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 Office action is in response to the preliminary amendment filed on 03/21/2024. Claims 1, 4-8, 10-13, and 16-19 have been amended, claims 14-15 have been canceled, and new claims 20-22 have been added.
Claims 1-13 and 16-22 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 03/21/2024 and 08/14/2024 are compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are considered by the examiner.
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.
Claims 1-2, 7, 16, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang et al. (US 2013/0127474 A1), in view of MACKENZIE et al. (US 2020/0351770 A1).
As to claim 1, Zhang discloses the invention as claimed, including a method for determining cell configuration, wherein the method is performed by a base station (Fig. 8, 801-805), and comprises:
determining energy saving mode configuration for a cell located within a coverage of the base station (¶0028, “a base station serving an essential coverage cell determining whether a current load state of the essential coverage cell is above or equal to a preset energy-saving threshold, where an additional cell or cells are required to participate in a service when the current load state is above or equal to the preset energy-saving threshold”; ¶0039, “a determination module configured to determine whether a current load state of the base station serving an essential coverage cell is above or equal to a preset energy-saving threshold”; ¶0044, “a determination module configured to determine required activation of an energy-saving cell according to a current load state of the base station serving an essential coverage cell…the energy-saving cell refers to a cell that can be brought into the energy-saving state”; ¶0047, “an energy-saving cell determination module configured to determine an energy-saving cell to be activated according to a local energy-saving strategy of the base station serving the essential coverage cell and a service demand of the UE”).
Although it is well known in the art that an energy-saving configuration consumes less energy than a non-energy-saving configuration, which defines the concept of an energy-saving mode, and Zhang discloses determining an energy consumption of the base station caused by the cell using the energy saving mode configuration (¶0028; ¶0039; ¶0044; ¶0047), Zhang does not specifically disclose wherein an energy consumption of the base station caused by the cell using the energy saving mode configuration is lower than an energy consumption of the base station caused by the cell not using the energy saving mode configuration.
However, MACKENZIE discloses wherein an energy consumption of the base station caused by the cell using the energy saving mode configuration is lower than an energy consumption of the base station caused by the cell not using the energy saving mode configuration (¶0043, “The second mode of operation of the first eNB 10 is hereinafter known as “energy saving mode”. Characteristics of energy saving mode include”; ¶0044, “the first eNB 10 does not transmit physical broadcast channel signals, or transmits fewer physical broadcast channel signals (compared to normal mode)”; ¶0045, “the first eNB 10 does not accept connections from UEs, or is configured to accept a reduced number of connections from UEs (compared to normal mode)”; ¶0046, “the first eNB 10 does not serve any UEs, or is configured to serve a reduced number of UEs (compared to normal mode)”; ¶0047, “the first eNB 10 reduces the number of processes performed by processor 13 (compared to normal mode); and [0048] the first eNB 10 does not transmit signals to any connected UEs, or is configured to transmit to any connected UE at a relatively low power level (compared to normal mode)”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Zhang to include wherein an energy consumption of the base station caused by the cell using the energy saving mode configuration is lower than an energy consumption of the base station caused by the cell not using the energy saving mode configuration, as taught by MACKENZIE because it optimize power usage based on traffic load variations and achieve significant savings compared to a conventional operation (MACKENZIE; ¶0043-¶0047).
As to claim 2, Zhang discloses the method according to claim 1, further comprising: sending to another base station energy saving mode information indicating the energy saving mode configuration (¶0080, “Energy-saving cell attribute information may be transferred to each base station providing an essential coverage through the OAM in an inter-RAT (RAT stands for Radio Access Technology) ”; ¶0089, “Energy-saving cell attribute information may be transferred to each base station providing an essential coverage through the OAM in an inter-eNB”; ¶0185, “energy-saving cell attribute information may be transferred to each base station providing an essential coverage through OAM”).
As to claim 7, Zhang discloses the method according to claim 1, wherein the energy saving mode configuration comprises configuration for any one of: a sending period of a synchronization signal and a physical broadcast channel (PBCH) block; a number of an available beam; or a silence pattern (¶0141, “energy-saving cell may be a state in which only limited downlink signals, e.g., a preamble, a synchronization signal, etc., are transmitted at the lowest energy”).
As to claim 16, it is rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim 1 above. In addition, Zhang discloses a communication device, comprising:
a transceiver; a memory; and a processor, connected to the transceiver and the memory respectively (¶0007; ¶0192; ¶0193).
As to claim 18, Zhang discloses a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a computer-executable instruction that, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to perform the method according to claim 1 (¶0007; ¶0192; ¶0193).
As to claim 20, it is rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim 2 above.
Claims 3-6, 8-13, 17, 19 and 21-22 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Zhang et al. (US 2013/0127474 A1), MACKENZIE et al. (US 2020/0351770 A1), further in view of ZHAO et al. (US 2022/0272629 A1).
As to claims 3-6, although Zhang discloses the user equipment and cell communicate each other (Fig. 6), Zhang does not specifically disclose sending, to a user equipment (UE) served by the cell or by a neighbor cell of the cell, energy saving mode information indicating the energy saving mode configuration; wherein the sending to the UE the energy saving mode information comprises: sending the energy saving mode information to the UE through a system broadcast or a radio resource control (RRC) signaling; sending, to the UE, energy saving mode activation information indicating activation of the energy saving mode configuration; and wherein the sending to the UE the energy saving mode activation information comprises: sending the energy saving mode activation information to the UE through downlink control information (DCI).
However, ZHAO discloses sending, to a user equipment (UE) served by the cell or by a neighbor cell of the cell, energy saving mode information indicating the energy saving mode configuration; wherein the sending to the UE the energy saving mode information comprises: sending the energy saving mode information to the UE through a system broadcast or a radio resource control (RRC) signaling; sending, to the UE, energy saving mode activation information indicating activation of the energy saving mode configuration; and wherein the sending to the UE the energy saving mode activation information comprises: sending the energy saving mode activation information to the UE through downlink control information (DCI) (¶0019, “the energy-saving downlink control channel information further includes function indication information related to wake-up of the UEs and/or function indication information related to sleep of the UEs”; ¶0031, “the indication information for indicating that the UEs have received the energy-saving downlink control channel information sent last time, is an acknowledgement (ACK) or a negative acknowledge (NACK)”; ¶0038, “the first eNB 10 is configured to transmit physical broadcast channel signals (e.g. reference signals)”; ¶0161, “the base station can use an energy-saving PDCCH to notify UEs whether to perform PDCCH detection in a subsequent time period. For example, in case that the base station is to send PDCCH in a subsequent time period, the base station issues an energy-saving PDCCH to notify the UEs to wake up for performing PDCCH detection in the subsequent time period”; ¶0171, “one energy-saving downlink control channel information may indicate states of UEs corresponding to the subsequent multiple time periods, thereby reducing power consumption of the UEs”; ¶0194, “the network device may configure information contained in the first information to the UEs through high-level signaling…The network device notifies the UEs of the number of time periods associated with each energy-saving downlink control channel, so that the UEs can obtain the states of UEs in each subsequent time period according to the received energy-saving downlink control channel information”; ¶0240, “the network device may configure information contained in the first information to the UE through high-level signaling. That is, the UE may receive the foregoing information indicated by the network device through high-level signaling”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of Zhang to include sending, to a user equipment (UE) served by the cell or by a neighbor cell of the cell, energy saving mode information indicating the energy saving mode configuration; wherein the sending to the UE the energy saving mode information comprises: sending the energy saving mode information to the UE through a system broadcast or a radio resource control (RRC) signaling; sending, to the UE, energy saving mode activation information indicating activation of the energy saving mode configuration; and wherein the sending to the UE the energy saving mode activation information comprises: sending the energy saving mode activation information to the UE through downlink control information (DCI), as taught by ZHAO because it would allow the UE to reduce power consumption and optimize resource utilization (ZHAO; ¶0146; ¶0171; ¶0202).
As to claim 8, it is rejected for the same reasons set forth in claims 1 and 3-5 above.
As to claim 9, it is rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim 4 above.
As to claim 10, Zhang discloses the method according to claim 8, further comprising: determining a new serving cell based on the energy saving mode configuration of the current serving cell and the neighbor cell (¶0028, “a base station serving an essential coverage cell determining whether a current load state of the essential coverage cell is above or equal to a preset energy-saving threshold, where an additional cell or cells are required to participate in a service when the current load state is above or equal to the preset energy-saving threshold”; ¶0066; ¶0160).
As to claims 11-13, they are rejected for the same reasons set forth in claims 5-7 above, respectively.
As to claim 17, Zhang discloses a communication device, comprising: a transceiver; a memory; and a processor, connected to the transceiver and the memory respectively, wherein the processor is configured to perform the method according to claim 8 (¶0007, “Devices at the Radio Access Network (RAN) side are intended primarily for a demand during high-traffic hours, and for a cell with three sectors, there are 4 transceivers in each sector, and thus there are 12 transceivers stay in an active state all the time”; ¶0192; ¶0193).
As to claim 19, Zhang discloses a non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing a computer-executable instruction that, when executed by a processor, causes the processor to perform the method according to claim 8 (¶0007, “Devices at the Radio Access Network (RAN) side are intended primarily for a demand during high-traffic hours, and for a cell with three sectors, there are 4 transceivers in each sector, and thus there are 12 transceivers stay in an active state all the time”; ¶0192; ¶0193).
As to claims 21-22, they are rejected for the same reasons set forth in claims 3-4 above, respectively.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
LIU (US 2024/0349293), MacKenzie et al. (US 2021/0400577), OZTURK et al. (US 2024/0334323), YANG et al. (US 2022/0060989) disclose method and system for providing measures for enabling energy saving in a service-based access network.
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/JUNGWON CHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454 April 24, 2026
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