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 .
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 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.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-20 filed on July 22, 2024 are pending.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority under 35 U.S.C. 119(a)-(d) and certified copy of paper required by 37 CFR 1.55 is received.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on July 22, 2024 and May 16, 2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner and an initialed and dated copy of the Applicant’s IDS form 1449 is attached to the instant Office Action.
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.
Claim(s) 1-6, 8-14 and 16-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chong et al. (US 12,342,225 B2, hereinafter "Chong") in view of 3GPP (3GPP TR 23.700-60 V0.3.0 (2022-05), hereinafter "3GPP").
Regarding claim 1, Chong discloses a service data packet processing method, performed by a network-side network element, the method comprising:
receiving characteristic assistance data transmitted by an application-side network element for a service flow (Chong, Col. 27, line 16-23 the service feature parameters obtained by the data analytics network element may further include a core network parameter value that can be met by the core network element, for example, parameter measurement values (i.e. characteristic assistance data) that are observed by network elements… an AF network element (i.e. application-side network element) for the target terminal device or parameter values that can be met by the network elements);
performing characteristic parameter inferencing based on the characteristic assistance data to obtain a target characteristic parameter of the service flow (Chong, Col. 35 line 5-7 sample data used for model training, and obtain a service quality analytics model (i.e. target characteristic parameter) through training based on the obtained sample data); and
processing a first service data packet of the service flow based on the obtained target characteristic parameter (Chong, Col. 35 line 7-9 The service quality analytics model may output a corresponding service quality analytics result based on the input service feature parameters),
Chong does not explicitly disclose wherein the characteristic assistance data includes data associated with a first characteristic of the service flow.
3GPP from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the characteristic assistance data includes data associated with a first characteristic of the service flow (3GPP, pg. 86 the AF may invoke the Nnef_AFsessionWithQoS_Create request to set up an AF session with required QoS).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified service quality analytics result disclosed by Chong and PDU Set integrated packet handling disclosed by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve network resources usage and QoE (3GPP, pg. 13).
Regarding claim 2, Chong discloses wherein the target characteristic parameter includes at least one of:
a periodicity of the first service data packet (Chong, Col. 3 line 35-39 the data analytics network element may periodically feed back the service quality analytics result for the terminal device to the access network element, or another network element may initiate a request to the data analytics network element),
a transmission rate of the first service data packet, wherein the transmission rate includes at least one of a rate range or an average rate (not given patentable weight due to not selected option),
a frame rate of the first service data packet (not given patentable weight due to not selected option),
a key frame interval of the first service data packet (not given patentable weight due to not selected option), or
a first value indicating whether a service data packet set exists in the service flow, wherein the service data packet set includes an association and a second characteristic of a second service data packet (Chong, Col. 55 line 27-34 The sample data includes sample service quality feature parameters (such as a UE identifier, a UE location, a service identifier, a latency, a flow bit rate, a packet loss rate, a jitter, and RSRP) used as model input and a sample MOS score used as model output, to obtain a function relationship between the sample service quality feature parameters and the sample MOS score).
Regarding claim 3, Chong discloses wherein the second characteristic includes at least one of:
a second value indicating whether a plurality of service data packets of the service data packet set are of equal ranking, or a third value indicating whether content of the service data packet set is recoverable based on one or more of the plurality of service data packets being lost (Chong, Col. 41 line 28-32 a second request sent by the data analytics network element to the RAN may be used to request data such as an air interface latency and a maximum packet loss rate of the target object Col. 55 line 35-44 when the service quality analytics model is trained, the used sample data may be a large amount of service quality feature data of one or more target objects and corresponding service quality scores. When a service quality analytics result for a specific target object is determined by using the trained service quality analytics model, service quality feature data input into the service quality analytics model may be service quality feature data corresponding to a single target object).
Regarding claim 4, Chong discloses wherein the target characteristic parameter further includes a packet loss policy of the service data packet set but does not explicitly discloses based on one or more rankings of the plurality of service data packets being different, and the content of the service data packet set being recoverable based on the one or more of the plurality of service data packets, and
wherein the packet loss policy indicates whether to abandon transmission of a third service data packet in the service data packet set during network congestion.
3GPP from the same field of endeavor discloses based on one or more rankings of the plurality of service data packets being different, and the content of the service data packet set being recoverable based on the one or more of the plurality of service data packets, and wherein the packet loss policy indicates whether to abandon transmission of a third service data packet in the service data packet set during network congestion (3GPP, pg. 58 Exceptions (e.g. transient link outages) can always occur in a radio access system which may then lead to congestion related packet drops; Services using Non-GBR QoS Flows should be prepared to experience congestion-related PDU-Set drops and delays; pg. 75 The UPF can also drop some less important data to the RAN when RAN is congested).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified service quality analytics result disclosed by Chong and PDU Set integrated packet handling disclosed by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve network resources usage and QoE (3GPP, pg. 13).
Regarding claim 5, Chong discloses wherein the target characteristic parameter of the service flow but does not explicitly disclose the service flow includes a frame rate of the first service data packet, and
wherein the performing characteristic parameter inferencing comprises:
counting a transmitted volume of the first service data packet in unit time based on a transmission timestamp of the first service data packet; and
determining the frame rate of the first service data packet based on the transmitted volume of the first service data packet in the unit time.
3GPP from the same field of endeavor discloses the service flow includes a frame rate of the first service data packet (3GPP, pg. 95 the SMF can provide some general PDR to the UPF to intelligently detect the XRM traffic and performance the mark. E.g. based on the time between the two successive PDU burst to determine the FPS (Frame per Second) of the XRM media), and
wherein the performing characteristic parameter inferencing comprises:
counting a transmitted volume of the first service data packet in unit time based on a transmission timestamp of the first service data packet; and determining the frame rate of the first service data packet based on the transmitted volume of the first service data packet in the unit time (3GPP, pg. 95 the UPF can intelligently get FPS, the number of the PDU set, start/end of a PDU set (and all the PDUs of this PDU set) based on packet size of the last PDU of the PDU set, since normally the size of the last PDU is less than the MTU while all other PDUs of the PDU set are in the full size of MTU).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified service quality analytics result disclosed by Chong and PDU Set integrated packet handling disclosed by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve network resources usage and QoE (3GPP, pg. 13).
Regarding claim 6, Chong discloses wherein the target characteristic parameter of the service flow but does not explicitly disclose the service flow includes a key frame interval of the first service data packet,
wherein the performing characteristic parameter inferencing comprises determining a target data packet with a data volume greater than a set threshold based on a size change rule of the first service data packet, and
wherein the key frame interval is based on an interval between adjacent target data packets.
3GPP from the same field of endeavor discloses the service flow includes a key frame interval of the first service data packet,
wherein the performing characteristic parameter inferencing comprises determining a target data packet with a data volume greater than a set threshold based on a size change rule of the first service data packet (3GPP, pg. 95 normally the I frame is the largest frame in the XRM stream and about 5 times bigger than the P type frame and about 20 times bigger than the B type frame), and
wherein the key frame interval is based on an interval between adjacent target data packets (3GPP, pg.95 start/end of the PDU set (and the PDUs between the start and end of the PDU set) if there is only one PDU set in the PDU burst. If there are multiple PDU Sets within a PDU burst).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified service quality analytics result disclosed by Chong and PDU Set integrated packet handling disclosed by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve network resources usage and QoE (3GPP, pg. 13).
Regarding claim 8, Chong discloses wherein the performing characteristic parameter inferencing is performed based on a machine learning model (Chong, Col. 35 line 12-17 the service quality analytics model may be constructed in advance by using a method such as big data analytics or machine learning, and the service quality analytics model is trained by using the sample data obtained from the UE, the base station, and each core network element).
Regarding claims 9-14 and 16-20, these claims recite "a service data packet processing apparatus" and "a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing computer code" that disclose similar steps as recited by the method of claims 1-6 and 8, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 1-6 and 8 as presented above.
Claim(s) 7 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chong et al. (US 12,342,225 B2, hereinafter "Chong") in view of 3GPP (3GPP TR 23.700-60 V0.3.0 (2022-05), hereinafter "3GPP") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Liu et al. (US 11,375,523 B2, hereinafter "Liu").
Regarding claims 7 and 15, Chong discloses wherein the target characteristic parameter of the service flow includes a periodicity of the first service data packet but does not explicitly disclose further comprises:
determining a semi-persistent schedule or a static schedule for the service flow based on a plurality of data volumes transmitted through the first service data packet in different periodicities being the same; and
determining a dynamic schedule for the service flow based on the plurality of data volumes being different.
Liu from the same field of endeavor discloses determining a semi-persistent schedule or a static schedule for the service flow based on a plurality of data volumes transmitted through the first service data packet in different periodicities being the same (Liu, Col. 6 line 18-20 the access network device may periodically configure SPS resources for each service flow based on the data period of each service flow corresponding to each TSCAI); and
determining a dynamic schedule for the service flow based on the plurality of data volumes being different (Liu, Col. 7 line 58-61 the resource configured by the access network device for each service flow is semi-persistent scheduling resource, so that when data arrives, the configured semi-persistent scheduling resources may be directly used for data transmission).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Liu’s system for dynamic data flow into Chong’s service parameters as modified by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve delay of data transmission (Liu, Col. 1).
Conclusion
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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415
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