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
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, 7-9, 10-12 and 14-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tripathi US 2024/0259898 A1 in view of Cui et al. US 2015/0312805 A1 and Prasad et al. US 2023/0309127 A1.
Claims 1 and 15:
Tripathi discloses a method, comprising: receiving, by a source base station and from a user equipment (UE), a report indicating a physical cell identifier (PCI) of a target cell provided by a target base station (See para 49, “The LTE-only UE 102 may report the PCI, ARFCN, and cell B measurements to cell A”);
sending, by the source base station and to the UE, a request for an identifier of the target cell based on the PCI of the target cell (See para 50, “even if cell A determines the PCI of cell B is in its NRT, cell A will request the LTE-only UE 102 obtain and report the ECGI of cell B”); receiving, by the source base station and from the UE, the identifier of the target cell based on the request (See para 50, “The LTE-only UE 102 may then transmit the ECGI of cell B to cell A”); and initiating, by the source base station and based on the PCI and the identifier of the target cell, a handover of the UE from a source cell provided by the source base station to the target cell provided by the target base station (See paras 50-51, “…a handover process may be initiated to transfer the cellular transmission from cell A to cell B”).
With regards to claim 15, a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of instructions, the set of instructions comprising: one or more instructions that, executed by one or more processors of a source base station (See para 21, non-transitory CRM may store instructions that are executed by a processor).
Tripathi doesn’t disclose PCI of the target cell being associated with a range of PCIs associated with small cell base stations; wherein the identifier of the target cell comprises a New Radio (NR) cell identifier (NCI).
Cui discloses PCI of the target cell being associated with a range of PCIs associated with small cell base stations (See para 50, “if the PCI of the neighbor access point lies within a PCI range reserved for femto cells, the type determination component 502 can determine that the neighbor access point is a femto access point”).
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 Tripathi with the teachings of Cui to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi by including the feature of PCI being in the range of PCIs for small BS. The motivation to combine would have been to know whether the cell is femto cell or another Macro cell in order to manage load-balancing.
Prasad discloses that the identifier of the target cell comprises a New Radio (NR) cell identifier (NCI) (See paras 296 and 436, New Radio (NR) cell identifier (NCI)).
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 Tripathi in view of Cui with the teachings of Prasad to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi in view of Cui by including the feature of New Radio (NR) cell identifier. The motivation for doing so would have been to allow scalability and flexibility limits of ECGI and to better support 5G features like dense small cells, slicing and multi-connectivity.
Claims 2, 10 and 16:
Cui discloses that the source base station is a macrocell base station, and wherein the target base station is a small cell base station (See para 25, “several metro cells (e.g., small cells, pico cells, femtocells, etc.) can be deployed within (partially or completely) a coverage area of a macro cell”).
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 Tripathi in view of Prasad with the teachings of Cui to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi in view of Prasad by including the feature of Source BS being Macrocell and target BS being femtocell. The motivation to combine would have been to offload UEs to femtocells for better service.
Claims 3, 11 and 17:
Cui discloses that that the range of PCIs indicate PCIs of small cell base stations that are within a coverage area associated with the source cell (See para 50, “if the PCI of the neighbor access point lies within a PCI range reserved for femto cells, the type determination component 502 can determine that the neighbor access point is a femto access point”).
Claims 4 and 18:
Cui discloses comparing a value of the PCI of the target cell to values included in the range of PCIs to determine whether the value of the PCI of the target cell is within the range of PCIs (See para 50, “A type determination component 502 can analyze information detected by the measurement component 408 to identify cell-type/cell-profile of a neighbor access point. In one aspect, the type determination component 502 can compare the PCI of the neighbor access point with a predefined PCI range reserved for a specific type of cell…if the PCI of the neighbor access point lies within a PCI range reserved for femto cells, the type determination component 502 can determine that the neighbor access point is a femto access point”); and determining that the PCI of the target cell is associated with the range of PCIs based on determining that the value of the PCI of the target cell is within the range of PCIs (See para 50, “A type determination component 502 can analyze information detected by the measurement component 408 to identify cell-type/cell-profile of a neighbor access point. In one aspect, the type determination component 502 can compare the PCI of the neighbor access point with a predefined PCI range reserved for a specific type of cell…if the PCI of the neighbor access point lies within a PCI range reserved for femto cells, the type determination component 502 can determine that the neighbor access point is a femto access point”)
Tripathi’s method of determining PCI of cell B is in its NRT can be modified to enable the source BS perform the function described by Cui. 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 Tripathi in view of Prasad with the teachings of Cui to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi in view of Prasad by including the feature of comparing PCI to determine whether the target cell is in the range of PCIs for small BS. The motivation to combine would have been to know whether the cell is femto cell or another Macro cell in order to manage load-balancing.
Claim 7:
Cui discloses maintaining a neighbor list that excludes any neighbor cells associated with the range of PCIs (See para 50, range of PCIs for Macro cells wouldn’t include PCIs for femto cells).
Claims 8 and 14:
Tripathi discloses that the report includes one or more measurements related to one or more signals that the UE received from the target base station (See para 49, “The LTE-only UE 102 may report the PCI, ARFCN, and cell B measurements to cell A”).
Claim 9:
Tripathi discloses a user equipment (UE), comprising: one or more processors (See fig. 7, processor in a UE) configured to: transmit, to a source base station, a report indicating a physical cell identifier (PCI) of a target cell of a target base station (See para 49, “The LTE-only UE 102 may report the PCI, ARFCN, and cell B measurements to cell A”); receive, from the source base station, a request for a identifier of the target cell based on the PCI of the target cell being (See para 50, “even if cell A determines the PCI of cell B is in its NRT, cell A will request the LTE-only UE 102 obtain and report the ECGI of cell B”); transmit, to the source base station, the identifier of the target cell based on the request (See para 50, “The LTE-only UE 102 may then transmit the ECGI of cell B to cell A”); and switch, based on a handover initiated by the source base station, from communicating with a source cell of the source base station to communicating with the target cell of the target base station (See paras 50-51, “…a handover process may be initiated to transfer the cellular transmission from cell A to cell B”).
Cui discloses PCI of the target cell being associated with a range of PCIs (See para 50, “if the PCI of the neighbor access point lies within a PCI range reserved for femto cells, the type determination component 502 can determine that the neighbor access point is a femto access point”).
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 Tripathi in view of Prasad with the teachings of Cui to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi in view of Prasad by including the feature of PCI being in the range of PCIs. The motivation to combine would have been to know whether the cell is femto cell or another Macro cell in order to manage load-balancing.
Prasad discloses that the identifier of the target cell comprises a New Radio (NR) cell identifier (NCI) (See paras 296 and 436, New Radio (NR) cell identifier (NCI)).
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 Tripathi in view of Cui with the teachings of Prasad to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi in view of Cui by including the feature of New Radio (NR) cell identifier. The motivation for doing so would have been to allow scalability and flexibility limits of ECGI and to better support 5G features like dense small cells, slicing and multi-connectivity.
Claim 12:
Tripathi discloses to transmit the report indicating the PCI of the target cell of the target base station based on the UE receiving one or more signals from the target cell that satisfy one or more conditions (See paras49-51, “If… the measurements between cell B and the UE 102, when compared to the measurements between cell A and the UE 102, indicate that the UE 102 would have a stronger connection with cell B, a handover process may be initiated to transfer the cellular transmission from cell A to cell B”).
Claim(s) 5 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tripahi in view of Cui, Prasad and Li et al. US 20220167228 A1
Claims 5 and 19:
Tripathi in view of Cui and Prasad doesn’t disclose receiving information provisioning the source base station with the range of PCIs.
Li discloses receiving information provisioning the source base station with the range of PCIs (See paras 133-134, obtaining PCI range information).
Tripathi’s method can be modified to have range of PCIs in the source cell. 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 Tripathi in view of Cui and Prasad with the teachings of Li to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi in view of Cui and Prasad. The motivation for doing so would have been to avoid confusion when mounting to a new cell.
Claim(s) 6, 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tripahi in view of Cui, Prasad and Zhao et al. US 20200137816 A1
Claims 6, 13 and 20:
Tripathi discloses that the PCI is associated with a corresponding identifier (See para 50, adding PCI and ECGI correspondence to the NRT).
Prasad discloses identifier comprises NCI (See paras 296 and 436, New Radio (NR) cell identifier (NCI)).
Tripathi in view of Cui and Prasad doesn’t disclose that the range of PCIs is associated with a corresponding range of identifiers.
Zhao discloses that the range of PCIs is associated with a corresponding range of identifiers (See para 43, “may store data (e.g., one or multiple lists, a range of eCGIs, a range of PCIs, etc.) that enables end device 180 to determine that femtocell device 115 is non-EN-DC capable based on a comparison between the data and the received eCGI and/or PCI”).
Zhao’s eCGI can be substituted with Prasad’s NCI; wherein the range of PCIs associated with a corresponding range of identifiers can include NCI instead eCGI. Tripathi’s method can be modified to have range of PCIs (Zhao) and NCIs (Prasad) in the source cell. 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 Tripathi in view of Cui and Prasad with the teachings of Zhao to improve the method disclosed by Tripathi in view of Cui and Prasad. The motivation for doing so would have been to avoid confusion when mounting to a new cell.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Sitaram et al. US 9301208 B1 discloses determining component 214 may determine the ECGI and/or IP address by comparing the PCI and ECGI to a plurality of ECGIs and/or a plurality of IP addresses within an NRT. Teyeb et al. US 20220264383 A1 discloses When the UE has found the new cell's NCGI(s)/ECGI(s), the UE reports these to the NG-RAN node serving cell A. In addition, the UE reports other cell parameters that have been read by the UE.
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HASHIM S. BHATTI
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2472
/HASHIM S BHATTI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2472
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