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 .
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.
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.
Claims 1-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over EP 1467586 B1 (Kim), in view of US 20120135731 A1 (Rangaiah) and in further view of 3GPP TS 36.304 V15.3.0 (TS 36.304), 3GPP TS 36.331 V10.1.0 (TS 36.331) and 3GPP TR 36.902 V9.3.10 ( TR 36.902).
Regarding Claims 1 and 10:
A base station for supporting cell reselection of a user equipment (UE) in a multi-carrier based communication system, the base station comprising: a transceiver; and a controller coupled with the transceiver and configured to: determine a cell reselection priority of each carrier of a plurality of carriers based on a load of each carrier among the plurality of carriers, in case that a cell reselection is to be performed in an idle mode by the UE, the cell reselection priority being one integer among 0 to 7, and transmit, to the UE via the transceiver, a system information block (SIB) including information on the determined cell reselection priority of each carrier, wherein the load of each carrier is determined based on a distribution of UEs in an active state (Kim: Figs. 1-3, a system configuration that UE is configured by serving cell, MIB/SIB in Fig. 3 to perform cell reselection; Figs. 5-6 illustrate UE reselection process where the serving cell and neighbor cells were given priorities, and selected cell has a higher priority barring restrictions; par. 38-51, disclose SIB, reselection priorities for serving and neighbor cells).
Kim does not teach explicitly on the cell reselection priority being one integer among 0 to 7. However, Rangaiah teaches (Rangaiah: Fig. 2, a cell reselection process that performs measurement for each cell, calculate rank value for each cell, order cells based on rank value, create cell ranking list, and reselect to neighbor cell with highest rank value; par. 8, 3GPP TS 45.008 V9.4.0 standardizes various cell reselection algorithms in Sections 6.6.5, 6.6.6, and 6.6.7, where ranking and priorities are defined for inter-RAT cell and intra-cell reselection, which are also illustrated in Figs. 10-15; Figs. 3-4, receiving neighbor cell list from serving cell in 304 for example; 3GPP TS 36.304 V15.3.0 e.g., section 5.2 cell selection and reselection procedures for a UE operating across multiple E-UTRA carries; 5.2.4.1 cell reselection priorities for different E-UTRA frequencies while in RRC_IDLE mod; 3GPP TS 36.331 V10.1.0 in page 198, CellResectionPriority is defined as integer (0..7); 3GPP TR 36.902 V9.3.10 section 4.5 teaches mobility load balancing (MLB) where an eNB monitors traffic load of active connections and dynamically adapts “cell reselection parameters (e.g., SIB priorities in TS 36.304) to distribute idle UEs, preventing them from camping on a carrier heavily populated by active UEs).
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention was made to modify Kim with the cell reselection priority being one integer among 0 to 7 as further taught by Rangaiah and 3GPP standards. The advantage of doing so is to addresses the problem of how to efficiently and effectively evaluate a candidate cell for re-selection and minimizes the need to tune to the frequency of a candidate cell and decode suitability parameters from candidate cells while avoiding the risk of discounting a candidate cell incorrectly (Rangaiah: Background).
Regarding Claims 2 and 11, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 1, wherein the load of each carrier is determined based on a number of the UEs in the active state using each carrier (Rangaiah: Fig. 2, a cell reselection process that performs measurement for each cell, calculate rank value for each cell, order cells based on rank value, create cell ranking list, and reselect to neighbor cell with highest rank value, where cell reselection are due to mobility, cell balance due to load distribution and etc.; TR36.902: e.g., 4.5.2., load metric used for balancing includes hardware/radio resource utilization directly tied to the number of active users (i.e., UEs in RRC_CONNECTED state) currently utilizing the carrier).
Regarding Claims 3 and 12, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 1, wherein the controller is further configured to: determine a relative availability of each carrier based on the load of each carrier, and determine the cell reselection priority of each carrier based on the determined relative availability of each carrier (Kim: Figs. 1-3, a system configuration that UE is configured by serving cell, MIB/SIB in Fig. 3 to perform cell reselection; Figs. 5-6 illustrate UE reselection process where the serving cell and neighbor cells were given priorities, and selected cell has a higher priority barring restrictions; par. 38-51, disclose SIB, reselection priorities for serving and neighbor cells; TR36.902: e.g., 4.6.5, load indicator, and load indicator and available capacity indicator exchanged neighboring eNBs are used for eNB to determine relative availability of carriers, and how to adjust cell reselection parameter).
Regarding Claims 4 and 13, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 1, wherein the controller is further configured to obtain information on the load of each carrier among the plurality of carriers (Rangaiah: Fig. 2, a cell reselection process that performs measurement for each cell, calculate rank value for each cell, order cells based on rank value, create cell ranking list, and reselect to neighbor cell with highest rank value, where cell reselection are due to mobility, cell balance due to load distribution and etc.; TR36.902: e.g., 4.5.2., eNB continuously obtains and monitors load metrics, both internally for its own carriers and externally via X2 for neighboring carriers).
Regarding Claims 5 and 14, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 4, wherein the information on the load includes at least one of information on the distribution of the UEs in the active state or information on a carrier distribution (TR36.902: e.g., 4.5., mobility load balancing (MLB) where an eNB monitors traffic load of active connections and dynamically adapts “cell reselection parameters (e.g., SIB priorities in TS 36.304) to distribute idle UEs, preventing them from camping on a carrier heavily populated by active UEs).
Regarding Claims 6 and 15, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the information on the distribution of the UEs in the active state indicates a distribution of the UEs in the active state using a same carrier for each frequency band (TR36.902: e.g., 4.5., mobility load balancing (MLB) where an eNB monitors traffic load of active connections and dynamically adapts “cell reselection parameters (e.g., SIB priorities in TS 36.304) to distribute idle UEs, preventing them from camping on a carrier heavily populated by active UEs).
Regarding Claims 7 and 16, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the information on the carrier distribution indicates a distribution of cells using a same frequency band (TR36.902: e.g., 4.5.2., eNB continuously obtains and monitors load metrics, both internally for its own carriers and externally via X2 for neighboring carriers).
Regarding Claims 8 and 17, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the distribution of the UEs in the active state is obtained based on a ratio of a number of the UEs in the active state for each carrier to a permissible maximum number of UEs for each carrier (TR36.902: e.g., 4.6.5, load indicator, and load indicator and available capacity indicator exchanged neighboring eNBs are used for eNB to determine relative availability of carriers, and how to adjust cell reselection parameter, where this is general SON admission control standard practice prior to 2011).
Regarding Claims 9 and 18, Kim as modified further teaches:
The base station of claim 5, wherein the carrier distribution is obtained based on a ratio of a number of carriers using the same frequency band to a maximum number of carriers in the base station (TR36.902: 4.5-4.6, teaches for eNB to balance load across multiple carriers, where calculating the distribution of those carriers by dividing the number of carriers on one frequency by the total numbers of carriers on the eNB is simply the application of simple mathematics to a known telecommunication process).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHITONG CHEN whose telephone number is (571) 270-1936. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 9:30am - 5pm.
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/ZHITONG CHEN/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2649