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 .
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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, 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.
Claim(s) 1-12 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over BELLESCHI US 20200229194 in view of Chen US 20210368372
1. (Currently Amended) A first user equipment (UE) for wireless communication, comprising:
[[at least one memory]]; and
at least one processor (BELLESCHI: [0038] processing circuitry) coupled with the at least one memory and configured to cause the first UE to:
transmit, via the wireless transceiver to a network node, at least one of carrier quality information and carrier problem information of a sidelink (SL) between the first UE and a second UE, in response to data to be transmitted on the SL or data already transmitted on one or more carriers of the SL and in response to the network node scheduling a carrier for a data transmission on the SL (BELLESCHI: [0100] the UE cannot transmit data associated with a given PPPP in any available sidelink carriers, the UE informs the network about that situation); or
determine whether the at least one of the carrier quality information and the carrier problem information of the SL fulfills a carrier selection or reselection condition, in response to the at least one processor scheduling the carrier for the data transmission on the SL (BELLESCHI: [0096-0098, 0106] e.g., thresholds on the level of interference/congestion of the sidelink carrier are used as a criterion for determining the number of carriers or selecting particular carriers); and
select a carrier from multiple carriers configured on the SL, in response to the at least one of the carrier quality information and the carrier problem information of the SL fulfilling the carrier selection or reselection condition (BELLESCHI: [0103, 0111, 0127] selecting one or more sidelink carriers from the determined one or more sidelinks carriers for data transmission).
BELLESCHI merely discloses the term at least one memory
Chen further teaches the at least one memory (Chen: [0179, 0181] one or more memories).
Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into BELLESCHI’s in order to perform sidelink communication on multiple carriers, as taught by Chen.
2. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the first UE to, in response to the network node scheduling the carrier for the data transmission on the SL, receive, from the network node, indicating information regarding a carrier selected by the network node for the data transmission on the SL (BELLESCHI: [0180-0181] transmitting an indication of the one or more selected sidelink carriers to the wireless device).
3. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the first UE to, in response to the network node scheduling the carrier for the data transmission on the SL, at least one of: determine the carrier quality information of the SL; and determine the carrier problem information regarding whether a problem has occurred on a carrier within the multiple carriers configured on the SL (BELLESCHI: [0100, 0151] determining one or more sidelink carriers based on the threshold).
4. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 1, wherein: the carrier quality information of the SL is obtained from configuration received from the network node or pre-configuration stored in the first UE; or the carrier quality information of the SL is received from the second UE; or the carrier quality information of the SL is maintained by the at least one processor UE according to information received from the second UE (BELLESCHI: [0072, 0107, 0125] preconfigured in the UE).
5. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 1, wherein the carrier quality information of the SL is related to at least one of: a measurement result including SL reference signal received power (SL-RSRP) of the carrier within the multiple carriers; a sub-carrier spacing (SCS) parameter for the carrier within the multiple carriers; and pathloss related information maintained by the at least one processor of the first UE for the carrier within the multiple carriers (Chen: [0037] obtain RSRP/RSRQ measurement of the sidelink). Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into BELLESCHI’s in order to perform sidelink communication on multiple carriers, as taught by Chen.
6. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 5, wherein the carrier selection or reselection condition includes at least one of:
the first UE received a first measurement report one or more times from the second UE, wherein the first measurement report indicates that a measurement result for the carrier is better than a first measurement threshold;
the first UE does not receive a second measurement report from the second UE, wherein the second measurement report indicates that the measurement result for the carrier is worse than a second measurement threshold;
a total number of wireless transceivers of the first UE receiving the second measurement report is less than a number threshold;
SL reference signal received power (RSRP) measured on the carrier is greater than a RSRP threshold;
the SL RSRP measured on the carrier is greater than the RSRP threshold for a first time period;
the SL RSRP measured on the carrier is greater than the RSRP threshold, and a channel busy ratio (CBR) measured on the carrier is less than a CBR threshold;
SL pathloss related information maintained for the carrier is less than a pathloss threshold;
the SL pathloss related information maintained for the carrier is less than the pathloss threshold for a second time period;
the SL pathloss related information maintained for the carrier is less than the pathloss threshold, and channel busy ratio (CBR) measured on the carrier is less than a CBR threshold; and the SCS parameter for the carrier is included in a list of allowed SCS parameters, wherein the list is configured for a logical channel (LCH) of the first UE (Chen: fig. 5 [0051-0060] sidelink measurement report). Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into BELLESCHI’s in order to perform sidelink communication on multiple carriers, as taught by Chen.
7. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 6, wherein: at least one of the first measurement threshold, the second measurement threshold, the number threshold, the RSRP threshold, the CBR threshold, and the pathloss threshold is associated with a priority (BELLESCHI: [0080-0081, 0087, 0101-0103, 0196-0197] where the traffic priority us used to define the threshold), and the at least one processor is configured to determine the at least one of the first measurement threshold, the second measurement threshold, the number threshold, the RSRP threshold, the CBR threshold, and the pathloss threshold according to an associated priority of the data to be transmitted on the SL, and the at least one of the first measurement threshold, the second measurement threshold, the number threshold, the RSRP threshold, the CBR threshold, and the pathloss threshold is configured or pre-configured by the network node (BELLESCHI: [0080-0081, 0087, 0101-0103] the network (or the UE implementation) may configure a lower CBR threshold A for high priority data and a higher CBR threshold A for lower priority data).
8. (Original) The first UE of Claim 1, wherein the carrier problem information of the SL is related to at least one of:
a SL grant unavailable case occurs on the carrier which is caused by a re-evaluation operation on the SL;
a SL grant unavailable case occurs on the carrier which is caused by a pre-emption operation on the SL;
a SL grant unavailable case occurs on the carrier which is caused by an uplink (UL) or SL prioritization procedure of the first UE;
a radio link failure (RLF) on the carrier of the SL;
a radio link control (RLC) retransmission total number; and
a consecutive hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) discontinuous transmission (DTX) or negative acknowledgement (NACK) total number (Chen: [0088] when UE1 or UE2 detects RLF and cannot find a suitable carrier for PC5 communication). Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into BELLESCHI’s in order to perform sidelink communication on multiple carriers, as taught by Chen.
9. (Original) The first UE of Claim 8, wherein the carrier selection or reselection condition includes at least one of:
a total number of one or more unavailable SL grants caused by the re-evaluation operation reaches a first threshold;
a total number of one or more unavailable SL grants caused by the pre-emption operation reaches a second threshold;
a total number of one or more de-prioritized SL grants caused by the UL or SL prioritization procedure reach a third threshold;
a RLF is declared for a carrier within the multiple carriers;
a RLC retransmission total number on the carrier within the multiple carriers reaches a fourth threshold;
the RLC retransmission total number on the carrier reaches the fourth threshold during a third time period;
a consecutive HARQ DTX or NACK total number on the carrier within the multiple carriers reaches a fifth threshold; and
the consecutive HARQ DTX or NACK total number on the carrier reaches the fifth threshold during a fourth time period (Chen: [0171] RLF). Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into BELLESCHI’s in order to perform sidelink communication on multiple carriers, as taught by Chen.
10. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 9, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the first UE to not release a PC5 radio resource control (RRC) connection of the carrier, in response to declaring the RLF and other one or more carriers within the multiple carriers being still available (Chen: [0081] continue to maintain communication). Thus, it would have been obvious to one skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claim invention to include the above recited limitation into BELLESCHI’s in order to perform sidelink communication on multiple carriers, as taught by Chen.
11. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 1, wherein the at least one processor is further configured to cause the first UE: to start a timer, in response to a problem occurring on a first carrier within the multiple carriers; and not to select the first carrier, in response to the timer running (BELLESCHI: [0092-0095, 0164] Carrier Selection on the Basis of Timer).
12. (Currently Amended) The first UE of Claim 1, wherein after a wireless transceiver of the first UE starts transmitting data on a second carrier within the multiple carriers, if further data is available to be transmitted on the SL, the at least one processor is further configured to cause the first UE to: determine whether at least one of carrier quality information and carrier problem information of the second carrier fulfills the carrier selection or reselection condition associated with a first set of thresholds; and not trigger a carrier re-selection procedure and continue transmitting the further data on the second carrier if the second carrier fulfills the carrier selection or reselection condition associated with the first set of thresholds; and if no data is transmitted on the second carrier and the further data is available to be transmitted on the SL, the at least one processor is further configured to cause to: determine whether the at least one of the carrier quality information and the carrier problem information of the second carrier fulfills the carrier selection or reselection condition associated with a second set of thresholds; and transmit the further data on the second carrier if the second carrier fulfills the carrier selection or reselection condition associated with the second set of thresholds (BELLESCHI: [0123-0129] Which Carrier to Select for Adding/Removing).
Regarding claims 13-14, 16-21, the independent claim and each dependent claim are related to the same limitation set for hereinabove in claims 1-12, where the difference used is a “wireless device & Base station” with a processor and a memory (Chen: [0179, 0181]) and the wordings of the claims were interchanged within the claim itself or some of the claims were presented as a combination of two or more previously presented limitations. This change does not affect the limitation of the above treated claims. Adding these phrases to the claims arid interchanging the wording did not introduce new limitations to these claims. Therefore, these claims were rejected for similar reasons as stated above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Sulaiman Nooristany whose telephone number is (571) 270-1929. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F from 9 to 5. 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. Information regarding the status of an application may be obtained from the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. Status information for published applications may be obtained from either Private PAIR or Public PAIR. Status information for unpublished applications is available through Private PAIR only. Should you have questions on access to the Private PAIR system, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free).
/SULAIMAN NOORISTANY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2415