DETAILED ACTION
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 03/17/2025 has been entered. No claims are amended; No claims are cancelled; No claims are added. Claims 1 - 19 are currently pending and subject to examination.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed in the remarks dated 03/17/2025 regarding the art rejection have been fully considered but they are not persuasive.
Applicant’s Arguments:
The Applicant acknowledges that Para. [0019] of Cao et al. references U.S. Pat. No. 8,570,963, which mentions resource blocks in the following context: “The UE scheduling information includes subframe number and physical resource blocks to be allocated for a UE data transmission. …,” but the argues that Cao et al. does not mention “from a pool of resource blocks,” as recited by claim 1, as it is similarly silent regarding a pool, where Cao et al Does Not Teach or Suggest “…from a pool of resource blocks,” as Recited by Claim 1, specifically, claim 1 recites, inter alia, “at a coordinating node, … scheduling resources for a user equipment (UE) at each base station in the virtual cell from a pool of resource blocks…“ and that Cao et al is silent regarding “resource blocks” as well as any kind of “pool,” as recited by claim 1.
The Office Action points to “resources [that] are available to improve performance at the UE by using resources from both the cell edge cell and another cell”; however, these vaguely identified resources are not necessarily “resource blocks,” nor can they be said to teach or suggest “…a pool of resource blocks,” as recited by claim 1. Further, nowhere does Cao et al. teach or suggest a pool. The mere use of “resources from both the cell edge cell and another cell” (Cao et al. at para. [0019]) does not teach or suggest “from a pool of resource blocks,” as recited by claim 1, at least because it does not teach or suggest pooling. It is well known that the Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) technique involves coordination between base stations that does not, however, lend itself to being characterized as pooling.
Examiner’s Response:
Examiner respectfully disagrees with this argument as the claims are given their broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the specification; however, limitations from the specification are not imported into the claims. See In re Van Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 26 USPQ2d 1057 (Fed. Cir. 1993).
Having “a pool of resource blocks” in and of itself is not a novel concept in the art and would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the claimed invention.
Cao et al. discloses in [0019] that resources are available to improve performance at a UE at an edge of one or more cells by using resources from both the cell edge cell and another cell, where joint transmission may be initiated by the coordinating node when a UE is identified to be in a coverage area at the edge of two eNodeBs as disclosed in [0022], thus reasonably reading on a pool of resource blocks, where the resources from different eNodeBs being assigned to a UE constitute a “pool of resource blocks”.
Applicant’s Arguments:
The Applicant argues that Ko et al Does Not Teach or Suggest “constructing a signal containing two cell identifiers,” as recited by claim 1. Ko et al. at para. [0088] is cited by the Office Action as purportedly disclosing this limitation, and in the cited paragraph, RS sequences are UE-specific, and are not cell identifiers. The cell identifiers in this paragraph are PCIs, and, given the reference here to “in the LTE-Advanced Release-10 standard,” it is clear that each cell has its own individual PCI according to the practice common in the standard. No PCI or cell identifier is disclosed as containing any other cell identifier in the above paragraph. It is not clear how this paragraph shows “construct[ion] of a signal containing two cell identifiers,” as recited by claim 1, since only UE reference signals and individual PCI cell identifiers are disclosed in the cited portion of Ko et al.
Examiner’s Response:
Examiner respectfully disagrees with this argument as the test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981), additionally, the specification as filed discloses in [0027] that “virtual cells can be set up for each individual UE”.
Ko et al. is directed to a communication environment in which a plurality of transmission/reception points belonging to the same cell have the same physical cell identity (PCI), and a method of transmitting a physical channel and an RS by introducing a virtual cell identity (ID); (see Ko et al. [0025]).
Ko et al. clearly discloses in FIG.1 that the base station 110 comprises a macro cell 111 with TRP’s 130, 150 within a microcell 313 an picocells 150, all enclosed by the macro cell.
Ko et al. discloses in [0045] that in a second PCI assignment method, the same PCI may be assigned to all the transmission/reception points 130 and 150 belonging to the same cell and in [0055] that all transmission/reception points may simultaneously transmit synchronization signals and CRSs corresponding to a PCI using the same radio resources.
Ko et al. discloses in [0090] that the base station notifies the terminals of the virtual cell IDs.
Applicant’s Arguments:
The Applicant argues that as each of the dependent claims depends from an allowable base claim, each of the dependent claims is believed to be allowable for at least the same reasons.
Examiner’s Response:
Examiner respectfully disagrees with this argument as the test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981). However, in light of the Applicant’s argument, a new ground of rejection is presented in view of Gaal et al. and Wei et al. (See the office action for details).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 1 - 9,10,12 - 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao et al. (US 20160081082 A1) in view of Gaal et al. (US 20160037420 A1) and Wei et al. (US 20190141589 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Cao et al. discloses a method for combining two radio access network (RAN) cells into a virtual cell (Cao et al., FIGs. 3/4), comprising:
at a coordinating node (Cao et al., FIGs. 3/4, coordinating node 304/404), assigning a virtual cell identifier for a virtual cell (Cao et al., [0022] coherent joint transmission may be initiated by the coordinating node when a UE is identified to be in a coverage area at the edge of two eNodeBs, in relation to [0040] a virtual cell ID enables the use of multiple cells as a single cell),
assigning a plurality of base stations to the virtual cell (Cao et al., [0023] the coordinating node may select eNodeBs to perform downlink CoMP to a UE, or it may select a serving eNodeB and any other non-serving cell or eNodeB in relation to [0040] as the UE moves, it may use different small cells for uplink, where the selection of cells may be performed at the coordinating node), and
scheduling resources for a user equipment (UE) (Cao et al., FIGs. 3/4, UE 303/403) at each base station in the virtual cell (Cao et al., [0023] more than two eNodeBs may be selected to transmit, when the UE is in an edge coverage area of three cells or more cells) from a pool of resource blocks (Cao et al., [0019] resources are available to improve performance at the UE by using resources from both the cell edge cell and another cell),
thereby improving performance for the UE at a cell edge of the base station (Cao et al., [0021] coherent joint transmission, and dynamic point selection may be used in conjunction to improve downlink network performance at the cell edge).
Cao et al. does not expressly disclose at a base station of the plurality of base stations, constructing a signal containing two cell identifiers, the two cell identifiers being the virtual cell identifier and a physical cell identifier of the base station, and sending the signal to the UE or expressly employ the term a pool of resource blocks.
Gaal et al., for example, from an analogous field of endeavor (Gaal et al., [0009] a serving base station may identify a set of virtual cell IDs of transmission points from a coordinated multipoint (CoMP) cluster in which a served UE is located, along with neighboring transmission points of neighboring CoMP clusters in relation to [0039] the available time frequency resources may be partitioned into resource blocks, where each resource block may cover N subcarriers in one slot) discloses at a base station of the plurality of base stations, constructing a signal containing two cell identifiers (Gaal et al., [0064] in order to increase the ability to differentiate between cells involved in CoMP communications, the concept of virtual cell IDs is introduced, where the virtual cell ID, is assigned by higher layers to identify the different transmission points with any particular CoMP cluster), the two cell identifiers being the virtual cell identifier and a physical cell identifier of the base station (Gaal et al., [0065] network signaling of a subset of possible virtual cell IDs may assist the UE to blind detect among this reduced subset of virtual cell IDs in relation to [0067] subsets of virtual cell IDs are grouped according to their association with a macro cell ID or CRS, where each CRS may be associated with one macro cell ID and the grouping groups according to the particular macro cell ID), and sending the signal to the UE (Gaal et al., [0069] the serving cell transmits the subsets of virtual cell IDs to the UE being served, where the subsets of virtual cell IDs are grouped according to primary cell ID).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine constructing a signal containing two cell identifiers, the two cell identifiers being the virtual cell identifier and a physical cell identifier of the base station, and sending the signal to the UE as taught by Gaal et al. with the system of Cao et al. in order to allow for the UE to perform blind detection for purposes of detection, cancelation, or mitigation of interfering signals (Gaal et al., [0069]).
Cao et al. - Gaal et al. do not expressly employ the term a pool of resource blocks.
Wei et al. is provided to show that a pool of resource blocks is well known in the art and would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the claimed invention.
Wei et al., for example, from an analogous field of endeavor (Wei et al. [0037] a mobile telecommunications system may include at least one anchor cell/ anchor base station, and at least one slave cell associated with the anchor cell and being established by a slave base station, where the slave cell may be a small cell, local cell, virtual cell or the like) discloses a pool of resource blocks for a virtual cell (Wei et al. [0102] sporadic carriers and/or resource blocks are available in cases where the eNodeB divides the whole or available spectrum into resource pools).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine a pool of resource blocks for a virtual cell as taught by Wei et al. with the combined system of Cao et al. - Gaal et al. in order to for allocate resources to a group of UEs or a single UE (Wei et al. [0110]).
Regarding claim 2, the construction of a second signal at a second base station is not patentably distinct from the construction of the first signal at a first base station and is therefore obvious in view of Cao et al. - Gaal et al.- Wei et al., as Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose at a second base station of the plurality of base stations, constructing a second signal containing two cell identifiers (Gaal et al., [0067] subsets of virtual cell IDs are grouped according to their association with a macro cell ID or CRS, where each CRS may be associated with one macro cell ID and the grouping groups according to the particular macro cell ID), the two cell identifiers being the virtual cell identifier and a physical cell identifier of the second base station (Gaal et al., [0064] the virtual cell ID, is assigned by higher layers to identify the different transmission points with any particular CoMP cluster), and sending the second signal to the UE (Gaal et al., [0069] the serving cell transmits the subsets of virtual cell IDs to the UE being served, where the subsets of virtual cell IDs are grouped according to primary cell ID). The motivation is the same as in claim 1.
Regarding claim 3, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose the coordinating node is a mesh network base station or a gateway between the plurality of base stations and a core network (Cao et al., [0024] a coordinating node may dynamically determine a set of two or more cells to be used as a joint reception cluster in relation to [0031] by using the coordinating node as an X2 anchor point, N2 connectivity can be effectively reduced to N links).
Regarding claim 4, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose the UE is a cell edge UE having a reduced signal quality below a cell edge threshold (Cao et al., [0023] the coordinating node may select more than two eNodeBs to transmit, when the UE is in an edge coverage area of three cells or more cells in relation to [0028] coherent joint transmission may be used to communicate to a UE that is experiencing high interference).
Regarding claim 5, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose the plurality of base stations are LTE eNodeBs (Cao et al., [0055] the radio transceivers may be base stations compatible with Long Term Evolution (LTE) radio transmission protocol or air interface and may be eNodeBs), and wherein the resources scheduled by the coordinating node include resource block allocations (Cao et al., [0034] the coordinating node can take this pattern into account and pick the UL reception cluster in a semi-static way and allocate the UL resource via semi-persistent scheduling across all cluster member eNodeBs in order to improve the UL delivery spectrum efficiency, and significantly reduce the PDCCH/CCE resources needed) for a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH), a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH), a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH), and a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) (Gaal et al., [0078] because the subsets of virtual cell IDs are grouped according to CSI resource within each CoMP cluster, the virtual cell IDs of such subsets would be applicable to PDSCH, CSI-RS and ePDCCH transmissions in the CoMP clusters). The motivation is the same as in claim 1.
Regarding claim 6, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose the signal includes a reference signal, a primary synchronization signal, and a secondary synchronization signal for the UE (Cao et al., [0020] the UE sends measurement reports to its associated eNodeB that include signal strength and quality measures such as received signal strength indications (RSSI)).
Regarding claim 7, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose dynamically adding or removing a base station to or from the virtual cell based on a measurement report from the UE (Cao et al., [0026] selection of the cell may also be performed using information received from each of the base stations, such as measurement reports in relation to [0035] the coordinating node may dynamically determine a set of two or more cells to be used as a joint reception cluster).
Regarding claim 8, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose constructing the signal with up with up to 3, 4, or 5 cell identifiers (Gaal et al., [0066] the number of virtual cell IDs per CoMP cluster is limited to a maximum of M and the total number of virtual cell IDs across all cells or all CoMP clusters to N, where M and N may be semi-statically selected by the serving cell). The motivation is to optimize VCI allocation (Gaal et al. ¶ [0066]).
Regarding claim 9, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose reserving, at the coordinating node, a portion of a radio resource pool for cell edge users (Cao et al., [0022] coherent joint transmission may be initiated by the coordinating node when a UE is identified to be in a coverage area at the edge of two eNodeBs).
Regarding claim 10, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose scheduling, at the base station, resources for a cell center UE (Cao et al., [0041] scheduling instructions may be sent to a scheduler located at the serving cell, another cell, or an entire cluster of cells providing uplink or downlink service to a UE).
Regarding claim 12, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose assigning non-overlapping radio resources to different UEs (Gaal et al., [0079] the serving cell may associate the subset of virtual cell IDs within each CSI resource to the CSI resource index, and associate the CSI resources within each macro region to the primary cell ID of the macro cell). The motivation is the same as in claim 1.
Regarding claim 13, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose using multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO), spatial diversity (Cao et al., [0055] the techniques described can also be extended to multiple-in, multiple-out (MIMO) systems), or beamforming for spatial multiplexing between the plurality of base stations and the UE (Gaal et al., [0058] CoMP operations generally fall into two major categories: Joint processing, which occurs where there is coordination between multiple entities, such as base stations, that are simultaneously transmitting or receiving to or from UEs; and coordinated scheduling or beamforming, often referred to as CS/CB, coordinated scheduling/coordinated beamforming). The motivation is the same as in claim 1.
Regarding claim 14, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose sending data from more than one of the plurality of base stations in the virtual cell simultaneously to the UE (Cao et al., [0026] in the set of selected cells, one cell may be scheduled to transmit to the UE in a particular slot and another cell may be scheduled to transmit another subframe to the UE in another slot, and so on).
Regarding claim 15, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose assigning a single set of radio resources to two different UEs that are being served by the virtual cell (Cao et al., [0034] in Internet of Things (IoT) application scenarios, the coordinating node can take this pattern/interval into account and pick the UL reception cluster in a semi-static way and allocate the UL resource via semi-persistent scheduling across all cluster member eNodeBs).
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al., as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Garcia et al. (US 20150155996 A1).
Regarding claim 11, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. disclose constructing the virtual cell identifier not to overlap with the physical cell identifier of the base station (Gaal et al. [0079] the serving cell may associate the subset of virtual cell IDs within each CSI resource to the CSI resource index, and associate the CSI resources within each macro region to the primary cell ID of the macro cell).
Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. do not expressly disclose the reference signal maintains a mod-6 difference.
Garcia et al., for example, from a similar field of endeavor discloses the reference signal maintains a mod-6 difference (Garcia et al. ¶ [0007] to avoid interference of CRSs which lead to degradation in performance, it is desirable for neighboring cells of the same center frequency to have different PCI modulo 6).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the reference signal maintains a mod-6 difference as taught by Garcia et al. with the combined system of Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. in order to optimize PCI allocation (Garcia et al. ¶ [0062]).
Claim 16 – 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al., as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Eyuboglu et al. (US 20160345342 A1).
Regarding claim 16, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. do not expressly disclose using interference rejection combining (IRC) or maximum ratio combining (MRC) to construct or reconstruct the signal, which is well known in the art as evidenced by Eyuboglu et al.
Eyuboglu et al., for example, from a similar field of endeavor (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0065] where the radio network supports multiple cells, downlink transmissions in different cells can be coordinated to reduce interference by using Hard and Soft Frequency Reuse (HFR/SFR) or Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP)) discloses using interference rejection combining (IRC) or maximum ratio combining (MRC) to construct or reconstruct the signal (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0066] when a UE is near the coverage boundaries of two or more remote units (Rus), the uplink performance can be improved by performing diversity combining (Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC), Interference Rejection Combining (IRC) or Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC)).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine using interference rejection combining (IRC) or maximum ratio combining (MRC) to construct or reconstruct the signal as taught by Eyuboglu et al. with the combined system of Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. in order to achieve multi-antenna/multi-RU combining (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0066]).
Regarding claim 17, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. do not expressly disclose using modulated symbol multiplexing at a transmitter or modulated symbol de-multiplexing at a receiver.
Eyuboglu et al., for example, from a similar field of endeavor (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0065] where the radio network supports multiple cells, downlink transmissions in different cells can be coordinated to reduce interference by using Hard and Soft Frequency Reuse (HFR/SFR) or Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP)) discloses using modulated symbol multiplexing at a transmitter or modulated symbol de-multiplexing at a receiver (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0056] multiple RU clusters each containing one or more RUs are formed within a single cell where the antennas in the cluster are assigned to different CS-RS or CSI-RS virtual antenna ports, but share the same Cell-ID).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine using modulated symbol multiplexing at a transmitter or modulated symbol de-multiplexing at a receiver as taught by Eyuboglu et al. with the combined system of Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. in order to achieve multi-antenna/multi-RU combining (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0066]).
Regarding claim 18, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. do not expressly disclose performing management of member transmitters at different base stations as virtual MIMO antennas.
Eyuboglu et al., for example, from a similar field of endeavor (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0065] where the radio network supports multiple cells, downlink transmissions in different cells can be coordinated to reduce interference by using Hard and Soft Frequency Reuse (HFR/SFR) or Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP)) discloses performing management of member transmitters at different base stations as virtual MIMO antennas (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0080] a cell may include 12 Rus each having two physical antennas and transmitting CSI-RS on virtual antenna ports).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine performing management of member transmitters at different base stations as virtual MIMO antennas as taught by Eyuboglu et al. with the combined system of Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. in order to achieve multi-antenna/multi-RU combining (Eyuboglu et al. ¶ [0066]).
Claim 19 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al., as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Abe et al. (US 20140045497 A1).
Regarding claim 19, Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. do not expressly disclose assigning two physical base stations to the virtual cell, to communicate with a Cat. 4 UE, or assigning four physical base stations in the virtual cell, to communicate with a Cat. 6 or Cat 7 UE.
Abe et al., for example, from a similar field of endeavor discloses communicating with a Cat. 4 UE, a Cat. 6 or Cat 7 UE (Abe et al. ¶ [0039] a category acquisition unit acquires one or more UE categories, UE categories 1 to 8, indicating capability of the mobile station with which to communicate, where the category acquisition unit acquires a UE category to be applied to radio communications between the UE and eNB).
Thus, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine assigning two physical base stations to the virtual cell, to communicate with a Cat. 4 UE, or assigning four physical base stations in the virtual cell, to communicate with a Cat. 6 or Cat 7 UE as taught by Abe et al. with the combined system of Cao et al. - Gaal et al. - Wei et al. in order to determine the UE category to be applied to radio communications (Abe et al. ¶ [0061]).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Barabell et al. (US 20160037550 A1) is cited to show operations performed by a processing system that may comprise dividing the communication cell into virtual cells such that different mobile devices in at least two different virtual cells are configured for communication on the same frequency and for a mobile device at a border of first and second virtual cells, controlling a first remote unit in the first virtual cell to transmit to the mobile device at a non-maximum power level and controlling a second remote unit in the second virtual cell to transmit to the mobile device at a non-maximum power level, such that different mobile devices in at least two different virtual cells are configured to communicate on a same frequency, which is similar to aspects of the claimed invention.
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/L.P./Examiner, Art Unit 2416
/NOEL R BEHARRY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2416