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 .
Election/Restrictions
Applicant’s election with traverse of Group I (claims 1 – 15) in the reply filed on 29th June 2026 is acknowledged. This is not found persuasive because as the examiner maintains the followings: Group I: Claims 1 – 15 focuses on a gNodeB (gNB, Next Generation Node B) obtaining LTE downlink data delivery status (DDDS) via a Master eNodeB (MeNB) Distributed Unit (DU), classified in H04W72/1273 – Mapping of traffic onto schedule, e.g. scheduled allocation or multiplexing of flows of downlink data flows.
Group II: Claims 16 – 22 focuses on a gNB calculating routing metric throughput measurement of a 4G or 5G leg, classified in H04W28/0958 – Network traffic/resource management related to load balancing or load distribution management thereof based on metrics or performance parameters; and in H04W28/0983 – for optimizing bandwidth or throughput.
Group III: Claims 23 – 32 focuses on a gNB calculating a Distributed Unit (DU) delay at a Centralized Unit User Plane (CU-UP) or a RAN Intelligent Controller, classified in H04W36/037 – Hand-off or reselection arrangements via control or signaling for completing the hand-off and reselecting a link using a direct mode connection by reducing handover delay, e.g. latency.
The requirement is still deemed proper and is therefore made FINAL.
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Claim Objections
Claim 1 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Insert -- Long Term Evolution -- prior to the first occurrence of the “LTE” term; insert -- distributed unit -- prior to the first occurrence of the “DU” term; insert -- New Radio -- prior to the first occurrence of the “NR” term; insert -- Master eNodeB -- prior to the first occurrence of the “MeNB” term; insert -- Secondary gNB -- prior to the first occurrence of the “SgNB” term; insert -- downlink -- prior to the first occurrence of the “DL” term; and, apply parentheses -- ( ) -- to the “PDUs” term.
Claim 5 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Insert -- Double Data Rate -- prior to the first occurrence of the “DDR” term.
Appropriate correction is required.
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Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim 1 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Chowta et al (US 2021/0297928 A1).
Claim 1. Chowta shows a method (abstract) comprising: obtaining a LTE Downlink Data Delivery Status (DDDS) at a gNB node centralized unit (gNB CU) via a 4G leg from an LTE DU (MeNB DU) ([0105]: the first trained DNN model (DNN_1) may input over time throughputs (R_5G for the 5G leg, R_4G for the 4G leg) measured at and reported, inside a respective DDDS message, from the MAC layer of the DU of the master node via the F1 interface for the 5G leg and from the MAC layer of the secondary node via the X2 interface for the 4G leg, and may then provide first output data (X_1_1, X_1_2) to a concatenation module (CM)); obtaining a NR DDDS at the gNB CU via a 5G leg from a SgNB DU ([0061]: routing can be performed at the transmitting PDCP layer of the gNB (i.e., at NR PDCP), and the data traffic can be split and sent from the PDCP layer of the gNB (i.e. from NR PDCP) to the lower layers (RLC, MAC) of both the gNB and the LTE eNB; [0099]: the estimated delay of transmission for the 4G leg (respectively, 5G leg) may be the delay of transmission that there will be for a PDCP PDU if it is transmitted from the splitting point of the splitter to the UE via the 4G leg (respectively, 5G leg)); computing an intermediate factor for a final split factor, the intermediate factor being computed from Desired Buffer Size (DBS) parameters in the LTE DDDS message and the NR DDDS message ([0066]: the PDCP layer may receive PDCP SDUs from an RLC entity, store them in a transmission buffer and assign a sequence number (SN) for each of them); computing the final split factor or a scheduling method for dynamic splitting and routing of DL Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) Protocol Data Units PDUs on a 4G leg and a 5G leg ([0067]: the PDCP layer of the CU of the master node (i.e. gNB-CU) may comprise a data split function entity (hereafter designated as a splitter) whose function may be to decide whether a PDCP PDU is to be transmitted to a path towards the DU of the master node (i.e. towards gNB-DU) via the F1 interface or to another path towards the secondary node (i.e. towards LTE eNB) via the X2 interface and a S-GW-based router; [0091]: in an attempt to enhance an accuracy in the estimation of the delays of transmission in the case of dynamic load and delay conditions, an example embodiment may consist in using a machine learning (ML) model instead of a mathematical or analytic formulation or algorithm; [0112]: after each time interval ΔT, the output data (W_5G, W_4G) are input into the splitter which may receive one or more incoming PDCP PDUs at a certain frequency (e.g., one packet per 10 ms). Based on at least the received output data (W_5G, W_4G) from the trained RNN model, the splitter may select amongst the 5G and 4G legs, for each incoming PDCP PDU, one path (i.e. 5G leg or 4G leg) via which the corresponding PDCP PDU may be transmitted to reach the UE); and routing the PDCP PDUs on the 4G leg, the 5G leg, or both based on the split factor calculation ([0099] – [0106]: the estimated delay of transmission for the 4G leg (respectively, 5G leg) may be the delay of transmission that there will be for a PDCP PDU if it is transmitted from the splitting point of the splitter to the UE via the 4G leg (respectively, 5G leg)… each estimated delay of transmission (W_5G, W_4G) output from the ML model may be then provided to the splitter. Based on at least the received estimated delay of transmission (W_5G, W_4G) for each path (5G leg, 4G leg), the splitter may select for each incoming PDCP PDU one path amongst each path (5G leg, 4G leg) via which the corresponding PDCP PDU may be transmitted to reach the UE).
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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.
The factual inquiries 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim 5 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chowta et al in view of Pawar et al (US 11,343,729 B1).
Claim 5. Chowta shows the method of claim 1; Chowta does not expressly describe wherein the intermediate factor is computed as the ratio of DDR received in the respective 4G leg and the 5G leg to the sum of a latest of the DDRs received in DDDS from both the 4G leg and the 5G leg.Pawar teaches an intermediate factor is computed as a ratio of DDR received in a respective 4G leg and a 5G leg to a sum of a latest of the DDRs received in DDDS from both the 4G leg and the 5G leg (col. 9 lines 22 – 26, col. 10 line 56 – col. 11 line 27: the UE could regularly determine channel quality based on signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and other factors and could periodically report to the 4G eNB 14 a channel-quality-indicator (CQI) value that represents the determined level of channel quality… the 4G eNB 14 could then sum those two measures of uplink throughput to compute the UE’s aggregate uplink throughput across the UE’s 4G and 5G connections… the 4G eNB 14 might compute and record an average of the UE’s downlink throughput on the UE’s 4G connection over a recent sliding window of time, and the 5G gNB might compute and report to the 4G eNB average of the UE’s downlink throughput on the UE’s 5G connection over largely the same recent sliding window of time).It would have been obvious to implement the intermediate factor feature as taught by Pawar as the calculating factor in the invention of Chowta to eliminate data bottlenecks and enabling fast cloud access and rapid local processing.
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Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chowta et al in view of Yang et al (US 2021/0258800 A1).
Claim 9. Chowta shows the method of claim 1; Chowta does not expressly describe the method further comprising: processing, at the gNB CU-UP or a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), midhaul quality parameters in the DDDS to determine the quality of the 4G leg and the 5G leg.Yang teaches feature of: processing, at a gNB CU-UP or a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC), midhaul quality parameters in a DDDS to determine the quality of a 4G leg and a 5G leg (fig. 2 and [0035]: core RAN may include a non-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller (MC)… real-time RIC 212 may control and optimize various radio resources of radio access devices (e.g. eNB, radio unit (RU), remote radio head (RRH), etc.), gNB, distributed unit (DU), etc.) associated with a 4G, 5G, or future RAN, radio resource scheduling for uplink and downlink communication with an end device, and radio signal characteristics).It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to implement the RIC feature as taught by Yang in the method of Chowta to enable mobile network cells and antennas to automatically adjust their settings based on usage patterns.
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Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 15 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.
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Conclusion
The prior art made of record is considered pertinent to applicant’s disclosure.
1. Syed Muhammad et al, US 2026/0246727 A1: Machine Learning based PDCP split for uplink traffic is provided in DC/MC split bearer scenario.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Xavier Szewai Wong whose telephone number is 571.270.1780. The examiner can normally be reached on 11:30 am - 8:30 pm Mon to Fri.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Jeffrey Rutkowski can be reached on 571.270.1215. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/XAVIER S WONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415 31st August 2026
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