CTNF 18/714,837 CTNF 88797 Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status 07-03-aia AIA 15-10-aia The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA. DETAILED ACTION Claims 1-30 received on 5/30/2024 have been examined, of which claims 1, 12, 16 and 27 are independent. Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103 07-20-aia AIA 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. 07-23-aia AIA 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. 07-20-02-aia AIA 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. 07-21-aia AIA Claim s 1-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Salami et al. (Integrating sensing and communication in cellular networks via NR sidelink, IEEE, NPL # 2, IDS 5/30/2024) in view of Jeon et al. (US 20220256519) Regarding claim 1, Salami teaches an apparatus for wireless communication at a user equipment (UE) (UE, fig 3) configured to: receive, from a network entity, a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration (page 4, col 1, section B: a UE would request resources for RF-sensing from the gNB or CRAN, which in turn informs the UE about the assigned resource block (step 1 and 2 in fig 3)) that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool (page 3, col 1 last two lines – col 2 lines 1-2: in NR-sidelink, a UE request resources for spatially constrained sidelink operation, we propose to implement RF-sensing utilizing FMCW on the reserved sidelink resources) ; and transmit a radar transmission using resources of the first sidelink resource sub- pool based at least in part on the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration (page 4, col 1, section B: the UE then utilize these resources, operating as a FMCW mmWave radar to sense an environment and gestures (steps a-d in fig 3)) . Salami teaches the sidelink resources sharing with radar sensing using FMCW. The reference teaches configuration received by UE for sidelink resources, which are used for RF-sensing. However, the reference does not specify partition of resource pool into separate sub-pools associated with radar and sidelink transmissions. The reference does not teach the structural components of UE. Jeon is directed to coexistence of radar sensing and wireless communication. Jeon further teaches a user equipment (UE) (UE 116, fig 1, 3) , comprising: a memory (memory 311, fig 3) ; and one or more processors (processor 307, fig 3) , coupled to the memory (fig 3) ; a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool into a first sidelink resource sub-pool associated with radar transmissions and a second sidelink resource sub-pool associated with sidelink transmissions (fig 9-13; para 412: the UE can be configured with a time pattern, wherein a first set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for radar sensing, and a second set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for communication, while the communication resources can be referred to as “SL” (for sidelink)). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 12, Salami teaches an apparatus for wireless communication at a network entity (gNB or CRAN, fig 3) configured to: transmit, to a user equipment (UE), a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration (page 4, col 1, section B: a UE would request resources for RF-sensing from the gNB or CRAN, which in turn informs the UE about the assigned resource block (step 1 and 2 in fig 3)) that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool (page 3, col 1 last two lines – col 2 lines 1-2: in NR-sidelink, a UE request resources for spatially constrained sidelink operation, we propose to implement RF-sensing utilizing FMCW on the reserved sidelink resources). Salami teaches the sidelink resources sharing with radar sensing using FMCW. The reference teaches configuration transmitted by gNB or CRAN and received by UE for sidelink resources, which are used for RF-sensing. However, the reference does not specify partition of resource pool into separate sub-pools associated with radar and sidelink transmissions. The reference does not teach the structural components of network entity. Jeon is directed to coexistence of radar sensing and wireless communication. Jeon further teaches an apparatus for wireless communication at a network entity (BS, fig 1, 2) , comprising: a memory (memory 290, fig 2) ; and one or more processors (processor 288, fig 2) , coupled to the memory (fig 2) ; a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool into a first sidelink resource sub-pool associated with radar transmissions and a second sidelink resource sub-pool associated with sidelink transmissions (fig 9-13; para 412: the UE can be configured with a time pattern, wherein a first set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for radar sensing, and a second set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for communication, while the communication resources can be referred to as “SL” (for sidelink)). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 16, Salami teaches a method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE) (page 4, col 1, section B: NR sidelink based RF sensing, fig 3; page 3 col 2 line 1-2: to implement RF sensing utilizing FMCW on the reserved sidelink resources) , comprising: receiving, from a network entity, a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration (page 4, col 1, section B: a UE would request resources for RF-sensing from the gNB or CRAN, which in turn informs the UE about the assigned resource block (step 1 and 2 in fig 3)) that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool (page 3, col 1 last two lines – col 2 lines 1-2: in NR-sidelink, a UE request resources for spatially constrained sidelink operation, we propose to implement RF-sensing utilizing FMCW on the reserved sidelink resources) ; and transmitting a radar transmission using resources of the first sidelink resource sub-pool based at least in part on the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration (page 4, col 1, section B: the UE then utilize these resources, operating as a FMCW mmWave radar to sense an environment and gestures (steps a-d in fig 3)) . Salami teaches the sidelink resources sharing with radar sensing using FMCW. The reference teaches configuration received by UE for sidelink resources, which are used for RF-sensing. However, the reference does not specify partition of resource pool into separate sub-pools associated with radar and sidelink transmissions. Jeon is directed to coexistence of radar sensing and wireless communication. Jeon further teaches a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool into a first sidelink resource sub-pool associated with radar transmissions and a second sidelink resource sub-pool associated with sidelink transmissions (fig 9-13; para 412: the UE can be configured with a time pattern, wherein a first set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for radar sensing, and a second set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for communication, while the communication resources can be referred to as “SL” (for sidelink)). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 27, Salami teaches a method of wireless communication performed by a network entity (gNB or CRAN and flow diagram, fig 3) , comprising: transmitting, to a user equipment (UE), a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration (page 4, col 1, section B: a UE would request resources for RF-sensing from the gNB or CRAN, which in turn informs the UE about the assigned resource block (step 1 and 2 in fig 3)) that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool (page 3, col 1 last two lines – col 2 lines 1-2: in NR-sidelink, a UE request resources for spatially constrained sidelink operation, we propose to implement RF-sensing utilizing FMCW on the reserved sidelink resources). Salami teaches the sidelink resources sharing with radar sensing using FMCW. The reference teaches configuration transmitted by gNB or CRAN and received by UE for sidelink resources, which are used for RF-sensing. However, the reference does not specify partition of resource pool into separate sub-pools associated with radar and sidelink transmissions. Jeon is directed to coexistence of radar sensing and wireless communication. Jeon further teaches a sidelink resource sub-pool configuration that indicates a partition of a sidelink resource pool into a first sidelink resource sub-pool associated with radar transmissions and a second sidelink resource sub-pool associated with sidelink transmissions (fig 9-13; para 412: the UE can be configured with a time pattern, wherein a first set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for radar sensing, and a second set of symbols/slots/subframes/frames in the time pattern are configured for communication, while the communication resources can be referred to as “SL” (for sidelink)). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 2 and 17, Salami further teaches to transmit the radar transmission using resources of the first sidelink resource sub-pool based at least in part on a frequency-modulated continuous wave waveform (page 3, col 1 last two lines – col 2 lines 1-2: in NR-sidelink, a UE request resources for spatially constrained sidelink operation, we propose to implement RF-sensing utilizing FMCW on the reserved sidelink resources; fig 3) . Regarding claim 3 and 18, Salami further teaches to transmit multiple coordinated radar transmissions using the resources of the first sidelink resource sub- pool based at least in part on common frequency-modulated continuous wave waveform parameters indicated in the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration (page 4, col 1-2, section B: if multiple UEs in proximity participate in the sensing of an environmental situation, the initiating UE first establishes a sidelink communication channel among the UEs, and shares information on the allocated channel resources (steps 3 and 4); the coordinated FMCW operation as shown in steps a-d in fig 3) . Regarding claim 4, 13, 19 and 28, Salami fails to teach, but Jeon further teaches wherein the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration includes a bitmap that indicates the partition of the sidelink resource pool into the first sidelink resource sub-pool associated with radar transmissions and the second sidelink resource sub-pool associated with sidelink transmissions (steps 901-902 fig 9; para 416: in step 901, the communication can be for example for DL/UL/SL, the time resource in steps 901 and 902 includes but need not be limited to slot/symbol/subframe/frame index and periodicity, it can be also indicated using bitmap of a certain size for slot/symbol/subframe/frame level indication of sensing and communication time pattern) . Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 5, 14, 20 and 29, Salami fails to teach, but Jeon further teaches wherein the partition of the sidelink resource pool into the first sidelink resource sub-pool and the second sidelink resource sub-pool associated with sidelink transmissions is based at least in part on one or more of a time division multiplexing partitioning (para 411: separate resources can be allocated for radar sensing compared to resources for communication, separate resource can refer to non-overlapping or fully orthogonal resource allocation between radar sensing and communications, in the time domain, resources for radar transmission can be TDM with respect to resources for communication) or a frequency division multiplexing partitioning (para 411: separate resources can be allocated for radar sensing compared to resources for communication, separate resource can refer to non-overlapping or fully orthogonal resource allocation between radar sensing and communications, in the frequency domain, resources for radar transmission can be FDM with respect to resources for communication) , and wherein resources of the sidelink resource pool that are not included in the first sidelink resource sub-pool are treated as sidelink resources (para 411: separate resource can refer to non-overlapping or fully orthogonal resource allocation between radar sensing and communications; here, the configured resources are non-overlapping, thus resources not included in the first set of resources are considered in the second set of resources in fig 9) . Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 6 and 21, Salami fails to teach, but Jeon further teaches wherein one or more of the first sidelink resource sub-pool or the second sidelink resource sub-pool are associated with a geographic region (para 449: in step 1202, the radar sensing type categories can include target/max sensing range , target/min sensing resolution for location /speed, sensing Tx power, and so on.) . Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 7 and 22, Salami further teaches to receive the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration based at least in part on: a radio resource control signaling (page 3, col 2, section A, para 1: to initialize device-to-device communication, the UE sends ProSe UE information indication informing the network that it wants to use direct communication, gNB in turn give radio resource information in an RRC message along with the SL-RNTI for that UE to decode DCI) . Regarding claim 8 and 23, Salami further teaches to receive the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration based at least in part on a request from the UE (page 4, col 1, section B: a UE would request resources for RF-sensing from the gNB or CRAN, which in turn informs the UE about the assigned resource block (step 1 and 2 in fig 3)) . Regarding claim 9 and 24, Salami fails to teach, but Jeon further teaches wherein the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration indicates a maximum transmit power limit for the radar transmission (para 449: in step 1202, the radar sensing type categories can include target/max sensing range, target/min sensing resolution for location/speed, sensing Tx power , and so on; para 441-445: sensing parameter include target or maximum transmission/reception power for sensing waveform or reference signal) . Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 10 and 25, Salami further teaches to transmit, to the network entity, feedback that indicates one or more of: radar activity (page 4, col 2, para below fig 3: after the sensing operation is completed, the UE informs the gNB that the resources may be released again, steps 5-7 in fig 3) , wherein the first sidelink resource sub-pool and the second sidelink resource sub-pool are adapted based at least in part on the feedback (fig 3 shows that in response to step 5 message from UE, the gNB releases channel resources and sends confirmation message to UE in step 7, thus the resources are considered adapted based on radar activity feedback) . Regarding claim 11 and 26, Salami fails to teach, but Jeon further teaches wherein the sidelink resource sub-pool configuration is valid until a timer expires (para 438: configuration/activation/release of time/frequency resources for radar sensing can be based on trigger conditions, timers, or counters, a UE can request for configuration/activation/release of sensing resources if the UE detects that a predefined triggering condition has occurred, when the UE senses an object (such as a finger or a face or a vehicle) or a motion (such as a human gesture or vehicle speeding) with predefined characteristics, e.g., within a range threshold, or with a velocity larger than a threshold, or with a duration longer than a threshold; here, the release of resources for radar sensing based on timer or duration longer than a threshold is considered) . Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine RF-sensing using sidelink resources as taught by Salami with resource configuration to indicate specific resources for radar sensing and sidelink as taught by Jeon for the benefit of more efficient communication operation and radar sensing as taught by Jeon in para 210. Regarding claim 15 and 30, Salami further teaches to receive, from the UE, feedback that indicates one or more of: radar activity (page 4, col 2, para below fig 3: after the sensing operation is completed, the UE informs the gNB that the resources may be released again, steps 5-7 in fig 3) ; and adapt the first sidelink resource sub-pool and the second sidelink resource sub-pool based at least in part on the feedback (fig 3 shows that in response to step 5 message from UE, the gNB releases channel resources and sends confirmation message to UE in step 7, thus the resources are considered adapted based on radar activity feedback) . Conclusion Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to RINA C PANCHOLI whose telephone number is (571)272-2679. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7:30am-4pm. 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If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000. /RINA C PANCHOLI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2477 6/12/2026 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 2 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 3 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 4 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 5 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 6 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 7 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 8 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 10 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 11 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 12 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 13 Art Unit: 2477 Application/Control Number: 18/714,837 Page 14 Art Unit: 2477
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