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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/28/23, 3/12/25, and 5/20/25 is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 16-18, 20-21, 23-26, 28-29 and 35 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by “Performance of simultaneous operation of IAB-node's child and parent links”, 3GPP TSG RAN WG #103-e, R1-2008314, AT&T, October 26ih - November 13th, 2020, 6 pages (hereinafter AT&T).
Regarding claim 16, AT&T teaches a method for operating a node (IAB-node) [Fig. 1] of a communication system, the node being configured to support wireless backhauling in the communication system (see Fig. 1 connection with gNB) and support wireless access to user equipments of the communication system (see Fig. 1 connection with Access UE), the method comprising:
using at least one test configuration (system parameter) for concurrently testing data transmission on a backhaul link and an access link of the node (see “In this section we provide system simulation results which compare the performance of simultaneous operation of child and parent links under different multiplexing constraints (i.e. SDM vs. M PTR). The system parameters are based on those used during the IAB study item with a carrier frequency of 39GHz and 100MHz system bandwidth shared dynamically between access and backhaul links based on traffic load” [p. 4, par 1] which suggests that access and backhaul links are tested simultaneously using a dynamically shared carrier frequency of 39 GHz and 100MHz system bandwidth which reads on the claimed “test configuration”).
Regarding claim 17, AT&T teaches the method of claim 16, wherein testing the data transmission on the backhaul link and the access link of the node comprises concurrently transmitting data on the backhaul link using at least one first frequency range (39GHz) and transmitting data on the access link using at least one second frequency range (100MHz) (see “The system parameters are based on those used during the IAB study item with a carrier frequency of 39GHz and 100MHz system bandwidth shared dynamically between access and backhaul links based on traffic load” [p. 4, par 1]).
Regarding claim 18, AT&T teaches the method of claim 17,
wherein the at least one first frequency range is a subrange of the at least one second frequency range (see “The system parameters are based on those used during the IAB study item with a carrier frequency of 39GHz and 100MHz system bandwidth shared dynamically between access and backhaul links based on traffic load” [p. 4, par 1] wherein 100MHz is a subrange of 39GHz); or
wherein the at least one second frequency range is separated from the at least one first frequency range by a predefined frequency offset; or
wherein the at least one second frequency range is equal to the at least one first frequency range respectively.
Regarding claim 20, AT&T teaches the method of claim 16, wherein the data transmission on the backhaul link and the data transmission on the access link are performed on same time slots using beams having respective different beam directions in a spatial domain of the communication system (see p. 3, Fig. 3 receive arrays and transmit arrays have “respective beam directions”).
Regarding claim 21, AT&T teaches the method of claim 20, the beam directions of the data transmission on the backhaul link and the data transmission on the access link are configured such that a difference between the beam directions does not exceed a maximum difference (one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the receive and transmit arrays in Fig. 3 may be oriented in any way including as claimed).
Claims 23 and 24 recite subject matter similar to claim 1 and are therefore rejected on the same basis.
Regarding claim 25, AT&T teaches the IAB node of claim 24, wherein testing the data transmission on the backhaul link and the access link of the node comprises concurrently transmitting data on the backhaul link using at least one first frequency range and transmitting data on the access link using at least one second frequency range (see “In this section we provide system simulation results which compare the performance of simultaneous operation of child and parent links under different multiplexing constraints (i.e. SDM vs. M PTR). The system parameters are based on those used during the IAB study item with a carrier frequency of 39GHz and 100MHz system bandwidth shared dynamically between access and backhaul links based on traffic load” [p. 4, par 1]).
Claim 26 recites subject matter similar to claim 17 and is therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claim 28 recites subject matter similar to claim 20 and is therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claim 29 recites subject matter similar to claim 21 and is therefore rejected on the same basis.
Regarding claim 35, AT&T teaches the IAB node of claim 24, wherein testing the data transmission comprises performing at least one measurement and determining whether results of the measurement fulfil predefined test requirements (see [p. 3, Section 3.2, Measurement results]).
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.
Claim(s)19, 22, 27, and 30-34 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over “Performance of simultaneous operation of IAB-node's child and parent links”, 3GPP TSG RAN WG #103-e, R1-2008314, AT&T, October 26ih - November 13th, 2020, 6 pages (hereinafter AT&T) in view of “On the performance of IAB solutions”, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 Meeting #93, R1-18G6907, Agenda: 7.7.3, Huawei, May 21-25, 2018, 6 pages (hereinafter Huawei).
Regarding claim 19, AT&T does not explicitly teach wherein the at least one first frequency range comprises one or two first frequency ranges, wherein each frequency range of the at least one first frequency range is placed at a respective difference edge of a radio frequency bandwidth of the node. In an analogous prior art reference, Huawei discloses “Configuration 3 (dynamic TDM with flexible SDM): In the DL or UL backhaul slot in configuration 2, the access link can be multiplexed with backhaul link in an SDM way according to the scheduler” [p. 4, par 8] which is a resource allocation scheme between backhaul and access used for testing which reads on the “at least one test configuration” in claim 16. Huawei further discloses System level parameters used for testing which include Carrier frequency and Subcarrier spacing [p. 6, Appendix Table A.1 System-level parameters]. Therefore 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 invention of AT&T to allow the at least one first frequency range to comprise one or two first frequency ranges, wherein each frequency range of the at least one first frequency range is placed at a respective difference edge of a radio frequency bandwidth of the node, as taught by Huawei, since one of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that the carrier frequency used for testing the IAB-node in the system level parameters may be changed to any frequency range including the claimed frequency range. See p. 6, Appendix of “Evaluation methodology and results on NR IAB", 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #95, R1-1812487, Agenda: 7.2.3.2, intel Corporation, November 12th-16th, 2018, 7 pages which is cited for support only, other system level parameters that may be specified for testing an IAB-node.
Regarding claim 22, AT&T does not explicitly teach wherein the data transmission on the backhaul link is performed in first time slots and the data transmission on the access link is performed in second time slots, wherein the first time slots and the second time slots are different. In an analogous prior art reference, Huawei teaches the data transmission on the backhaul link is performed in first time slots and the data transmission on the access link is performed in second time slots, wherein the first time slots and the second time slots are different (see p. 5, Fig. 6, Config. 3 which illustrates BH (backhaul) and AC (access) combined in different slots). Therefore 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 invention of AT&T to allow the data transmission on the backhaul link to be performed in first time slots and the data transmission on the access link is performed in second time slots, wherein the first time slots and the second time slots are different, in order to simultaneously communicate data for testing on both links.
Claim 27recites subject matter similar to claim 19 and is therefore rejected on the same basis.
Claim 30 recites subject matter similar to claim 22 and is therefore rejected on the same basis.
Regarding claim 31, Huawei teaches the IAB node of claim 30, wherein the difference between a number of the first time slots and a number of the second time slots is smaller than a threshold (see p. 5, Config. 3 and p. 6, Table A.1, Slot length can be any number of time slots).
Regarding claim 32, Huawei teaches the IAB node of claim 30, wherein a ratio of a number of the first time slots by a number of the second time slots is equal to one or substantially equal to one (see p. 5, Config. 3 and p. 6, Table A.1, Slot length can be any number of time slots).
Regarding claim 33, Huawei teaches the IAB node of claim 30, further comprises using the first time slots for data reception on the access link; and
using the second time slots for data reception on the backhaul link (see p. 5, Config. 3. slots may be used for both access and backhaul).
Regarding claim 34, Huawei teaches the IAB node of claim 30, the first time slots being uplink (UL) slots and the second time slots being downlink (DL) slots, wherein the uplink slots and the downlink slots are defined in accordance with a DL-UL pattern having a predefined periodicity (see p. 6, Table A.1, Slot length and TDD UL/DL configuration).
Conclusion
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/NAM T HUYNH/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2647