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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDSs) submitted on 3/11/2024 and 7/24/2024 have been entered and considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 1 are objected to because of the following informalities: The limitation "acquire position information of a base station” appears to have an antecedent basis issue in that it says “a” base station so it is confusing as to how this relates to “A” base station in the preamble. Since the base station is what is being claimed in the preamble and the other independent claims also state “a” base station, it appears that claim 1 was not changed to read “the” base station for this limitation. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 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 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.
Claims 1, 5-6, 8-9, 13-14, 16, and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ohta et al (US2017/0303229 A1) in view of Gan et al (US 2022/0201507 A1) IDS submitted by Applicant.
Regarding claims 1,9, and 16, Ohta teaches a base station/communication path setting method/non-transitory computer readable medium storing a program causing a computer to execute (Abstract), comprising:
at least one memory storing instructions, and at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to (Para. 0078):
directly or indirectly share the position information of the subordinate terminal information of the base station with one or more peripheral base stations in a vicinity of the base station, and acquire subordinate terminal information for each of the peripheral base stations (Figs. 1A-C and 2; Paras. 0036-0043 and 0106; even when terminals are connected to different base stations, the base station 110 is capable of using processing related to proximity-based communications services and ascertaining proximity between terminals . As a result, shortcut communication through multiple base stations (for example, the base stations 110, 140) is executed between terminals that are in proximity to each other (for example, the terminals 120, 130) and a reduction of traffic on the packet core network 101 is possible; The LCS information of the UEs 201, 202 is information that indicates the geographical location of the UEs 201, 202; i.e. the proximity/location information of the UEs are shared to determine a shortcut communication between terminals. In order to do this, location of the base stations would be inherently needed but Ohta does not explicitly state this. Figs. 1C and 2 show that there are multiple base stations in the path and the other base station shown would read on the one or more peripheral base stations);
accept a communication request from a first communication terminal being subordinate to the base station to a second communication terminal being subordinate to one of the peripheral base stations (Figs. 1A-C and 2; Paras. 0032, 0036-0043, and 0106; The control signal transmitted to the terminals 120, 130 by the control unit 112 is, for example, a response to a communication request from the terminals 120, 130 to the base station 110, information indicating a radio resource to be used by the terminals 120, 130 in wireless communication with the base station 110, etc.); and
set a communication path from the first communication terminal to the second communication terminal, based on position information of the base station, position information of each peripheral base station, and subordinate terminal information of the one of the peripheral base stations (Figs. 1A-C and 2; Paras. 0032, 0036-0043, and 0106; the second path between the terminals 120, 130 described above is a path passing through the base station 110 and the base station 140. In the second path, communication is performed between the base station 110 and the base station 140 directly or through another base station, etc., without passing through the packet core network 101).
However, while Ohta teaches LCS information indicates the geographic location of the UEs and shortcut communication through multiple base stations (for example, the base stations 110, 140) is executed between terminals that are in proximity to each other (Paras. 0106), which would strongly suggest that the location information of the base stations are shared amongst each other, he does not specifically disclose acquire position information of a base station; directly or indirectly share the position information of the base station with one or more peripheral base stations in a vicinity of the base station, and acquire position information for each of the peripheral base stations.
Gan teaches managing distributed self-organizing network (Abstract). He further teaches acquire position information of a base station; directly or indirectly share the position information of the base station with one or more peripheral base stations in a vicinity of the base station, and acquire position information for each of the peripheral base stations (Fig. 8; Para. 0046; Number of surrounding base stations 805 could be the number of surrounding base stations which may exchange configuration information with the base station via MnS interface. Location 806 could be a global position system (GPS) coordinate with height).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings as in Gan with the teachings as in Ohta. The motivation for doing so would have been to allow the base station to obtain timely and sufficient decision information for network optimization management algorithms such as coverage and capacity optimization (CCO), automatic neighbor relations (ANR), and physical cell id (PCI) allocation (Gan at para. 0038).
Regarding claims 5, 13, and 20, the combination of references Ohta and Gan teach the limitations of the previous claims. Ohta further teaches wherein the peripheral base station includes an adjacent base station being adjacent to the base station and a base station existing beyond the adjacent base station (Figs. 1A-C and 2; Paras. 0032, 0036-0043, 0056, and 0106; the wireless access network 210 includes User Equipment ((UEs): user terminals) 201, 202, and evolved Nodes B (eNBs) 211 to 213; i.e. Fig. 2 shows an adjacent BS 213 to BS 211 and another which is not adjacent, BS 212).
Regarding claims 6 and 14, the combination of references Ohta and Gan teach the limitations of the previous claims. Ohta further teaches further comprising a core, and being a hand-carried type base station operating according to a cellular communication standard (Figs. 1A-C and 2; Paras. 0004, 0032, 0036-0043, 0056, and 0106; Enhancements for Infrastructure based data Communication Between Devices (eICBD) are being studied for performing communication between terminals by a shortcut path through a base station, without passing through a packet core network such as an Evolved Packet Core (EPC) or the like (for example, refer to 3GPP TR22.807 v1.0.0, June 2014)).
Regarding claim 8, the combination of references Ohta and Gan teach the limitations of the previous claims. Ohta further teaches wherein the at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to perform communication control between the first communication terminal, and the peripheral base station and the second communication terminal on a set path (Figs. 1A-C and 2; Paras. 0032, 0036-0043, 0078, and 0106; The control signal transmitted to the terminals 120, 130 by the control unit 112 is, for example, a response to a communication request from the terminals 120, 130 to the base station 110, information indicating a radio resource to be used by the terminals 120, 130 in wireless communication with the base station 110, etc.).
Claims 2-4, 7, 10-12, 15, and 17-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ohta et al (US2017/0303229 A1) in view of Gan et al (US 2022/0201507 A1) IDS submitted by Applicant further in view of Lim et al (US 2022/0110152).
Regarding claims 2, 10, and 17, the combination of references Ohta and Gan teach the limitations of the previous claims. Ohta further teaches includes a receiver configured to receive a positioning signal from a satellite positioning system, and the at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to acquire position information of the base station based on a positioning signal received via the receiver (Fig. 8; Paras. 0004, 0009-0010, 0139-0142, 0188-0197, and 0306; If it is extended into a method that MTRPs transmit the same DCI by using a different PDCCH candidate).
However, the combination of references Ohta and Gan does not specifically disclose wherein the base station adopts time division duplex (TDD).
Lim teaches a mode of operation is provided for user equipment (UE) (Abstract). He further teaches wherein the base station adopts time division duplex (TDD) (Para. 0078; In TDD systems, the number of CCs as well as the bandwidths of each CC is usually the same for DL and UL).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings as in Lim with the combination of references Ohta and Gan. The motivation for doing so would have been to improve or enhance functionality by gathering and use of data available from various sources (Lim at para. 0855).
Regarding claims 3, 11, and 18, the combination of references Ohta, Gan, and Lim teach the limitations of the previous claims. Gan further teaches herein the at least one processor configured to execute the instructions to transmit, to one or more peripheral base stations by broadcast, state information of the base station together with an identifier of the base station, and acquire, from the peripheral base station by broadcast, state information of the peripheral base station together with an identifier of the peripheral base station (Fig. 8; Para. 0046; i.e. Fig. 8 shows column 803 which is physical cell ID and columns 808, 807, 805, or 804 would read on state information).
Regarding claims 4, 12, and 19, the combination of references Ohta, Gan, and Lim the limitations of the previous claims. Lim further teaches wherein the subordinate terminal information sharing is performed by using a random backoff algorithm (Para. 0077; a backoff mechanism is used to avoid collisions in situations where more than one WLAN node senses the channel as idle and transmits at the same time. The backoff mechanism may be a counter that is drawn randomly within the CWS).
Regarding claims 7 and 15, the combination of references Ohta and Gan teach the limitations of the previous claims.
However, the combination of references Ohta and Gan does not specifically disclose further comprising a radio unit (RU), a distributed unit (DU), and a central unit (CU).
Lim teaches a mode of operation is provided for user equipment (UE) (Abstract). He further teaches further comprising a radio unit (RU), a distributed unit (DU), and a central unit (CU) (Para. 0069; In some implementations, an individual RAN node 511 may represent individual gNB-DUs that are connected to a gNB-CU via individual F1 interfaces (not shown by FIG. 5). In these implementations, the gNB-DUs may include one or more remote radio heads or RFEMs (see, e.g., FIG. 8), and the gNB-CU may be operated by a server that is located in the RAN 510 (not shown)).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to utilize the teachings as in Lim with the combination of references Ohta and Gan. The motivation for doing so would have been to improve or enhance functionality by gathering and use of data available from various sources (Lim at para. 0855).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KENT KRUEGER whose telephone number is (303)297-4238. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:00-5:00 MT.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Michael Thier can be reached on (571) 272-2832. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/KENT KRUEGER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2474