregate measurement is discussed above).
Regarding claim 8, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the MDT measurements configured by the base station include one or more of: sidelink signal quantity measurement, a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) service data unit (SDU) data volume measurement for sidelink, an average UE throughput measurement for the sidelink, a packet delay measurement for the sidelink, or a packet loss rate measurement for the sidelink, (Wang: “the sidelink QoS measurement information includes at least one of the following: based on a sidelink data channel PSSCH or a sidelink control channel PSCCH block error rate BLER measurement, based on a sidelink logical channel or sidelink bearer or priority PPPP or reliability PPPR between source and target pairs Or 5QI data volume data, or throughput, or packet delay packet delay, packet loss rate or packet discard rate measurement result information”)
Regarding claim 9, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the claim 8 (discussed above), wherein the report indicates the MDT measurements per Sidelink data radio bearer (SL-DRB) and per remote device (implied based on disclosure above by Wang of sidelink bearer. Data radio bearers are the bearers of interest for data transmission ).
Regarding claim 10, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the MDT measurements configured by the base station include a measurement of a delay between the remote device and the relay device, the delay including at least one of a first queuing delay in a packet data convergence protocol (PDCP) layer of the remote device, an air-interface delay between the remote device and the relay device and a second queuing delay in an Adaptation layer (ADAPT) of the remote device or the relay device (Wang, “the packet delay is the measurement time T, Based on the sidelink logical channel or sidelink bearer or priority PPPP or reliability PPPR or 5QI between the source and target pairs, the packet PDCP queueing delay (the time it takes for a packet to reach the PDCP upper SAP to begin transmitting to the RLC layer) exceeds the configured delay threshold packet (PDCP SDU) ratio to the total number of packets”).
Regarding claim 11, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the claim 10 (discussed above), wherein the memory and the at least one processor are further configured to: measure the delay between the remote device and the relay device per data radio bearer (DRB) for one or more remote devices (implied based on discussion above in claim 9 and disclosure by Wang as discussed in claim 10), wherein the report to the base station includes an indication of the delay (implied based on discussion above in claim 9).
Regarding claim 12, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the claim 10 (discussed above), wherein the memory and the at least one processor are further configured to: measure the delay between the remote device and the relay device per sidelink radio link control (RLC) for one or more remote devices, wherein the report to the base station includes an indication of the delay per the sidelink RLC and a corresponding data radio bearer (DRB) identifier (ID) (delay is discussed above in claims 10 and 11; corresponding radio bearer ID is implied based on the measurement and reporting is for data radio bearers (discussed above in claim 9)).
Regarding claim 13, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 1 (discussed above), wherein the configuration indicates for the relay device or the remote device to report the MDT measurements for one or more sidelink transmission resource pools, the MDT measurements including at least one of
a sidelink data volume, a sidelink average throughput, a sidelink packet delay, a sidelink packet loss, a sidelink discovery reference signal received power (SD-RSRP), and
the configuration indicates for the MDT measurements to be associated with one or more of location information,
an additional measurement of a different radio access technology (RAT) than sidelink, or
one or more sensor measurements (data volume is discussed in claim 20).
Regarding claim 14, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 13 (discussed above), wherein the report of the MDT measurements is periodic or based on an occurrence of a trigger event (trigger event is discussed above in claim 18).
Regarding claim 15, The apparatus of claim 13, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 13 (discussed above).
Regarding claim, wherein the memory and the at least one processor are further configured to: skip transmission of the location information or the additional measurement of the different RAT in the report based on the location information or the measurements of the different RAT being reported with inter-RAT or intra-RAT MDT measurements for Uu, though combination of Wang and Xu, though does not teach it, it would have been obvious as per configuration if not requiring implementation of measurement and reporting and location information not transmitted, if the information is already available by other reporting or not available).
Regarding claim 24, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 23 (discussed above), wherein the configuration is for a logged MDT procedure at the relay device when the relay device is in a radio resource control (RRC) idle state or an RRC inactive state (discussed earlier ).
Regarding claim 26, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 23 (discussed above), wherein the memory and the at least one processor are further configured to: receive an indication of the relay device or the remote device from a network, wherein the base station transmits the configuration for the relay device or the remote device based on the indication from the network (implied by disclosure in Wang: “sidelink drive test configuration information issued by the receiving configuration side includes: receiving sidelink drive test configuration information from a base station; receiving sidelink drive test configuration information from a centralized data processing center on the access network side”).
Regarding claim 27, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 24 (discussed above), wherein the MDT measurements from the relay device comprise aggregate measurements and are received in response to an RRC connection with the relay device (implied by disclosure in Wang, “Among them, UE PC5 QoS related parameters include at least one of the following: UE-PC5-Aggregated Maximum Bit Rate (AMBR),”).
Claims 6 and 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over combination of Wang and XU as applied to claim 17 above, and further in view of Liu et al. (US 20220167447 A1) hereinafter “Liu” .
Claims 6 and 29:
Regarding claim 6, combination of Wang and Xu teaches the apparatus of claim 4 (discussed above).
combination of Wang and Xu however fails to teach, but in the same field of endeavor Liu teaches, wherein the MDT measurements from the remote device are comprised in a transparent container from the relay device to the base station (implied by the disclosure [0036] “receiving the indication may include operations, features, means, or instructions for receiving, in a transparent container from the UE, the indication of whether the MDT measurements may be supported by the UE for the non-standalone base station”.
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to come up with the claimed invention by combining disclosure by Liu with that of the combination of Wang and Xu motivated by transferring information is a RAT agnostic way to facilitate handover or RAT change.
Regarding claim 29, the claim is discussed above in claim 6.
Conclusion
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/INTEKHAAB A SIDDIQUEE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462
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