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 in response to application filed on 1/28/2024.
Claims 1-20 have been examined and are pending with this action.
Priority
Examiner acknowledges that the Applicant claims a foreign priority benefit of 371 of PCT/CN2021/110158 filed on 8/2/2021.
Drawings
The drawings were received on 1/28/2024 and these drawings are accepted.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 1/28/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Oath/Declaration
The Oath/Declaration filed on 1/28/2024 is accepted by the 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 of this title, 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 1-3, 6-7, 10-12, 15-16 & 19-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Huang (US 20190306734 A1) in view of Yao (CN 110537375 A).
As per claim 1, Huang discloses a method for measurement-occasion determination (Huang: [ABS]: “A method can include receiving measurement configurations for measuring serving/neighboring cells at a user equipment (UE) & The MOs can be measured within the SMTC occasions that overlap the gap occasions. ”), comprising:
determining, by a terminal device, a measurement occasion of a first measurement object (MO) in at least one measurement occasion (Huang: [ABS]: “The measurement configurations can indicate multiple measurement objects (MOs) each with a SSB measurement timing configuration (SMTC) specifying a sequence of SMTC window durations (i.e. SMTC occasions), and a sequence of gap occasions. The MOs can be measured within the SMTC occasions that overlap the gap occasions.”), according to whether a measurement gap (MG) and/or a network control small gap (NCSG) are needed for measurement of the first MO (Huang: [ABS & 0034]: “ the MOs include one of a first intra-frequency MO to be measured with no measurement gap, where the SMTC occasions of the first intra-frequency MO overlapping the gap occasions, a second intra-frequency MO to be measured with measurement gaps & The UE 110 can use the MGs to identify and measure intra-frequency cells, inter-frequency cells, or inter-RAT cells”),
Huang does not explicitly teaches the network control small gap (NCSG).
Yao however discloses wherein the at least one measurement occasion comprises the NCSG (Yao: [ABS]: “the capability information indicates that the UE supports each UE network control of the small gap (NCSG) operation, the configuration information request message is encoded in the first frequency associated with the serving cell on request each UE NCSG”).
Therefore it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Huang in view of Yao to figure out the network control small gap (NCSG). One would be motivated to do so because this technology aid in performing NCSG measurements (Yao).
Claim 10 and 19 are rejected based on rationale provided for claim 1.
As per claim 2, Huang in view of Yao discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising at least one of: determining, by the terminal device according to a first condition, whether the MG is needed for the measurement of the first MO (Huang: [ABS & 0034]: “ the MOs include one of a first intra-frequency MO to be measured with no measurement gap, where the SMTC occasions of the first intra-frequency MO overlapping the gap occasions, a second intra-frequency MO to be measured with measurement gaps & The UE 110 can use the MGs to identify and measure intra-frequency cells, inter-frequency cells, or inter-RAT cells”).
As per claim 3, Huang in view of Yao discloses the method of claim 2, wherein the first condition comprises at least one of: the first MO being contained in an active bandwidth part (BWP) (Huang: [ABS & 0035]: “The measurement configurations can indicate multiple measurement objects (MOs) each with a SSB measurement timing configuration (SMTC) specifying a sequence of SMTC window durations & the UE 110 operates on a bandwidth part (BWP) of the whole frequency band, and the BWP does not include the SSBs of the neighboring cells 131-132 indicated for the measurement”),
As per claim 6, Huang in view of Yao discloses the method of claim 1, wherein determining, by the terminal device, the measurement occasion of the first MO in the at least one measurement occasion according to whether the NCSG is needed for the measurement of the first MO (Huang: [ABS]: “A method can include receiving measurement configurations for measuring serving/neighboring cells at a user equipment (UE) & The MOs can be measured within the SMTC occasions that overlap the gap occasions. ”), comprises:
Huang does not explicitly teaches the network control small gap (NCSG).
Yao however discloses determining, by the terminal device, the measurement occasion of the first MO from the NC SG and outside-gap according to a position relationship between a measurement timing window of the first MO and the NCSG, in response to the NCSG being not needed for the measurement of the first MO (Yao: [ABS]: “the capability information indicates that the UE supports each UE network control of the small gap (NCSG) operation, the configuration information request message is encoded in the first frequency associated with the serving cell on request each UE NCSG”).
Therefore it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Huang in view of Yao to figure out the network control small gap (NCSG). One would be motivated to do so because this technology aid in performing NCSG measurements (Yao).
As per claim 7, Huang in view of Yao discloses the method of claim 1 (Huang: [ABS]: “A method can include receiving measurement configurations for measuring serving/neighboring cells at a user equipment (UE) & The MOs can be measured within the SMTC occasions that overlap the gap occasions. , further comprising:
determining, by the terminal device, the first specific scaling factor for the first MO according to the period of the measurement timing window of the first MO and a measurement gap repetition period (MGRP), in response to that the terminal device determines from both the MG and the outside-gap that the measurement occasion of the first MO is the outside-gap when the measurement timing window of the first MO is partially overlapping with the MG (Huang: [ABS]: “the measurement configurations 141 may further specify a measurement gap pattern for the measurement. For example, a set of parameters, including a gap pattern ID, a measurement gap length (MGL), a measurement gap repetition period (MGRP), and a measurement gap offset, can be provided such that timings of a sequence of measurement gaps (MG) can be determined and the time periods that UE 110 does not have to receive or transmit any data can be provided to the UE 110. The MG can also be referred to as a gap occasion, or a gap window duration. In one example, the MGRP takes one of the values among {20 ms, 40 ms, 80 ms, 160 ms}”),
Claim 11-12, 15-16 and 20 are rejected based on rationale provided for claims 2-3 and 6-7.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-5 and 13-14 OR 8-9 and 17-18 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in all independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims. Both claims must be included in all independent claims for allowance.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. This includes:
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/SIBTE H BUKHARI/Examiner, Art Unit 2449
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