DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Application No. 18/487,643 filed on 10/16/2023. Claims 1-20 have been examined.
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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 10/16/2023 is being considered 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, 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, 8-10, 12-16, 18, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Farmanbar et al. (hereinafter Farmanbar)(US 2018/0123961) in view of Li (US 2021/0204154).
Regarding claims 1, 8, and 14, Farmanbar teaches as follows:
A wireless communication system to manage a wireless network slice (the present invention pertains to the field of wireless network communications, and in particular to a method and apparatus for providing slice specific policy configuration of control plane functions (CPF) by the management plane, see, ¶ [0002]), the wireless communication system comprising:
a microprocessor (interpreted as the central processing unit (CPU) 1310 in figure 13)(the CPU may comprise any type of electronic data processor, and may include one or more cores or processing elements, see, ¶ [0096]) to execute an operating system and to execute wireless network slice software under control of the operating system (FIG. 13 illustrates an embodiment of a general purpose computing platform that may be employed to carry out the method and message exchanges described above, see, ¶ [0093])(the general purpose computing platform inherently includes one or more processing elements to execute the operating system and all software under control of the operating system);
a performance monitor system (the management system is operative to monitor network slice resource usage, and to check adherence to one or more polices associated with the network slice based on the monitored network usage, see, ¶ [0061]) to obtain microprocessor measurement data that indicates microprocessor performance during the execution of the operating system and the wireless network slice software (policies are sets of conditions, constraints, and settings that shape the network behavior. These policies, otherwise known as rules, can be applicable to a specific slice or across multiple slices. Examples of these polices can include total slice compute resource usage at Network Function (NF) x<A cores and total slice storage resource usage at NF y<M bytes, see, ¶ [0052])(therefore, slice compute resource usage equivalent to applicant’s microprocessor performance is inherently monitored/measured to compare with the above policy);
a network control system to generate wireless network slice information based on the microprocessor measurement data and the operating system measurement data (the OS determines that there is a violation of the policy, for instance that current resources are insufficient for the network slice to provide services that meet the policy constraints based on the monitored resource usage, see, ¶ [0071] and figure 8), and
the network control system to modify the execution of the wireless network slice software based on the wireless network slice information (if at determination step 810, the OS determines that there is a violation of the policy, for instance that current resources are insufficient for the network slice to provide services that meet the policy constraints, then at step 820 the OS triggers an update of the resource allocation to the network slice to ensure compliance with the policy, see, ¶ [0071] and figure 8).
Farmanbar does not explicitly teach of obtaining operating system measurement data.
Li teaches as follows:
A MANO network element allocates a virtual resource to a network slice, and deploys a VNF network element on the virtual resource. The MANO network element includes a network functions virtualization orchestrator (NFVO), a virtualized network function manager (VNFM), and a virtualized infrastructure manager (VIM). Both the NFVO and the VNFM can drive the VIM to automatically scale out/in the virtual resource of the VNF network element. The VNFM monitors VNF network element performance indicators, such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, and storage utilization (see, ¶ [0074]).
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 Farmanbar with Li to include monitoring the performance indicators as taught by Li in order to efficiently allocate resource to the network slice.
Regarding claims 2, 9, and 18, Farmanbar in view of Li teaches of allocating network slice resource based on performance indicators as presented above.
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 Farmanbar in view of Li to include stopping execution of the wireless network slice software in case no more resources are available in order to efficiently support for other services or applications.
Regarding claims 3 and 10, Farmanbar teaches as follows:
The CPU may comprise any type of electronic data processor, and may include one or more cores or processing elements (see, ¶ [0096])
Li teaches as follows:
The VNFM monitors VNF network element performance indicators, such as CPU utilization, memory utilization, and storage utilization (see, ¶ [0074]).
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 Farmanbar in view of Li to include switching to a different core or processing element in case the current core or processing element utilization is full.
Regarding claims 6 and 20, Farmanbar teaches as follows:
The slice resource usage monitoring may, for instance, be conducted by the management system monitoring individual network function nodes and/or network logical links (equivalent to applicant’s network usage metrics) that may be specified in the one or more polices (see, ¶ [0061]).
Li teaches as follows:
Wherein the operating performance data comprises microprocessor usage metrics, memory usage metrics, and network usage metrics (see, ¶ [0074]).
Therefore, they are rejected for similar reason as presented above.
Regarding claims 12 and 15, Farmanbar teaches as follows:
Wherein the smart contract modifying the execution of the wireless network slice software based on the wireless network slice information comprises directing a Management and Orchestration (MANO) system to modify the execution of the wireless network slice software (when the OS determines there is a violation and triggers an update, it can send a request for an update to the network slice manager (NSM) within the management system, which in turn communicates with a management and orchestration (MANO) component, see, ¶ [0070] and figure 7).
Regarding claim 13, Farmanbar teaches as follows:
Directing a Management and Orchestration (MANO) system to modify the execution of the wireless network slice software (when the OS determines there is a violation and triggers an update, it can send a request for an update to the network slice manager (NSM) within the management system, which in turn communicates with a management and orchestration (MANO) component, see, ¶ [0070] and figure 7) and the MANO system directing a Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) to modify the execution of the wireless network slice software (network functions can be instantiated using any of a number of known techniques, including network function virtualization (NFV), to create Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), see, ¶ [0104]).
Regarding claim 16, Farmanbar teaches as follows:
Wherein the network control system comprises a Network Function Virtualization Infrastructure (NFVI) to modify the execution of the wireless network slice software based on the wireless network slice information (it should be understood that within the storage and compute resources illustrated in FIGS. 14A and 14B, network functions can be instantiated using any of a number of known techniques, including network function virtualization (NFV), to create Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), see, ¶ [0104] and figure 14).
Claims 4 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Farmanbar et al. (hereinafter Farmanbar)(US 2018/0123961) in view of Li (US 2021/0204154), and further in view of Byun et al. (hereinafter Byun)(US 2011/0149322).
Regarding claims 4 and 11, Farmanbar in view of Li teaches all limitations as presented above except for using multiple operating systems.
Byun teaches as follows:
Upon detecting a plurality of operating systems, the control unit may detect in operation 602 one or more critical characteristics of the operating systems to determine a resource allocation ratio. The critical characteristics may include a number of applications using the operating system, the resource-intensiveness of the applications, a type of operating systems, such as real-time or non-real-time, or any other critical characteristic… In operation 603, the control unit sets the resource allocation ratio between the operating systems based on the comparison of the critical characteristics of operation 602 (see, ¶ [0136]-[0137] and figure 6).
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 Farmanbar in view of Li with Byun to include switching to other operating system among multiple operating systems based on detected critical characteristics in order to efficiently provide fault tolerance for the operating system.
Claims 5 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Farmanbar et al. (hereinafter Farmanbar)(US 2018/0123961) in view of Li (US 2021/0204154), and further in view of Groves et al. (hereinafter Groves)(US 2013/0159512).
Regarding claims 5 and 19, Farmanbar in view of Li does not explicitly teach the performance metrics of interrupt handling.
Groves teaches as follows:
The dashboard shows exemplary metrics collected for application monitoring, such as CPU usage, CPU interrupts, memory usage, and free memory (see, ¶ [0057] and figure 4A).
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 Farmanbar in view of Li with Groves to include collecting performance metrics of CPU interrupts as taught by Groves in order to efficiently monitor the application executing on the computing device.
Claims 7 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Farmanbar et al. (hereinafter Farmanbar)(US 2018/0123961) in view of Li (US 2021/0204154), and further in view of Krishnaswamy et al. (hereinafter Krishnaswamy)(US 2025/0016059).
Regarding claims 7 and 17, Farmanbar in view of Li teaches all limitations as presented above except for the distributed ledger technology.
Krishnaswamy teaches as follows:
The allocating module, may enable allocation of the one or more distributed ledgers (104 in figure 1) associated with smart contracts for storing information pertaining to resource allocation of the at least one domain and their respective one or more subnet slices of the network. The one or more distributed ledgers can perform local blockchain data processing in the at least one respective domain (see, ¶ [0072] and figure 1).
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 Farmanbar in view of Li with Krishnaswamy to include the well-known distributed ledger technology as taught by Krishnaswamy in order to efficiently provide the local blockchain data processing.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jeong S Park whose telephone number is (571)270-1597. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 8:00-4:30 ET.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Glenton B Burgess can be reached at 571-272-3949. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/JEONG S PARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454
December 19, 2025