DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Application No. 18/575,028 filed on 12/28/2023. The amendment presented on 3/23/2026, which amends claims 10-11 and 13-15, is hereby acknowledged. Claims 10-15 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 .
Specification
The amendment to the Title "TERMINAL, RADIO COMMUNICATION METHOD, BASE STATION, AND SYSTEM FOR SWITCHING A SERVING CELL” has been considered and is acceptable.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 10-15 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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 10 and 12-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao (US 2023/0096215) in view of Liu et al. (hereinafter Liu)(US 2023/0370238).
Regarding claims 10 and 13, Cao teaches as follows:
A terminal (interpreted as the user equipment (UE) in figure 5) comprising:
a receiver (interpreted as the acquiring unit 201 in figure 25)(the acquiring unit 201 is further configured to acquire MAC CE including the activation information of the downlink beam from the base station, see, ¶ [0130] and figure 25) that receives a medium access control control element (MAC CE) for serving cell change indication (the serving gNB determines that the UE is to be handed over to the target cell, and acquires a handover request ACK from the target cell. The serving gNB has provided the UE with the configuration information of the universal TCI state including the TCI state of the target cell via RRC signaling. In order to reduce the delay caused by the inter-cell handover, the serving gNB activates one or more of the TCI states configured for the target cell through MAC CE, see, ¶ [0064] and figure 5), the MAC CE including an ID of a target cell (interpreted as the PCI-index in figure 6)(the number of bits required for the PCI-Index is no greater than 7, reducing the signaling overhead, see, ¶ [0057]) represented with a number of bits that is less than a number of bits used to represent a physical cell ID (the ID of the target cell is represented by 10 bits of PCI, see, ¶ [0069] and figure 7) and information indicating a transmission configuration indication (TCI) state applied to DL (the one or more TCI states indicate directions of the one or more activated downlink control beams of the target cell, that is, the directions of the emission beam for transmitting a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), see, ¶ [0064] and figure 5), the information being associated with the target cell having a physical cell ID that is different from a physical cell ID of a serving cell (information of the identifier (ID) of the target cell, a CORESET ID, and a TCI-state ID. FIG. 6 and FIG. 7 show examples of particular forms of the corresponding MAC CE signaling. In FIG. 6, the ID of the target cell is represented by the PCI-Index. In FIG. 7, the ID of the target cell is represented by 10 bits of PCI, see, ¶ [0069]); and
a processor (the acquiring unit 201 and the determination unit 202 may be implemented by one or more processing circuitries. The processing circuitry may be implemented as a chip and a processor, see, ¶ [0126] and figure 25) that applies the TCI state indicated by the information to a specific channel for the target cell (the one or more TCI states indicate directions of the one or more activated downlink control beams of the target cell, that is, the directions of the emission beam for transmitting a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), see, ¶ [0064]),
wherein the number of bits of the ID of the target cell include in the MAC CE is 3 bits (the ID of the target cell is represented by 10 bits of PCI, see, ¶ [0069] and figure 7).
Cao does not teach allocating 3 bits for the target cell ID but teaches 10 bits of PCI 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 Cao to include allocating 3 bits of cell ID for smaller number of cells (up to 8 cells) in order to efficiently reduce the size of the MAC CE.
Cao does not explicitly teach the MAC CE including information for both downlink and uplink TSI states.
Liu teaches as follows:
The method 900 may include 902 transmitting one MAC CE that can simultaneously activate DL TCI states and UL TCI states, wherein the one MAC CE includes TCI state IDs that can be indicated as DL TCI state IDs identifying the DL TCI states to be activated and/or UL TCI state IDs identifying the UL TCI states to be activated (see, ¶ [0156] and figure 9) and
considering that both a DL TCI state and a UL TCI state can be represented by a TCI state ID with 7 bits, while 8 out of all 128 states are to be activated for both dynamic DL TCI states and dynamic UL TCI states indication, it is reasonable to update the DL TCI states and the UL TCI states for UE-specific PDSCH transmission and/or PUSCH transmission by one MAC CE, so that MAC CE signaling overhead and latency can be reduced (see, ¶ [0050]).
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 Cao with Liu to include the MAC CE including TCI state IDs for DL TCI state and UL TCI state as taught by Liu in order to efficiently reduce MAC CE signaling overhead and latency.
Regarding claim 12, Cao teaches as follows:
The serving gNB has provided the UE with the configuration information of the universal TCI state including the TCI state of the target cell via RRC signaling (see, ¶ [0064] and figure 5).
Therefore, the UE inherently handovers from the current serving cell to the target cell based on the TCI state of the target cell.
Regarding claim 14, Cao in view of Liu teaches similar limitations as presented above in the rejection for claim 10. Cao further teaches as follows:
A base station (interpreted as the eNB 800 in figure 28) comprising a transmitter (interpreted as the antennas 810)(each of the antennas 810 includes a single or multiple antennal elements and is used for the base station apparatus 820 to transmit and receive wireless signals, see, ¶ [0186] and figure 28) and a processor (the controller 821 may be, for example, a CPU or a DSP, and operates various functions of a higher layer of the base station apparatus 820, see, ¶ [0188] and figure 28).
Therefore, it is rejected for similar reason as presented above.
Regarding claim 15, Cao in view of Liu teaches all limitations as presented above in the rejections for claims 10 and 14.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cao (US 2023/0096215) in view of Liu et al. (hereinafter Liu)(US 2023/0370238), and further in view of Ryu et al. (hereinafter Ryu)(US 2021/0243750).
Regarding claim 11, Cao in view of Liu teaches all limitations as presented above except for transmitting capability information.
Ryu teaches as follows:
The information indicating the capability of the UE to support the simultaneous beam update across multiple component carriers indicates whether the UE supports a simultaneous transmission configuration indication (TCI) state update across multiple component carriers (see, ¶ [0014]); and
the UE 120 may transmit, and the base station 110 may receive, information indicating a capability of the UE 120 to support a simultaneous beam update across multiple component carriers (see, ¶ [0062] and figure 3).
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 Cao in view of Liu with Ryu to include transmitting UE capability information of TCI state update as taught by Ryu in order for the base station to efficiently determine UE capability.
Conclusion
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 nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) 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 mailing date of this final action.
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.
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/JEONG S PARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454
May 30, 2026
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