DETAILED ACTION
Introduction
Claims 1-3, 5-12, 14-17, and 19-23 are pending. Claims 4, 13, and 18 are cancelled. Claims 1, 3, 5-6, 9-12, 14-17, and 19-20 are amended. Claims 21-23 are new. This Office action is in response to Applicant’s request for continued examination (RCE) filed on 7/14/2025.
Other Relevant Prior Art
Lee (US 2022/0345929) teaches obtaining latency information for a plurality of UPFs from an NWDAF and selecting a UPF in accordance with a maximum latency requirement. See figs. 4, 6, and accompanying text. Guo (US 2021/0392539) teaches selecting a second UPF in the event that a latency between a UE and a first UPF exceeds a latency budget set forth in a service level agreement. See par. 23.
Response to Arguments
Examiner discusses the arguments of Applicant’s representative below.
Rejection of claims 1, 12, 17 under 35 U.S.C. 102
Applicant’s representative has amended claims 1, 12, and 17 to recite new features and now argus that Ly and 5G Prior Art do not teach the system of claims 1, 12, and 17, as amended. Examiner agrees. Nonetheless, the combination of Chen and Xin teaches the system of amended claims 1, 12, and 17, as discussed in the rejection below.
Claim Objections
Claims 1, 12, and 17 recite a step of selecting a UPF “based on a session modify message,” but it is not clear what it means for the selecting step to be “based on a session modify message,” especially in light of the fact that the SMF generates and sends the session modify message after it selects the UPF, according to numerous portions of the specification. Examiner respectfully requests that Applicant’s representative either delete the phrase “based on the session modify message” or explain how the SMF performs the selecting step based on a session modify message that it does not generate and send until after it performs the selecting step.
Claim 7 recites the phrase “wherein the session modify message indicates that the PDU session is to be modified to provide a lower latency data path to the application and wherein the application is a sensitive application,” but it is not clear how this phrase further limits the session modify message itself because the phrase appears to merely recite the intended goal of executing the session modify message, i.e., the session modify message is to be executed by the recipient of the session modify message to achieve the goal of providing a lower latency data path.
Claim Rejections: 35 U.S.C. 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 1-3, 5-10, 12, 14-15, 17, and 19-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 because they are unpatentable over Chen (US 2023/0180038) in view of Xin (GB 2627328 A).
Regarding claims 1, 12, and 17, Ly teaches a method, comprising: transmitting, by a session management function (SMF) and to a network data analytics function (NWDAP), an analytics message that requests or subscribes to analytics for user plane performance data (A SMF transmits an analytic request to an NWDAP, which causes the SMF to subscribe to receive an analytic result from the NWDAP. See par. 121. The analytic result may comprise network performance data such as a transmission delay. See par. 129-130); receiving, by the SMF and from the NWDAF, analytics information in response to the analytics message, wherein the analytics information indicates a prediction, per expected location and time, of a user plane performance data (The SMF receives the analytic result from the NWDAF. See par. 121. The analytic result includes a prediction of a transmission delay, an area where the prediction is valid, a time period within which the prediction is valid, and an estimation of the accuracy of the prediction. See par. 31), wherein the user plane performance data is associated with at least a first UPF and a second UPF (The transmission delay is associated with a plurality of UPFs from which the SMF is to select. See par. 121); selecting, by the SMF, a first UPF or a second UPF to serve an application running on a data network (DN), based on a session modify message (After receiving the analytic result from the NWDAF, the SMF selects a new UPF based on the analytic result. See par. 121); and transmitting, by the SMF, the session modify message to modify a protocol data unit (PDU) session based on the analytics information (The SMF establishes an optimum path for the UE through the selected UPF using a session modify message, such as by triggering the insertion of an uplink classifier (UL-CL) or establishing a branch point. See par. 124-125), wherein the PDU session simultaneously corresponds to multiple interfaces providing access to multiple DNs (As indicated above, Chen teaches that the SMF triggers insertion of a UL-CL classifier to provide a UE with access to an edge computing application. See par. 124-125. It is well-established that the function of a UL-CL classifier is to provide simultaneous access to a service at a local network as well as access to a core network. See Edge Computing, pg. 4-5; fig. 5. More generally, the ability to have a single PDU session simultaneously provide access to multiple data network was ubiquitous in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention. See Ronkainen (US 2023/0209402), par. 70-72; fig. 7a; Youn (US 2022/0167446), par. 34; fig. 3; Zhang (US 2022/0015163), par. 36; Moon (US 2021/0321487), par. 67; and Ramle (US 2019/0174386), par. 8; fig. 4).
However, Chen does not teach that the user plane performance data is a user equipment (UE) to user plane function (UPF) (UE-to-UPF) latency, and wherein the UE-to-UPF latency is collected by an operations and management (OAM) entity. Nonetheless, Xin teaches a system for collecting path delay information in a 5G network, whereby an OAM collects end-to-end (E2E) delay information (i.e., delay between a UPF and a UE. See par. 84 at pg. 25), and the distribution of UL/DL delay between a UPF and UE (See par. 84 at pg. 26), and provides the delay information to and NWDAF for generating analytics using the NWDAF. See also par. 141 at pg. 47.
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 system of Chen so that the transmission delay is UE-to-UPF latency that is collected by an OAM, because doing so provides an additional type of user plane performance data that is usable to select the UPF, and further provides an additional way of collecting the user plane performance data.
Regarding claim 2, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the analytics message indicates one or more of: an analytics identifier, a target of analytics reporting, or analytics filter information, wherein the target of analytics reporting includes a single UE or a group of UEs, and the analytics filter information includes one or more of a Fifth Generation quality of service identifier (SQ), slice information, or area of interest information (Chen teaches that the analytics request is a NWDAF subscription message, the contents of which are defined in the 3GPP 5G architecture. See par. 154. According to the 3GPP 5G architecture, the NWDAF subscription message contains the following parameters: a list of analytics identifiers, a target of analytics reporting (i.e., a single UE, a group of UEs, or an area), analytics filter information, a time range (immediate, periodic, or future interval), etc. See 3GPP TS 23.288 Version 16.4.0 Release 16 at pg. 12-13, section 6.1.3).
Regarding claim 3, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the analytics information indicates a statistical analysis of an average uplink or downlink latency of a UE or a group of UEs to one or more serving UPFs, including the first UPF and the second UPF, and the average uplink or downlink latency of the UE or the group of UEs to the UPFs is collected by an operations and management (OAM) entity in accordance with a configurable interval (Xin teaches that the NWDAF provides average observed or predicted packet delay between a single UE or a list of UEs and a UPF. See par. 107, 112, 125, and 128. Xin further teaches that the average packet delay may be collected by the OAM over a configurable analytics target period. See par. 80. Thus, Xin suggests further modifying the system of Chen and Xin so that the analytic result includes UL/DL average packet delay of a single UE or group of UEs to a UPF, and so that the OAM collects the average packet delay over a configurable analytics target period, because doing so is beneficial for the reasons provided above with respect to claim 1).
Regarding claim 5, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the analytics information includes a UPF-to-UE downlink latency, and the UPF-to-UE downlink latency is based on a first timestamp associated with a local time of a downlink packet transmitted by the first UPF or the second UPF, and a second timestamp associated with a local time that the downlink packet is received by a radio access network (RAN) and reported to the first UPF or the second UPF (Xin teaches that the packet delay includes a UPF-to-UE DL delay, which is defined in the 3GPP 5G architecture as the time to send a packet from the UPF to the RAN. One of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that this transmission time is calculated as the difference between the time of sending a packet from the UPF and the time of receiving the packet at the RAN. See par. 64, 84. Thus, Xin suggests further modifying the system of Chen and Xin so that the analytic result includes a UPF-to-UE DL delay, because doing so is beneficial for the reasons provided above with respect to claim 1).
Regarding claim 6, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the analytics information includes a UE-to-UPF uplink latency, and the UE-to-UPF uplink latency is based on a third timestamp associated with a local time of an uplink packet leaving a radio access network (RAN), and a fourth timestamp associated with a local time that the uplink packet arrives at the first UPF or the second UPF from the RAN (Xin teaches that the packet delay includes a UE-to-UPF UL delay, which is defined in the 3GPP 5G architecture as the time to send a packet from the RAN to the UPF. One of ordinary skill in the art would appreciate that this transmission time is calculated as the difference between the time of sending a packet from the RAN and the time of receiving the packet at the UPF. See par. 64, 84. Thus, Xin suggests further modifying the system of Chen and Xin so that the analytic result includes a UE-to-UPF UL delay, because doing so allows the SMF to select the UPF based on additional packet delay information).
Regarding claim 7, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the session modify message indicates that the PDU session is to be modified to provide a lower latency data path to the application and wherein the application is a sensitive application (Chen teaches that the new UPF is selected to provide lower packet delay for an edge computing application. See par. 191-194).
Regarding claim 8, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the PDU session is modified during a PDU session establishment or after the PDU session establishment (Chen teaches that a UPF is selected during session establishment or reselected after session establishment. See par. 6).
Regarding claims 9, 14, and 19, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the session modify message indicates that an uplink classifier UPF is to be inserted as a branching point in a data path, and a low latency flow is served directly by it or through a local UPF PFU session anchor (PSA) connected to it that serve the data path with reduced latency (Chen teaches that an SMF modifies a session to use a path through a newly selected UPF by triggering insertion of a UL-CL classifier. See par. 125).
Regarding claims 10, 15, and 19, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the UPF PDU session anchor (PSA) is selected during a PDU session establishment to match a latency service level agreement (SLA), wherein the UPF PSA is the first UPF or the second UPF (Chen teaches that the new UPF is selected to meet a QoS requirement in accordance with the UE location. See par. 194).
Regarding claims 21-23, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the NWDAF requests, from the OAM, information on average uplink/downlink UE-to-UPF key performance indicators (KPIs), which are collected per periodic reporting (The NWDAF obtains the UL/DL packet delay distribution between a UPF and UE from the OAM, where the term “packet delay distribution” is defined as the mean, minimum, maximum, and/or variance of packet delay distribution. See par. 141 at pg. 47; par. 84 at pg. 25. The NWDAF receives the delay information in response to sending a request or subscription to the OAM. See par. 155-156. The delay information may be collected periodically. See par. 83).
Claims 11, 16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 because they are unpatentable over Chen and Xin. Alternatively, claims 11, 16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 because they are unpatentable over Chen and Xin, as applied to claims 1, 12, and 17 above, in further view of Chitta (US 2020/0245182).
Regarding claims 11, 16, and 20, Chen and Xin teach the method of claim 1, wherein the session modify message indicates that an uplink classifier UPF is to be inserted as a branching point in a data path, the uplink classifier UPF is inserted during a PDU session (Chen teaches that an SMF modifies a session to use a path through a newly selected UPF by triggering insertion of a UL-CL classifier. See par. 125), and a first flow associated with a first latency is served by the uplink classifier UPF and a second flow associated with a second latency is served by a UPF PDU session anchor (PSA) connected to the uplink classifier UPF, wherein the uplink classifier UPF is the first UPF or the second UPF (Ronkainen teaches serving low-latency traffic by a local application 108 via a local UPF 108c, and serving high-latency traffic by a central application 110 via a central UPF which receives the high-latency traffic from the local UPF. See par. 57; fig. 7b). Similarly, Chitta teaches a 5G system whereby one UPF is used for low latency traffic and a centralized anchor UPF is used for the remaining traffic. See par. 79.
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 system of Chen and Xin so that a UL-CL UPF services low latency traffic and a UPF PSA serves the remaining traffic, because doing so allows the system to offload low-latency traffic to an edge node.
Conclusion
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/ANDREW C GEORGANDELLIS/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2459