DETAILED ACTION
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 .
This action is in response to the communication filed on 02/13/2026.
The Claims 2, 10 and 17-20 have been canceled by the applicant.
The Claims 21-26 have been newly added by the applicant.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments with respect to claim(s) 1 have been considered but are moot in view of the new ground(s) of rejection.
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.
Claim(s) 1, 3-9, 11-16 and 21-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tseng et al. (U.S. Pub. 20230180223) in view of Tseng et al. (U.S. Pub. 20240040626), hereafter “Tseng626”.
Regarding claim 1 Tseng disclose, an SDT failure reporting method, comprising:
determining an SDT failure when an SDT failure condition is satisfied para. 176, “the UE may try to resume the RRC connection with the UE (e.g., by initiating an RRC resume procedure) to report the failure condition to the serving RAN”,
wherein the SDT failure condition comprises Configured Grant (CG) resource being unavailable para. 176, “the Secondary Node (of the SCG) may also configure specific Uplink Configured Grant configuration for the UE to implement small data transmissions while the UE is staying in the RRC_INACTIVE state. Therefore, the described mechanisms related to a radio link failure mechanism may also be applied to an SCG failure event (e.g., when the UE detects a radio link failure for the SCG) while the small data transmission associated with the SCG may be triggered”; and
Tseng does not specifically disclose, reporting SDT failure information to a first serving cell read as: “serving RAN”, wherein the first serving cell is a first cell configured with an SDT resource and having an SDT failure occurring therein. However, Tseng626 teach, reporting SDT failure information to a first serving cell, “the UE may transmit the SDT failure report to the serving RAN” see para. 74, Table 2.
Tseng626 further teach, wherein the first serving cell read as: “serving RAN” is a first cell configured with an SDT resource and having an SDT failure occurring therein, para. 74, Table 2, and Fig. 5A, “The UE may store the SDT failure event, and next time when the UE connects with the serving RAN again (e.g., anchor cell or non-anchor cell), the UE may transmit the SDT failure report to the serving RAN… FIG. 5A, the UE 503 may firstly receive the SDT configuration from the serving cell #1 505 (e.g., step 511) (e.g., the SDT configuration may be transmitted to the UE 503 within an RRCRelease message with the ‘suspendconfig’ IE, which instructs the UE 503 to move to the RRC inactive sate). In this scenario, the serving cell #1 505 is the anchor cell of the UE 503”.
Tseng and Tseng626 are analogous because they pertain to the field of wireless communication and, more specifically, to transmission parameters.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Tseng626 in the system of Tseng so the system can promptly report this information to a serving cell in order understand the context of the failure. The motivation for doing so would have been to avoid subsequent failures by adjusting resource configuration preventing further loss.
Regarding claim 3 Tseng disclose, wherein the SDT failure condition further comprises at least one of:
expiry of a first timer that is started when an SDT process starts and/or is triggered para. 8, “the at least one predefined condition includes at least one of the following: a timing advanced (TA) timer associated with a UL configured grant (CG) for the SDT procedure has expired”;
Random Access (RA) failure; Radio Link Control (RLC) failure; Radio Link Failure (RLF); cell reselection; or Radio Resource Control Reject (RRCReject) or Radio Resource Control Setup (RRCSetup) message being received. The claim list features in the alternative. While the claim lists a number of optional limitations only one limitation from the list is required and needs to be met by the prior art. The Examiner has chosen the first of the alternatives.
Regarding claim 4 Tseng disclose, wherein the SDT failure information comprises at least one of: an SDT failure type; or a failure cause para. 170, “the UE may report the cause of reporting in the RRCResumeComplete message/RRC Re-establishment Complete message to the serving cell. For example, one additional IE, such as ‘Physical Layer Problem’, ‘Radio Link Failure’, or ‘RLC Failure event’ may be transmitted to the serving cell through the RRCResumeComplete/RRC Re-establishment Complete message to the serving cell”. The claim list features in the alternative. While the claim lists a number of optional limitations only one limitation from the list is required and needs to be met by the prior art. The Examiner has chosen the last of the alternatives.
Regarding claim 5 Tseng disclose, wherein the SDT failure type comprises at least one of: SDT failure; Configured Grant Small Data Transmission (CG-SDT) failure; or Random Access Small Data Transmission (RA-SDT) failure para. 128, “initiate the SCG failure information procedure when a small data transmission procedure (e.g., through a random access procedure) fails (e.g., when a random access problem indication from the MAC entity is received)”. The claim list features in the alternative. While the claim lists a number of optional limitations only one limitation from the list is required and needs to be met by the prior art. The Examiner has chosen the last of the alternatives.
Regarding claim 6 Tseng disclose, wherein the failure cause comprises at least one of: expiry of a first timer that is started when an SDT process starts and/or is triggered, Random Access (RA) failure; Configured Grant (CG) resource being unavailable; Radio Link Control (RLC) failure; beam recovery failure; cell reselection; or Radio Resource Control Reject (RRCReject) or Radio Resource Control Setup (RRCSetup) message being received, para. 129, Table 5, “The UE declares Radio Link Failure (RLF) when one of the following criteria are met: - Expiry of a timer started after indication of radio problems from the physical layer (if radio problems are recovered before the timer is expired, the UE stops the timer); or - Random access procedure failure”.
Regarding claim 7 Tseng disclose, further comprising: reporting the SDT failure information via a Radio Link Failure (RLF) report; or reporting the SDT failure information via dedicated information, para. 169, “In some implementations, the UE may report the cause of reporting in the RRCResumeRequest message/RRC Re-establishment Request message to the serving cell”. The claim list features in the alternative. While the claim lists a number of optional limitations only one limitation from the list is required and needs to be met by the prior art. The Examiner has chosen the last of the alternatives.
Regarding claim 8 Tseng disclose, wherein the first serving cell comprises at least one of para. 169, “In some implementations, the UE may report the cause of reporting in the RRCResumeRequest message/RRC Re-establishment Request message to the serving cell”: a cell accessed using a non-SDT random access process, a cell successfully accessed using a Radio Resource Control (RRC) connection reestablishment process, or a cell successfully accessed when a terminal device re-enters an RRC connected state para. 169, “For example, one additional IE, such as ‘Physical Layer Problem’, ‘Radio Link Failure’, or ‘RLC Failure event’ may be transmitted to the serving cell through the RRCResumeRequest/RRC Re-establishment Request message to the serving cell”. While the claim lists a number of optional limitations only one limitation from the list is required and needs to be met by the prior art. The Examiner has chosen the second of the alternatives.
Regarding claim 9 Tseng disclose, further comprising: storing the SDT failure information para. 176, “The failed RA attempts for packet transmission may be stored in the UE”.
Regarding claim 11 Tseng disclose, wherein the SDT failure information further comprises an identity of the first cell para. 49, “A UE-specific reference may include a reference to the UE context within a logical NG-RAN node. An NG-RAN node address index may include information that identifies the NG-RAN node that allocates the UE specific part”.
Regarding claim 12 Tseng disclose, further comprising:
reporting first indication information indicating that there is SDT failure information to be reported para. 129, Table 4, “Expiry of a timer started after indication of radio problems from the physical layer (if radio problems are recovered before the timer is expired, the UE stops the timer); or - Random access procedure failure; or - RLC failure. After RLF is declared”.
Regarding claim 13 Tseng disclose, further comprising: receiving second indication information instructing a terminal device to report or not to report the SDT failure information para. 184, “the cell may also indicate whether the UE is allowed to fallback to access the common random access resources for small data transmissions or not when one or more air link problems (e.g., am RA failure event, an RLF detection, etc.)”.
Regarding claim 14 Tseng disclose, further comprising: receiving uplink data from a higher layer para. 115, “After receiving the at least one UL resource (e.g., through an RRC message), process 400 may select, at 420, one of the NUL frequency carrier and the SUL frequency carrier to transmit data (e.g., one or more small packets) received from higher layers to the serving cell (or base station)”; and
transmitting the uplink data over a random access resource and/or a the CG resource para. 161, “the UE may be able to transmit small packets through a (contention-free and/or contention-based) random access procedure”.
Regarding claim 15 Tseng disclose, wherein when it is determined to transmit the uplink data over the CG resource, at least one of the following conditions is satisfied para. 122, “In addition to the above-described small data transmissions (e.g., through either an uplink configured grant configuration or a random access procedure):
a data amount of the uplink data being smaller than or equal to an SDT threshold; a change amount of signal quality of a serving cell being smaller than or equal to a quality threshold; a CG resource being available on a selected carrier para. 122, “implemented on a normal uplink component carrier and/or a supplementary uplink component carrier”; a CG resource being available on a selected beam; or a Timing Advance (TA) timer being running. While the claim lists a number of optional limitations only one limitation from the list is required and needs to be met by the prior art. The Examiner has chosen the fifth of the alternatives.
Regarding claim 16 Tseng teaches, terminal device, comprising a processor and a memory, para. 195, “in FIG. 5, node 500 may include processor 526 and memory 528,”; furthermore claim 16, recites an apparatus corresponding to the device of claim 1 and thus is rejected under the same reason set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
Regarding claim 21 Tseng teaches, wherein the CG resource being unavailable comprises no available CG resource in a current beam para. 11, “selecting the one of the NUL frequency carrier or the SUL frequency carrier includes selecting any of the NUL frequency carrier or the SUL frequency carrier with which the RA resource is associated in a case that: the CG resource is not available, or the UE receives an indication from the serving cell that indicates to the UE to fallback from the CG resource”.
Regarding claim 22 Tseng do not specifically teaches, wherein the method further comprises: reporting the SDT failure information to the first serving cell, wherein the first serving cell is a second cell other than the first cell. However Tseng626 teach, the UE may transmit the SDT failure report to the serving RAN… the SDT failure report may be transmitted to the serving RAN via Early Measurement Report procedure. The content included in an SDT failure report may include information related to SDT-CG failure” see para. 74, Table 2. Tseng626 further teach, the second cell is configured to forward the received SDT failure information to the first cell para. 39, “a Primary Cell (PCell) may refer to the SpCell of an MCG. A Primary SCG Cell (PSCell) may refer to the SpCell of an SCG. MCG may refer to a group of serving cells associated with the Master Node (MN), including the SpCell and optionally one or more Secondary Cells (SCells)”.
Tseng and Tseng626 are analogous because they pertain to the field of wireless communication and, more specifically, to transmission parameters.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the teachings of Tseng626 in the system of Tseng so the system can promptly report this information to a serving cell in order understand the context of the failure. The motivation for doing so would have been to avoid subsequent failures by adjusting resource configuration preventing further loss.
Regarding claim 23 Tseng teaches, wherein the first indication information is 1-bit indication information.para. 79, “ HARQ ACK/NACK transmissions may be supported when a MSG 3 is transmitted”, although Tseng do to specify the size of the messages being transmitted, it would be obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art that supporting ACK/NACK signals to communicate it is equivalent as using a 1-bit signal.
Regarding claims 24-26 the limitations of claims 24-26, respectively, are rejected in the same manner as analyzed above with respect to claims 3-5, respectively.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: Agiwal (U.S. Pub. 20220201659) which disclose(s) method for handling configured grant (cg) resources for small data transmission (sdt) in wireless communication system, involves transmitting second uplink data of sdt by using cg resource associated with cg resource information.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a). A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any extension fee pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RAUL RIVAS whose telephone number is (571)270–5590. The examiner can normally be reached on Monday – Friday, from 8:30am to 5:00pm.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner' s supervisor, Sujoy K. Kundu, can be reached on (571) 272 - 8586. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571–273–8300.
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/RR/
Examiner, Art Unit 2471
/SUJOY K KUNDU/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
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