DETAILED ACTION
Status of Case
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This Office Action is in response to the claims filed on 1/12/2024.
Claims 1-21 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) filed on 9/18/2025 has been considered by Examiner.
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.
Claims 1-2, 18, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bachu (USPAN 2022/0361025) in view of Mo (USPAN 2021/0105869).
Consider claim 1, Bachu discloses a radio access network (RAN) system (see figure 3, reproduced below for convenience, wherein disclosed is said RAN system), comprising:
a first RAN comprising a first distribution unit (DU) (see DU 310-a in figure 3, wherein disclosed is said first RAN comprising said first DU); a second RAN comprising a second DU (see DU 310-b in figure 3, wherein disclosed is said second RAN comprising said second DU); a first remote unit (RU) cluster comprising or more first remote units (RUs) (see RUs 315-a, 315-b, and 315-c in figure 3, wherein disclosed is said first RU cluster); a second RU cluster comprising one or more second RUs (see RU 315-d in figure 3, wherein disclosed is said second RU cluster); a network agent device comprising a controller configured to be communicatively coupled to first RU cluster, the second RU cluster, the first DU, and the second DU (see CU 305 in figure 3, wherein disclosed is said network agent device that is coupled to said first RU cluster, second RU cluster, the first DU, and the second DU), the controller configured to: discover the presence of the at least one RU of the one or more RUs; receive RU communication capability information for at least one first RU in the first RU cluster and at least one second RU in the second RU cluster (see paragraph 84: a DU may determine, dynamically, whether to communicate with a RU 315 based on the current processing capability of the RU; also, see paragraph 85); assign one or more subsets of the total RU communication capability to the first DU and the second DU (see paragraphs 84-85 and figure 4: “…may support a subset of the functional splits such as option 6 and option 7,” wherein option 6 and option 7 are different processing capabilities); and communicate the assigned one or more subsets of the total RU communication capability to the first DU and the second DU (see paragraphs 84-85 and figure 4).
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Bachu does not specifically disclose to determine a total RU communication capability based on the received RU communication capability information for the first RU cluster and the second RU cluster.
Mo discloses to determine a total RU communication capability based on the received RU communication capability information for the first RU cluster and the second RU cluster (see paragraph 243: “Step 1708 includes multiple sub-steps. First, the DU will pair itself with accessible RUs and invite them to join. Second, it will announce the combined DU/RU capabilities, such as bandwidth, to join accessible CU clusters. If one CU can serve the combined capabilities, the DU will join that CU cluster and invite that CU to join its KCN registry. Else, the DU will join multiple CU clusters and invite all the associated CUs to join its KCN registry forming the potential virtual radio BSs that the DU is part of. Once that is done, the DU will broadcast Service Available signal to the area and wait for UE requests. The DU will then invite the UE that it is serving to join its KCN registry”).
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 invention of Bachu and combine it with the noted teachings of Mo. The motivation to combine these references is to provide an efficient method for device module formation of network devices in a distributed mesh radio network (see paragraphs 2-8 of Mo).
Consider claim 2, Bachu discloses the first DU (see above), and at least implies a host agent device (see figures 1, 3, and 4: it is implicit that said system comprises at least one host agent device) but does not explicitly a host agent device.
Mo discloses a host agent device (see paragraph 208: host gateway device).
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 invention of Bachu and combine it with the noted teachings of Mo. The motivation to combine these references is to provide an efficient method for device module formation of network devices in a distributed mesh radio network (see paragraphs 2-8 of Mo).
Consider claim 18, Bachu discloses that the one or more first RUs and the one or more second RUs each comprise radio device comprised from the group consisting of a small cell radio and a base station (see paragraph 5: base station).
Consider claim 21, Bachu discloses that the controller is further configured to discover the presence of the first DU and the second DU (see figure 3, wherein the CU being in communication with each of the first and second DUs 310-a and 310-b and therefore the C is able to discover each of the DUs).
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bachu (USPAN 2022/0361025) in view of Mo (USPAN 2021/0105869) and Sudletsky (USPN 11,838,169).
Consider claim 3, although Bachu in view of Mo disclose the host agent device (see above), Bachu in view of Mo do not specifically disclose a RU controller.
Sudletsky discloses a RU controller (see claim 16: RU controller).
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 invention of Bachu and combine it with the noted teachings of Sudletsky. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for remote logging management in multi-vendor open radio access networks (see col. 1 lines 6-9 of Sudletsky).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-17 and 19-20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jamal Javaid whose telephone number is 571-270-5137 and email address is Jamal.Javaid@uspto.gov.
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/JAMAL JAVAID/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2412