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.
Claim(s) 1-11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gurelli et al., US2023/0063645 A1, and further in view of Gaal et al., US2024/0187078 A1.
Regarding claim 1, Gurelli teaches A communication method using a meta-surface (Fig. 4, par. 0063; an environment 400 in which an IRS may operate, and the surface elements may also be referred to as metaatoms.), the communication method comprising: providing, by a base station, a control signal to a beam steering apparatus including a reconfigurable meta-surface (par. 0064; When the surface phase (that is, the phases of the surface elements) is properly set, the beam from the base station 402 may be reflected by the IRS 404 toward the UE 406 in downlink.); and performing, by the beam steering apparatus, time synchronization with the base station by using the control signal (par. 0029 and 0030; the base stations 102 may perform one or more of the following functions such as synchronization, and The communication links 120 may use multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) antenna technology, including spatial multiplexing, beamforming, and/or transmit diversity.).
Gurelli fails to teach the following recited limitations. However, Gaal teaches performing, by the beam steering apparatus, beam sweeping with a plurality of different beams formed by reconfiguring the meta-surface (par. 0116; the base stations 802 and 804 may perform recurrent or periodic beam sweeps as part of their respective access procedures during a same or overlapping time period. During the beam sweep by the A.sub.1 base station 804, the controllable reflective surface 850 (which is in a first directional configuration) may redirect directional beams to the UE-A 824.) and performing communication, by a user terminal, with the base station by using one of the plurality of beams swept by the beam steering apparatus (par. 0116; based on the beam sweep by the B.sub.1 base station 802, the UE-B 822 (or another UE) may provide feedback to the B.sub.1 base station 802 indicating a different one of the plurality of directional configurations for the controllable reflective surface 850.), wherein the time synchronization, the beam sweeping, and the communication are performed periodically (par. 0038; the scheduled entity 106 is a node or device that receives downlink control information 114, including but not limited to scheduling information (e.g., a grant), synchronization or timing information, or other control information from another entity in the wireless communication network such as the scheduling entity 108.). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to combine Gurelli’s teachings with Gaal’s teachings in order to advance wireless communication technologies not only to meet the growing demand for mobile broadband access, but to advance and enhance the user experience with mobile communications (Gaal, par. 0002).
Regarding claim 2, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 1. Gurelli further teaches wherein the control signal includes a synchronization field for time synchronization and a reconfiguration field for reconfiguring the meta-surface of the beam steering apparatus (par. 0048).
Regarding claim 3, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 2. Gurelli further teaches wherein the control signal is a signal according to a narrow band Internet of Things (NB-IoT) protocol and is a signal emulated with binary phase shift keying (BPSK) (par. 0052).
Regarding claim 4, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 2. Gurelli further teaches wherein the performing of the time synchronization includes forming, by the beam steering apparatus, an envelope of the synchronization field (par. 0029), and sampling, by the beam steering apparatus, the envelope, wherein the forming of the envelope and the sampling of the envelope are performed in pairs, and the envelope is sampled at a different time point for each pair (par. 0116).
Regarding claim 5, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 2. Gurelli further teaches wherein, upon initial boot-up of the beam steering apparatus, the performing of the time synchronization includes sampling the entire synchronization field (par. 0116).
Regarding claim 6, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 2. Gurelli further teaches wherein, upon subsequent boot-up of the beam steering apparatus, the performing of the time synchronization includes sampling the highest power portion of the synchronization field (par. 0116).
Regarding claim 7, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 1. Gurelli further teaches further comprising: reporting, by the user terminal, a synchronization signal block (SSB) of the beam received with the highest power among the plurality of beams swept and provided by the beam steering apparatus and the base station to the base station, after the performing of the beam sweeping (par. 0107).
Regarding claim 8, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 1. Gurelli further teaches wherein the reconfiguration field corresponds to information of the beam received with the highest power in the previous performing of the beam sweeping (par. 0061).
Regarding claim 9, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 1. Gurelli further teaches further comprising: performing, by the base station, beam sweeping by forming different synchronization signal blocks (SSBs) for each of the plurality of different beams, wherein, in the performing of the beam sweeping by the base station, the beam steering apparatus does not perform beam steering (par. 0066).
Regarding claim 10, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 1. Gurelli further teaches wherein, in the performing of the beam sweeping, the base station provides the beam at the same angle, and the beam steering apparatus performs beam sweeping by forming different synchronization signal blocks (SSBs) while reflecting the beam provided by the base station in different directions (par. 0066).
Regarding claim 11, Gurelli and Gaal teach all the limitations in claim 1. Gurelli further teaches wherein the providing of the control signal is conducted using a 5G FR1 band of less than 6 GHz, and the performing of the communication is conducted using a 5G FR2 band of a mm wave band (par. 0064).
Conclusion
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/AYODEJI O AYOTUNDE/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649