Detailed Action
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
This is a Non-final action for application number 18/566,663 in response to an original application filed on 12/04/2023. Claims 1-20 are pending and considered below. Claims 1, 8 and 15 are independent claims.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS), submitted on 08/26/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities: [Please remove the letter “a” from (monitoring a sites). Appropriate correction is required.
Examiners Note
The Examiner respectfully suggests that the claim be further amended and details in the specification be incorporated to distinguish the claimed invention over prior art of record. The examiner suggest to amend the independent claims by including that “converting the higher configuration to a lower configuration including converting higher MIMO configuration 4T4R to a lower MIMO configuration 2T2R”.
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, 2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 15 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Mehta et al. (US 2021/0385051 A1) in view of Apatachioae et al. (US 2023/0232253 A1).
Regarding claims 1, 8 and 15, a method, comprising:
monitoring a sites in a mobile network for power outages, [The system includes an element management control unit including distribution and central units (DU/CU) to monitor power and traffic loads at a plurality of nodes in a network, (Mehta et al., Paragraph 18)],
determining a power outage for a plurality of the sites in the mobile network, [in response to at least one of the determining conditions of a AC power outage, (Mehta et al., Paragraph 21)],
converting the plurality of the sites in the mobile network that are in a higher configuration to a lower configuration, [As a result, at task 620, the adaptive Bandwidth solution is executed for changing the current BWP configuration to a new smaller BWP configuration (Mehta et al., Paragraph 71)],
determining whether a cause for the power outage of the plurality of the sites has been addressed, [At task 750, after full power restores or loading on the RAN has increased, gNB can re-activate all the dedicated BWP and/or slices and reassign the users seamlessly to their respective BWP and/or slice(s), (Mehta et al., Paragraph 74)],
and in response to the cause for the power outage of the plurality of the sites being addressed, converting the plurality of the sites in the mobile network that were converted to the lower configuration to the higher configuration, [After full power restores or loading on the RAN has increased, gNB can re-activate all the dedicated BWP or slices and move the users seamlessly to their respective BWP or slice(s), (Mehta et al., Paragraph 40)],
Mehta et al. fails to explicitly teach that the power outage qualifies as a crisis,
Apatachioae et al. teaches that the unplanned outages can be caused by natural catastrophes or manmade catastrophes including, for example, hurricanes, earthquakes, snowstorms, floods, tsunamis, wildfires, nuclear power plant malfunctions, cybersecurity incidents and attacks, and terrorist attacks, (Apatachioae et al., Paragraph 1),
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention was made to modify Mehta et al. by including that the power outage qualifies as a crisis, (Apatachioae et al., Paragraph 1), in order to ensure that all resources and services that rely on the network are back up and running in the event of an outage as soon as possible, (Apatachioae et al., Paragraph 1).
Regarding claims 2 and 9, the method wherein the determining the power outage for the plurality of the sites in the mobile network qualifies as the crisis comprises:
determining the power outage for the plurality of the sites in the mobile network satisfies a crisis criteria, [that the unplanned outages can be caused by natural catastrophes or manmade catastrophes including, for example, hurricanes, earthquakes, snowstorms, floods, tsunamis, wildfires, nuclear power plant malfunctions, cybersecurity incidents and attacks, and terrorist attacks, (Apatachioae et al., Paragraph 1)],
obtaining data regarding the power outage for the plurality of the sites in the mobile network, [The system includes an element management control unit including distribution and central units (DU/CU) to monitor power and traffic loads at a plurality of nodes in a network, (Mehta et al., Paragraph 18)],
based on the data, determining a count of the plurality of the sites experiencing the power outage is greater than a predetermined count threshold, [Apatachioae et al., please see Figure 3A wherein the numbers of interrupted sites exceed a threshold],
and based on the count of the plurality of the sites experiencing the power outage being greater than the predetermined count threshold, determining the plurality of the sites experiencing the power outage are associated with a same geography/administrative district, [Apatachioae et al., please see Figure 4 wherein the numbers of interrupted sites are associated together].
Regarding claims 4, 11 and 17, The method wherein the determining the power outage for the plurality of the sites in the mobile network qualifies as the crisis comprises:
analyzing predetermined crisis parameters to determine whether the power outage for the plurality of the sites in the mobile network qualifies as the crisis, [that the unplanned outages can be caused by natural catastrophes or manmade catastrophes including, for example, hurricanes, earthquakes, snowstorms, floods, tsunamis, wildfires, nuclear power plant malfunctions, cybersecurity incidents and attacks, and terrorist attacks, (Apatachioae et al., Paragraph 1)], wherein the predetermined crisis parameters include one or more of the cause of the power outage to the plurality of the sites, a geography in which the power outage to the plurality of the sites occurs, a number of site experiencing the power outage, a number of people impacted by the power outage of the plurality of the sites, characterization of the geography of the plurality of the sites as a high density area or low density area, or a level of impact of the power outage of the plurality of the sites has on the mobile network, [The geographical map also includes a second set of icons representing important objects in the area affected by the unplanned network and access information (e.g., roads, railroads, or transit center access) for the multiple cell sites in the wireless telecommunications network, (Apatachioae et al., Paragraph 17)].
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3, 5-7, 10, 12-14 and 16, 18-20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Shukri Taha whose telephone number is 571-270-1921. The examiner can normally be reached on 8:30am-5pm Mon-Fri.
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/SHUKRI TAHA/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2478