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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This action is responsive to the application filed on 01/23/2024 has a total of 20 claims pending in the application; there are 3 independent claims and 17 dependent claims, all of which are ready for examination by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Balakrishnan et al. Publication No. (US 2025/0227784 A1) in view of BHATOOLAUL et al. Publication No. (US 2024/0284331 A1).
Regarding claim 1, Balakrishnan teaches a method, comprising:
receiving, by a network device (base station 602 FIG.6), a group command associated with data transfers for a plurality of user equipments (UEs) (base station 602 defines groups of remote UEs ‘either by an explicit request from the base station 602 or by acting as a proxy for certain services and identifies the need to wake-up the group 605 of remote UEs 606 [0149]’, groups can be defined based on, for example, service functions, geographic distribution of nodes, traffic patterns, frequency of wake-up, whether wake-up would be triggered by individual external events, and/or whether a relay UE will act as a service proxy for several remote UEs [01691-173] FIG.8); and
transmitting, by the network device and based on the group command, a wakeup signal to a subset of UEs, of the plurality of UEs, in a target area (the base station 602 transmits a group Wake Up Signal (WUS) to the relay UE 604 to perform a group wake-up procedure whereby wake-up of the remote UEs 606 in the group 605 is performed, the relay UE 604 sends a separate WUS (e.g., a separate LPWUS) to each of the remote UEs 606 in the group 605 (or to the entire group at once) and, optionally, listens for WUS ACKs from the remote UEs 606 [0175-176] FIG.8) , wherein the wakeup signal is associated with a control of data transfers for the subset of UEs based on a number of UEs in the target area (the WUS indicate information about the number of UEs successfully woken-up, the base station 602 performs one or more actions may then proceed to send data or command(s) to the group 605 of remote UEs 606 [0176] FIG.6, uplink data transmission and downlink data transmission is performed with the base station 602 and the group [target area] 605 of the remote UEs [0101] FIG.2) and
Balakrishnan does not explicitly teach the wakeup signal is associated with a load condition level associated with the target area.
BHATOOLAUL teaches a wakeup signal is associated with a load condition level associated with the target area (BHATOOLAUL: obtaining an evaluation configuration of wake-up (WUS) triggering based on determining whether or not a condition included in the metric is fulfilled [condition level], reporting the WUS signal based on a trigger load-balancing to redistribute UEs across multiple WUS signals to minimize congestion in groups, trigger re-configuration/adjustment to the applied number of sub-groups in WUS or re-configuration of the applied WUS configuration e.g. the sub-group of the UE, trigger reconfiguration to minimize interference to or from neighboring cells to measure the reception quality/success/failure of the WUS [0116-124] FIG.1).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified Balakrishnan by the teaching of BHATOOLAUL to associate a load level with the wakeup signal in order to trigger load-balancing given multiple UEs sharing the same WUS, trigger reconfiguration to minimize interference from neighboring cells, adjust WUS characteristics such as power, repetition, length, to either make the WUS more robust or optimize resource usage (BHATOOLAUL: [0164] FIG.2).
Regarding claim 2, Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: transmitting, by the network device, one or more queries for information regarding the number of UEs in the target area and the load condition level associated with the target area; and receiving, by the network device, one or more responses that indicates the number of UEs in the target area and the load condition level associated with the target area (When the base station 602 desires to wake-up and fetch data from the group 605 of remote UEs 606, either by an explicit request from the base station 602 or because it is acting as a proxy for certain services and identifies the need to wake-up the group 605 of remote UEs 606, the relay UE 604 wakes-up the group 605 of remote UEs 606. The relay UE 604 checks if each of the remote UEs 606 in the group 605 is woken-up and establishes time synchronization [0149-152] FIG.6).
Regarding claim 3, Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the number of UEs in the target area is per radio access technology (RAT) type based on a radio access network (RAN) resource allocation, and the target area is associated with a cell or a base station (a communication system includes a telecommunication network 2400, such as a 3GPP-type cellular network, which comprises an access network 2402, such as a RAN, and a core network 2404. The access network 2402 comprises a plurality of base stations 2406A, 2406B, 2406C, such as Node Bs, eNBs, gNBs, or other types of wireless Access Points (APs), each defining a corresponding coverage area 2408A, 2408B, 2408C and each remote UE may be in the same or different network [0205-252] FIG.24).
Regarding claim 4, Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the load condition level associated with the target area accounts for predicted future traffic associated with the target area (The base station 1402 can determine or predict when there will be a loss of connection based on the location of the (source) relay UE 1404-S and, possibly, predicted future location(s) of the (source) relay UE 1404-S determined, e.g., based on the trajectory and possibly speed of movement of the (source) relay UE 1404-S. The base station 1402 may also consider the location(s), trajectory(ies), and/or predicted future location(s) of the remote UE(s), e.g., relative to that of the (source) relay UE 1404-S and/or known environmental impediments (e.g., buildings, etc.) [0220] FIG.14).
Regarding claim 5, the modified Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the wakeup signal indicates one or more of: service gap control information to control UE-network uplink transfer attempts per time interval, uplink or downlink rate control per access point name (APN) for control plane based transfer, or a user plane data rate (Balakrishnan: to make the WUS more robust at cell edge by increasing a data rate. Such code rate increase may be performed by the network in response to the network obtaining/receiving a report and/or alarm from a UE(s) to a specific node [0135-138] FIG.1).
Regarding claim 6, Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the wakeup signal is a short messaging service (SMS) wakeup command or a non-Internet Protocol (non-IP) data delivery wakeup command (a Wake-Up Signal (WUS) to wake up Internet-of-Things (IoT) UEs e.g., non-IP wakeup or paging or paging information carried in a PDCCH if the IoT finds the WUS is targeting itself [0069] FIG.6).
Regarding claim 7, Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the data transfers for the subset of UEs are downlink data transfers or uplink data transfers (downlink data transmission and uplink data transmission once the relay UE 104 receives data for the remote UE 106 from the base station 102, the relay UE 104 transmits the data to the remote UE 106 via the sidelink [0101-102] FIG.1).
Regarding claim 8, Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the wakeup signal is associated with a paced trigger for mobile origination (MO) data to multiple target areas (triggering condition for handover of the remote UE 1406 or the group 1405 of remote UEs by the [source or originating] relay UE [0219-220] FIG.14).
Regarding claim 9, the modified Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, further comprising: maintaining, by the network device, a cell-radio access technology (RAT) based load map database with a RAT type based on a number of UEs in cells and a capacity of the cells (Balakrishnan: Reconfigure the mapping of WUSs to different UEs to improve load balancing and/or reduce false alarm for certain UEs e.g., database 420 in end terminals [0146-151] FIG.4).
Regarding claim 10, Balakrishnan teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the network device is a network exposure function (NEF) service capability exposure function (SCEF) in a wireless network (Core Network Node is a Service Capability Exposure Function (SCEF), a Network Exposure Function (NEF), a Network Function (NF) Repository Function (NRF), a Policy Control Function (PCF), or the like [0067] FIG.24).
Regarding claims 11-15, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 1-10, where the difference used is the limitations were presented from the “network device” side with processors (Balakrishnan: FIG.25) and the wordings of the claims were interchanged within the claim itself or some of the claims were presented as a combination of two or more previously presented limitations. This change does not affect the limitation of the above treated claims. Adding these phrases to the claims and interchanging the wording did not introduce new limitations to these claims. Therefore, these claims were rejected for similar reasons as stated above.
Regarding claims 16-20, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 1-10, where the difference used is the limitations were presented from the “computer-readable medium” side with a set of instructions executed by processors (Balakrishnan: [0246] FIG.20) and the wordings of the claims were interchanged within the claim itself or some of the claims were presented as a combination of two or more previously presented limitations. This change does not affect the limitation of the above treated claims. Adding these phrases to the claims and interchanging the wording did not introduce new limitations to these claims. Therefore, these claims were rejected for similar reasons as stated above.
Conclusion
When responding to this office action, Applicant is advised to clearly point out the patentable novelty which he or she thinks the claims present, in view of the state of the art disclosed by the references cited or the objections made. He or she must also show how the amendments avoid such references or objections See 37 CFR 1.111 (c).
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/ABDELNABI O MUSA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2472