DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
This communication is in response to amendment and response under 37 C.F.R. § 1.111 filed on November 26, 2025.
Claims 1-5, 7-9, 11-13, and 15-19 are pending in the application. Claims 3, 6, 10, and 14 have been canceled.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1, 15, and 19 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.
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, 2, 4, 5, 7-9, 11-13, and 15- 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Pub. No. 2025/0106774 (hereinafter “He”) in view of U.S. Pub. No. 2025/0324366 (Newly Cited, hereinafter “Chen”).
He discloses, teaches, or suggests:
regarding claims 1 and 19, a method and an apparatus (see at least Fig. 8, terminal device) comprising at least one processor, and at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor (see at least Fig. 17 and paragraphs 371-377, the terminal device comprises a processor and memory storing a computer program that can be executed by the processor), to cause the apparatus at least to:
receive, from an access node, instructions regarding receiving a signal, wherein the signal is for activating radio resources of the apparatus utilized for radio communication (see at least Fig. 8 and paragraphs 83-88, receiving, from a network device, first information including at least one of: power information of a wake up signal, spatial information of the wake up signal, a transmission parameter of the wake up signal, or time-frequency resource information of the wake up signal);
receive the signal (see at least paragraphs 77, 80, 83-88, 117, 123-127, 133, and 134, receiving the wake up signal according to the plurality of sets of wake up signal transmission parameters and the time-frequency resource information); and
in response to receiving the signal, activate the radio resources (see at least paragraphs 196-197, the wake up receiver receives the wake up signal and wakes up the primary transceiver to further perform channel occupation and data transmission and reception).
He does not explicitly disclose receiving, from the access node, an indication of a selection that indicates a receiver type according to which the signal is to be received, wherein the selection that indicates the receiver type according to which the signal is to be received is a selection between receiving according to operation of an envelope detector or receiving according to operation of a sequence detector and receiving the signal based on the indication of the selection, according to operation of the envelope detector or according to operation of the sequence detector.
However, in an analogous art, Chen discloses, teaches, or suggests receiving, from the access node, an indication of a selection that indicates a receiver type according to which the signal is to be received, wherein the selection that indicates the receiver type according to which the signal is to be received is a selection between receiving according to operation of an envelope detector or receiving according to operation of a sequence detector (see at least paragraphs 51 and 88-93, the network (NW) 110 may transmit a WUS configuration in the system information to the UE, where the WUS configuration may comprise a sequence configuration indicating at least a number of OOK symbol in a sequence, duration of an OOK symbol, or a sequence ID which indicate an OOK sequence from a plurality of predefined OOK sequences, where the receiver may only need to detect the envelop/energy of time domain signal with OOK modulation) and receiving the signal based on the indication of the selection, according to operation of the envelope detector or according to operation of the sequence detector (see at least paragraphs 94-97, the UE detects the WUS based on the WUS configuration).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to implement the technique as taught by Chen in to the invention of He in order to avoid the potential resource collision between the WUS and the other DL transmissions (see at least paragraph 92 of Chen).
He further discloses, teaches, or suggests:
regarding claim 2, the signal has a plurality of orthogonal frequency-modulation symbols assigned to it (see at least paragraph 215, using OFDM modulation to implement a waveform of the wake up signal) and the apparatus is further caused to receive the signal by detecting a pre-determined sequence of symbols indicating ON- and OFF -status (see at least Fig. 7, and paragraphs 80 and 215, the wake up signal adopts OOK modulation, which modulates amplitude of the carrier signal to non-zero and zero values, which generates an On waveform and an Off waveform);
regarding claim 4, the signal occupies a plurality of resource elements in frequency (see at least paragraphs 123-132, frequency domain resources, where Fig. 12 also shows a wake up signal occupying a plurality of resource elements in frequency);
regarding claim 5, some of the resource elements are reserved for guard (see at least Figs. 13-14, and paragraphs 125 and 252, frequency domain offset);
regarding claim 7, the apparatus is further caused to obtain at least one measurement indicative of coverage associated with the signal (see at least paragraphs 208 and 220-228, the terminal device may determine coverage performance of the wake up signal according to the power information of the wake up signal, so as to determine reception performance of the wake up signal (such as, whether the reception of the wake up signal is reliable));
regarding claim 8, the at least one measurement indicative of the coverage associated with the signal is based on at least one of the following: a primary synchronization signal or a secondary synchronization signal or a beacon signal (see at least paragraphs 206 and 216, secondary synchronization signal (SSS));
regarding claim 9, the apparatus is further caused to transmit the at least one measurement to the access node (see at least paragraphs 226-228, the terminal device transmits/feeds back the first measurement result to the network device);
regarding claim 11, a structure of the signal is dependent on at least one of the following: a receiver type or a configuration of the access node (see at least paragraph 3, the structure of the wake up signal is dependent on the type of the network device being an NR type or NR configuration);
regarding claim 12, the apparatus is further caused to determine the receiver type based on the at least one measurement indicative of the coverage associated with the signal (see at least paragraphs 208 and 220-228, the terminal device may determine coverage performance of the wake up signal according to the power information of the wake up signal, so as to determine reception performance of the wake up signal (such as, whether the reception of the wake up signal is reliable)); and
regarding claim 13, the apparatus is further caused to inform the access node regarding the determination of the receiver type (see at least paragraphs 225-228, obtaining CSI reporting by a result of the CSI-RS measured by the terminal device, thereby determining whether the terminal device receives the wake up signal through the wake up receiver).
He discloses, teaches, or suggests:
regarding claim 15, an apparatus (see at least Fig. 8, network device) comprising at least one processor, and at least one memory storing instructions that, when executed by the at least one processor (see at least Fig. 17 and paragraphs 371-377, the terminal device comprises a processor and memory storing a computer program that can be executed by the processor), to cause the apparatus at least to:
determine that a signal is to be transmitted to a terminal device, wherein the signal is for activating radio resources of the terminal device utilized for radio communication (see at least Fig. 8 and paragraphs 83-88, 189, and 196-197, determining that a wake up signal is to be transmitted and transmitting, from a network device, first information including at least one of: power information of a wake up signal, spatial information of the wake up signal, a transmission parameter of the wake up signal, or time-frequency resource information of the wake up signal, where the wake up signal is used to wake up a primary transceiver of a terminal device to further perform channel occupation and data transmission and reception); and
transmit the signal to the terminal device (see at least paragraphs 77, 80, 83-88, 117, 123-127, 133, and 134, transmitting, to the terminal device, the wake up signal according to the plurality of sets of wake up signal transmission parameters and the time-frequency resource information, where the wake up signal adopts On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation, where the waveforms of the wake up signal received by the wake up receiver are different from these of a signal carried on the PDCCH).
He does not explicitly disclose transmitting an indication of a selection that indicates a receiver type according to which the signal is to be received by the terminal device, wherein the selection that indicates the receiver type according to which the signal is to be received is a selection between receiving according to operation of an envelope detector or receiving according to operation of a sequence detector and transmitting the signal to the terminal device, based on the indication of the selection, according to operation of the envelope detector or according to operation of the sequence detector.
However, in an analogous art, Chen discloses, teaches, or suggests transmitting an indication of a selection that indicates a receiver type according to which the signal is to be received by the terminal device, wherein the selection that indicates the receiver type according to which the signal is to be received is a selection between receiving according to operation of an envelope detector or receiving according to operation of a sequence detector (see at least paragraphs 51 and 88-93, the network (NW) 110 may transmit a WUS configuration in the system information to the UE, where the WUS configuration may comprise a sequence configuration indicating at least a number of OOK symbol in a sequence, duration of an OOK symbol, or a sequence ID which indicate an OOK sequence from a plurality of predefined OOK sequences, where the receiver may only need to detect the envelop/energy of time domain signal with OOK modulation) and transmitting the signal to the terminal device, based on the indication of the selection, according to operation of the envelope detector or according to operation of the sequence detector (see at least paragraphs 94-97, the UE detects the WUS based on the WUS configuration).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to implement the technique as taught by Chen in to the invention of He in order to avoid the potential resource collision between the WUS and the other DL transmissions (see at least paragraph 92 of Chen).
He further discloses, teaches, or suggests:
regarding claim 16, the apparatus is further caused to obtain the selection of the receiver type, according to which the signal is to be received by the terminal device by determining, for the terminal device, the receiver type (see at least paragraphs 77, 80, 83-88, and 194-198, the network device obtains a selection that indicates that the wake up signal adopts On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation, where the waveforms of the wake up signal received by the wake up receiver are different from these of a signal carried on the PDCCH, where the network device transmits, to the terminal device, first information including at least one of: power information of a wake up signal, spatial information of the wake up signal, a transmission parameter of the wake up signal including an encoding scheme and an encoding rate, or time-frequency resource information of the wake up signal);
regarding claim 17, the apparatus is further caused to obtain the selection of the receiver type according to which the signal is to be received by the terminal device by determining the receiver type based on measurements received from the terminal device (see at least paragraphs 208, 225-228, 239, and 240, CSI reporting obtained by a result of the CSI-RS measured by the terminal device, thereby determining whether the terminal device receives the wake up signal through the wake up receiver, where the network device may set the power of the wake up signal according to a cell size and/or a coverage requirement of the wake up signal and notify the power of the wake up signal to the terminal device); and
regarding claim 18, a structure of the signal is dependent on the receiver type (see at least paragraph 3, the structure of the wake up signal is dependent on the type of the network device being an NR type).
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over He in view of Chen, and further in view of U.S. Pub. No. 2019/0289549 (hereinafter “Lim”).
Regarding claim 3, He discloses that that the wake up signal adopts On-Off Keying (OOK) modulation, which is to modulate amplitude of the carrier signal to non-zero and zero values, corresponding to on and off, respectively (see at least paragraph 80). He, as modified by Chen, does not explicitly disclose that at least one symbol of the pre-determined sequence of symbols carry a constant amplitude zero autocorrelation sequence or a computer search -based zero autocorrelation sequence.
However, in an analogous art, Lim discloses or suggests that at least one symbol of the pre-determined sequence of symbols carry a constant amplitude zero autocorrelation sequence or a computer search -based zero autocorrelation sequence (see at least paragraph 218, a sequence used for an OOK symbol, such as a CAZAC-sequence, may be used as a WUR preamble sequence).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to implement the CAZAC sequence as taught by Lim in to the invention of He, as modified by Chen, in order to ensure proper reception of the wake up signal.
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Pawaris Sinkantarakorn whose telephone number is (571)270-1424. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00am-4:00pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Hadi Armouche can be reached at (571) 270-3618. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/PAO SINKANTARAKORN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2409 02/26/2026