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 .
This action is response to the application filed on 04/04/2024. Claims 1-20 are pending and herein considered.
Oath/Declaration
The receipt of oath/declaration is acknowledged.
Drawings
The drawings were received on 04/04/2024. These drawings are reviewed and accepted by the Examiner.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS), submitted on 09/08/2025, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CRR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 11 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Belghoul et al. (U.S 2018/0227911) in view of Xiao et al. (CA-2834556-A1).
For claim 1:
Belghoul discloses an apparatus for wireless communication at a user equipment (UE) (see Belghoul, at least figures 1-2; wireless communication at a user equipment), comprising: one or more memories; and one or more processors, coupled to the one or more memories (see Belghoul, at least figure 3; memory and processor), configured to cause the UE to: transmit a first indication of support for flexible spectrum integration (FSI) (see Belghoul, at least paragraph [0064]; the UE 106 (and/or base station 102) may include hardware and software components for implementing methods for at least UE 106 to perform cellular communication in unlicensed spectrum using a flexible slot structure and see FIG. 3, to perform cellular communication in unlicensed spectrum using a flexible slot structure according to various embodiments disclosed herein. Processor(s) 302 may also implement various other applications and/or end-user applications running on UE 106.
Belghoul does not explicitly disclose receive a second indication of network assistance information for communicating in a network using a virtual cell that is provided by a candidate network node, the virtual cell being based at least in part on the FSI.
Xiao, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Cheng fails: a UE with the capability to communicate using non-compatible CCs, for example, a UE, the Scell can be configured flexibly for better spectrum efficiency by removing some overhead and he bandwidth for the UE and/or whether the bandwidth is a partial of the whole bandwidth (of the Scell). The signaling may also indicate one or more CRS/CSI-RS patterns with one or more multiple scrambling code(s) corresponding to one or more virtual cell-IDs (see Xiao, at least paragraph [0093]-[0094]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Xiao. The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks improving where can provide the improved data rates, LTE-Advanced introduces "multicarrier" which refers to the aggregation of multiple carriers to increase data rates and provide more bandwidth for a user device/equipment (UE).
For claim 11:
For claim 11, claim 11 is directed to a method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE) which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 11 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
For claim 17:
For claim 17, claim 17 is directed to a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing a set of instructions for wireless communication which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 17 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
Claims 2-4, 6-9, 12, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Belghoul et al. (U.S 2018/0227911) in view of Xiao et al. (CA-2834556-A1) further in view of Cheng et al. (WO2023/151463A1).
For claim 2:
In addition to rejection in claim 2, Belghoul- Xiao does not explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors, to cause the UE to receive the second indication, are configured to cause the UE to: receive the second indication of the network assistance information from a serving network node.
Cheng, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Belghoul- Xiao fails: the network may indicate which cells/network nodes can support the on-demand SSB request. For example, the network may further broadcast an energy-saving state indicator for a serving cell (see Cheng, at least page 8-9, lines 23-25).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Cheng.
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks may improve energy efficiency becomes an important issue for the newly developed wireless communication network. Therefore, there is a need to provide proper energy-saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
For claims 3, 12 and 18:
In addition to rejection in claims 3, 12 and 18, Belghoul- Xiao does not explicitly disclose wherein the network assistance information indicates system information (SI) acquisition information for the candidate network node.
Cheng, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Belghoul- Xiao fails: using on-demand reference signal or system information block for network energy saving with respect to user equipment (UE) and network apparatus in mobile communications and UE may receive an on-demand SSB request configuration initiated by the network node including a preference list of S SB indices ( e.g., candidates of SSBs) that the network node would like to deactivate/activate. The UE may select one candidate and report to the network node. The network node may receive multiple preferred candidates from multiple UEs. The network node may determine voting results based on the received preferences. For example, the network node may determine an SSB configuration which is voted by most UEs. Then, the network node may transmit an updated SSB configuration to all the UE (see Cheng, at least page 12, lines 2-10).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Cheng.
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks may improve energy efficiency becomes an important issue for the newly developed wireless communication network. Therefore, there is a need to provide proper energy-saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
For claim 4:
In addition to rejection in claim 4, Belghoul- Xiao does not explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors, to cause the UE to receive the second indication of the network assistance information, are configured to cause the UE to: receive the second indication in at least one of: Layer 1 signaling, Layer 2 signaling, or Layer 3 signaling.
Cheng, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Belghoul- Xiao fails: the UE may receive one or multiple recommending on-demand SSB configuration parameter sets via higher layer signaling ( e.g., radio resource control (RRC) signaling) (see Cheng, at least page 6, line 27-28).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Cheng.
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks may improve energy efficiency becomes an important issue for the newly developed wireless communication network. Therefore, there is a need to provide proper energy-saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
For claims 6 and 13:
In addition to rejection in claims 6 and 13, Belghoul- Xiao does not explicitly disclose wherein the network assistance information includes scheduling information for acquiring a system information block type X1 (SIB X1) from the candidate network node.
Cheng, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Belghoul- Xiao fails: the UE may receive an indication in SIB from the cell to indicate whether the cell is in an energy-saving state and/or whether the on-demand RS/SIB request is allowed (see Cheng, at least page 6, lines 12-13).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Cheng.
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks may improve energy efficiency becomes an important issue for the newly developed wireless communication network. Therefore, there is a need to provide proper energy-saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
For claims 7 and 14:
In addition to rejection in claims 7 and 14, Belghoul- Xiao does not explicitly disclose wherein the network assistance information includes supplementary information for a recommended synchronization signal block (SSB).
Cheng, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Belghoul- Xiao fails: the field of SSB periodicity and offset may indicate a recommended periodicity of on-demand SSB allocation in slots and the slot offset with respect to system frame number (SFN) 0 and slot number 0. The field of SSB subcarrier offset may indicate a recommended frequency domain offset between SSB and the overall resource block grid in a number of subcarriers (see Cheng, at least page 8, lines 6-11). The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks may improve energy efficiency becomes an important issue for the newly developed wireless communication network. Therefore, there is a need to provide proper energy- saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
For claim 8:
In addition to rejection in claim 8, Belghoul- Xiao does not explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to: receive, from a serving network node, a measurement configuration for generating a measurement metric using the candidate network node; and transmit a measurement report that includes the measurement metric.
Cheng, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Belghoul- Xiao fails: the UE may report assistant information for the network node to determine which direction the on-demand SSB should be transmitted and the resources allocated to the on-demand SSB transmissions. The UE may transmit the assistant information to the network node and receive the on-demand RS/SIB corresponding to the assistant information. The UE assistant information reported from the UE to the network node may include L1-RSRP and/or L1-SINR reports or resource and/or resource set indices associated with DL RS (e.g., SSB reports) (see Cheng, at least page 10, lines 20-25).
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks may improve energy efficiency becomes an important issue for the newly developed wireless communication network. Therefore, there is a need to provide proper energy- saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
For claim 9:
In addition to rejection in claim 9, Belghoul- Xiao-Cheng further disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to: receive a third indication of an assistance information trigger condition; detect an occurrence of the assistance information trigger condition; and transmit a request for the network assistance information, wherein receiving the second indication of the network assistance information is based at least in part on transmitting the request (see Cheng, at least abstract; using on-demand reference signal (RS) or system information block (SIB) for network energy saving with respect to user equipment and network apparatus in mobile communications are described. An apparatus may determine whether to trigger an on-demand RS/SIB or SIB request according to a trigger condition and the apparatus may transmit the on-demand RS/SIB or SIB request to a network node in an event that the trigger condition is satisfied).
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system network may improve energy efficiency where there is a need to provide proper energy saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
For claim 20:
In addition to rejection in claim 8, Belghoul- Xiao does not explicitly disclose wherein the network assistance information indicates random access channel (RACH) resource configuration, and wherein the one or more instructions, that cause the UE to transmit the request, cause the UE to: transmit the request using the RACH resource configuration and as part of a RACH procedure.
Cheng, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Belghoul- Xiao fails: the UE may transmit the on-demand SSB request in a random access preamble in random-access channel (RACH) via Msg 1 or Msg A (see Cheng, at least page figure 5 page 623-25).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Cheng.
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks may improve energy efficiency becomes an important issue for the newly developed wireless communication network. Therefore, there is a need to provide proper energy-saving schemes to adapt the network configurations for various traffic scenarios.
Claims 10 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Belghoul et al. (U.S 2018/0227911) in view of Xiao et al. (CA-2834556-A1) further in view of Murray et al. (WO 2021113581 A1).
For claims 10 and 19:
In addition to rejection in claims 10 and 19, Belghoul- Xiao-Cheng does not explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to: receive a system information block type 1 (SIB1) from the candidate network node; and transmit, using the network assistance information, a request for an on-demand remaining minimum system information (RMSI).
Murray, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses what Cheng fails: SIB1 for a candidate cell when performing the Cell Reselection Evaluation process and SIB1 is also referred to as Remaining Minimum SI (RMSI) and is periodically broadcast on DL-SCH or sent in a dedicated manner on DL-SCH to UEs in RRC_CONNECTED (see Murray, at least paragraph [00119]; [00136]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Murray.
The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks can where ensure multi-USIM UEs can operate reliably and efficiently in 5G networks.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5, 10, 15-16 and 19 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, set forth in this Office action.
Conclusion
The prior arts made or record and not relied upon are considered pertinent to applicant's disclosures. Haag et al. (U.S 2025/0007639), discloses the BSS for the permission to provision a lambda or spectrum service.
Hosseini et al. (U.S 2022/0046603), discloses selecting sidelink resource for inter-UE co-ordination signaling.
Wang et al. (U.S 2021/0258065), discloses multiple candidate Tx beams may be identified and the UE starts to monitor the beam failure recovery response, which can be configured by higher layers via MSI, RMSI (SIB1).
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LAN HUONG TRUONG whose telephone number is (571)270-5829. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri (7:30AM-5:00PM).
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, RICKY NGO can be reached on 571-272-3139. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Lan-Huong Truong/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit: 2464
03/21/2026
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