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 .
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.
Claims 1, 5-6, 8-9, 13, 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stoica et al. (US 20260088930, hereinafter, “Stoica”) in view of Navrátil et al. (US 20220006563, hereinafter, “Navrátil”).
Claim 1. Stoica teaches: A method performed by a session management function (SMF) in a communication system, the method comprising: - See Fig. 5, ¶ [0174], (“The SMF informs the UPF…”)
receiving, from a policy control function (PCF), a policy and charging control (PCC) rule - in ¶ [0096], (“The PCF 515 sends the QoS rules to the SMF 520. The PCF 515 may include in the communication to the SMF 520 Policy and Charging Control (PCC) rules per importance of a PDU set.”) including a protocol descriptor that indicates support of a protocol data unit (PDU) set-based forward error correction (FEC); - - in ¶ [0206], (“an application indicates via its AF the NEF and PCF with a corresponding set of PFD traffic descriptors and QoS requirements associated with an AL-FEC configuration used to encode application ADUs to PDU sets. The PCF generates PCC rules and configures the SMF with a corresponding set of QoS rules including an indication of a minimum percentage of PDUs (i.e., either source or repair PDUs) out of an encoded PDU set corresponding”); ¶ [0233], (“Application-Level Forward Error Correction (AL-FEC) coding”)
transmitting, to a user plane function (UPF), - in ¶ [0174], (“The SMF informs the UPF…”) packet handling information including detection rule information for distinguishing an FEC source packet and an FEC repair packet in the PDU set-based FEC; - in ¶ [0174], (“The SMF informs the UPF of the PFD rules and the SMF informs the UPF also about the PCF determined PCC and QoS rules for the NR application traffic and AL-FEC associated coding configuration. The UPF can then apply the appropriate packet detection and filtering to determine the PDU sets containing the encoded co-dependent source PDUs as a subset and the repair PDUs as another subset.”); ¶ [0185], (“the payload type of the source PDUs is ‘100’, whereas the payload type of the repair PDUs ‘110’.”) and
transmitting, to an access and mobility management function (AMF), a quality of service (QoS) profile including a QoS rule updated based on the PCC rule. – See Fig. 5, ¶ [0097], (“At 583, the SMF 520 establishes a QoS flow according to the QoS rules by the PCF…The SMF 520 also provides the QoS profile containing PDU set QoS requirements to the RAN 530 via the AMF 525. The AMF 525 may provide the QoS profile…in an N2 Session Management (SM) container.”)
Stoica does not explicitly teach:
transmitting, to an access and mobility management function (AMF), a quality of service (QoS) profile including a QoS rule updated based on the PCC rule.
However, Navrátil teaches:
transmitting, to an access and mobility management function (AMF), a quality of service (QoS) profile including a QoS rule updated based on the PCC rule. – See Fig. 4, ¶ [0049], (“the PCF 312 invokes an Npcf_SMPolicyControl_UpdateNotify request. The PCF 312 provides the SMF 308 with a policy and charging control (PCC) rule (PccRule) for one or more source flows and a PCC rule for one or more FEC flows for the source flows…¶ [0050] the SMF 308 decides on QoS flow mapping…The SMF may also map one PCC rule to one QoS flow…¶ [0052] The SMF initiates Namf_N1N2MessageTransfer…The AMF may initiate the PDU Session Resource Modify procedure…containing…the list of QoS flows...”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Stoica with Navrátil to include updated based on the PCC rule, as taught by Navrátil. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to improve packet handling, as suggested by Navrátil, In order to reach such a packet error probability, forward error correction (FEC) coding is used at various layers of the protocol stack in communication systems. - ¶ [0003]
Claim 5. Combination of Stoica and Navrátil teaches The method of claim 1, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Stoica teaches:
wherein one FEC repair packet corresponds to one or more FEC source packet blocks. – in ¶ [0137], (“This indicates thus the dependency of encoded repair RTP/SRTP packets to the block of RTP/SRTP source packets jointly encoded”); ¶ [0184], (“the M-bit marker field may indicate by a bit value of ‘1’ the end of the repair PDUs associated with a source block corresponding to a source ADU and as such to an encoded source PDUs.”)
Claim 6. Stoica teaches: A method performed by a user plane function (UPF) in a communication system, the method comprising: - See Fig. 5, ¶ [0174], (“The SMF informs the UPF…”)
receiving, from a session management function (SMF), - See Fig. 5, ¶ [0174], (“The SMF informs the UPF…”) a packet handling information including detection rule information for distinguishing a forward error correction (FEC) source packet and a FEC repair packet in a protocol data unit (PDU) set; - in ¶ [0174], (“The SMF informs the UPF of the PFD rules and the SMF informs the UPF also about the PCF determined PCC and QoS rules for the NR application traffic and AL-FEC associated coding configuration. The UPF can then apply the appropriate packet detection and filtering to determine the PDU sets containing the encoded co-dependent source PDUs as a subset and the repair PDUs as another subset.”); ¶ [0185], (“the payload type of the source PDUs is ‘100’, whereas the payload type of the repair PDUs ‘110’.”)
receiving, from an application server (AS), downlink data; - See Fig. 8, ¶ [0098], (“The UPF 540 may also determine the importance of the PDU set either based on UPF 540 implementation means, information provided by the XRM AF 510 or information provided as metadata from an ARM application server. Based on the importance of the PDU set the UPF 540 may route the traffic to a corresponding QoS flow 1 (according to the rules received from the SMF 520) or include the importance of the PDU set within a GTP-U header. QoS flow 1 may comprise GTP-U headers, and these may include PDU set information.”) and
transmitting, to a radio access network (RAN), - See Fig. 8, ¶ [0098], (“When the UPF 540 detects packets of a PDU set the UPF 540 marks the packets belonging to a PDU set within a GTP-U header…¶ [0099], At 585, the RAN 530 identifies packets belonging to a PDU set (based on the GTP-U marking) and handles the packets of the PDU set…”) information about whether a packet included in the downlink data corresponds to any one of the FEC source packet and the FEC repair packet – in ¶ [0204], (“a 1-bit field indicating the type (T, 1538) of each of the PDU, e.g., a ‘0’ value for a source PDU and ‘1’ value for a repair PDU;”) and association information between the FEC source packet and the FEC repair packet by - in ¶ [0137], (“the FEC encoding scheme used to encode the source and repair PDUs as RTP/SRTP packets is using therefore the sequence number of the original RTP/SRTP source packets as a Payload ID replacement…This indicates thus the dependency of encoded repair RTP/SRTP packets to the block of RTP/SRTP source packets jointly encoded”) including the information about whether a packet included in the downlink data corresponds to any one of the FEC source packet and the FEC repair packet - See Fig. 15, ¶ [0204], (“The example extension header 1500 comprises…a field PDU sequence number (PDU SN, 1536) for each of the PDUs within the PDU set; a 1-bit field indicating the type (T, 1538) of each of the PDU, e.g., a ‘0’ value for a source PDU and ‘1’ value for a repair PDU;”) and the association information between the FEC source packet and the FEC repair packet in a general packet radio service tunneling protocol-user plane (GTP-U) header of each packet. – in ¶ [0194], (“the information of the AL-FEC encoded PDU set is conveyed to/from the RAN by means of a GTP-U extension header.”); See Fig. 15, ¶ [0204], (“The example extension header 1500 comprises…a field PDU sequence number (PDU SN, 1536) for each of the PDUs within the PDU set; a 1-bit field indicating the type (T, 1538) of each of the PDU, e.g., a ‘0’ value for a source PDU and ‘1’ value for a repair PDU;”)
Stoica does not explicitly teach:
receiving, from a session management function (SMF), a packet handling information including detection rule information for distinguishing a forward error correction (FEC) source packet and a FEC repair packet in a protocol data unit (PDU) set;
However, Navrátil teaches:
receiving, from a session management function (SMF), a packet handling information including detection rule information for distinguishing a forward error correction (FEC) source packet and a FEC repair packet in a protocol data unit (PDU) set; – See Fig. 4, ¶ [0049], (“The PCF 312 provides the SMF 308 with a policy and charging control (PCC) rule (PccRule) for one or more source flows and a PCC rule for one or more FEC flows for the source flows…¶ [0050] the SMF 308 decides on QoS flow mapping…The SMF may also map one PCC rule to one QoS flow...”); ¶ [0045], (“whether a QoS flow is used for source or FEC repair flow.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Stoica with Navrátil to further specify distinguishing a FEC source packet and a FEC repair packet, as taught by Navrátil. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to improve packet handling, as suggested by Navrátil, In order to reach such a packet error probability, forward error correction (FEC) coding is used at various layers of the protocol stack in communication systems. - ¶ [0003]
Claim 8. Combination of Stoica and Navrátil teaches The method of claim 6, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Stoica teaches:
wherein the PDU set-based scheduling in the RAN is performed - See Fig. 5, ¶ [0099], (“the RAN 530 identifies packets belonging to a PDU set (based on the GTP-U marking) and handles the packets of the PDU set according to the QoS requirements of the PDU set”) based on FEC source packet information or FEC repair packet information. - in ¶ [0194], (“the information of the AL-FEC encoded PDU set is conveyed to/from the RAN by means of a GTP-U extension header…[0196] an indication of the boundaries of a source PDU subset of the PDU set…[0197] an indication of the boundaries of a repair PDU subset of the PDU set”)
Claim 9 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim of Claim 1 and is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 1 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claim 13 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim of Claim 6 and is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 6 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claim 15 is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 8 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 2, 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stoica et al. (US 20260088930, hereinafter, “Stoica”) in view of Navrátil et al. (US 20220006563, hereinafter, “Navrátil”), and further in view of Talebi Fard et al. (US 20250274810, hereinafter, “Talebi”).
Claim 2. Combination of Stoica and Navrátil teaches The method of claim 1, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Stoica teaches:
determining a buffering operation for the FEC source packet or the FEC repair packet based on the congestion information. – in ¶ [0147], (“method uses an AL-FEC configuration…to determine a PDU set further containing 2 subsets representing encoded source PDUs and encoded repair PDUs as a common PDU set…¶ [0149], (policies may be applied to determine when to drop PDUs of AL-FEC encoded PDU sets. The RAN dropping is motivated by…increase of system capacity by stopping transmission processing of PDUs of an encoded PDU set…”)
Combination of Stoica and Navrátil does not explicitly teach:
further comprising: receiving, from the AMF, congestion information about a congestion situation occurring in a radio access network (RAN); and determining a buffering operation for the FEC source packet or the FEC repair packet based on the congestion information.
However, Talebi teaches:
further comprising: receiving, from the AMF, congestion information about a congestion situation occurring in a radio access network (RAN); - See Fig. 29, ¶ [0442], (“Npcf_EventExposure_Notify message may comprise at least one of the event ID (e.g…RAN congestion…¶ [0446] the SMF may receive the notification from the AMF…wherein the AMF receives the notification from the RAN node”); See Fig. 25, ¶ [0380], (“The AMF may forward the N2 SM information and the User location Information received from the AN to the SMF via Nsmf_PDUSession_UpdateSMContext service operation”) and
determining a buffering operation for the FEC source packet or the FEC repair packet based on the congestion information. – in ¶ [0447], (“the AMF may receive from the RAN node the notification of congestion…the AMF may send the notification to the SMF…the SMF may send an N4 message to the UPF to instruct the UPF to buffer, suspend data transmission via the congested user plane resources”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Stoica and Navrátil with Talebi to include receiving RAN congestion information from the AMF, as taught by Talebi. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to apply the method taught by Talebi to improve FEC packet handling taught by Stocia, as suggested by Talebi, user plane congestion may refer to a state wherein the network may drop packets or be unable to process packets for transmission and/or reception…user plane congestion may be RAN congestion. - ¶ [0374]
Claim 10 is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 2 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 3, 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stoica et al. (US 20260088930, hereinafter, “Stoica”) in view of Navrátil et al. (US 20220006563, hereinafter, “Navrátil”), and further in view of Talebi Fard et al. (US 20250274810, hereinafter, “Talebi”) and Kammachi Sreedhar et al. (US 20240259454, hereinafter, “Kammachi”).
Claim 3. Combination of Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi teaches The method of claim 2, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Combination of Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi does not explicitly teach:
wherein determining the buffering operation is to determine the FEC source packet or the FEC repair packet to which the buffering operation is to be applied based on priority of the FEC source packet and the FEC repair packet.
However, Kammachi teaches:
wherein determining the buffering operation – in ¶ [0327], (“the UPF or any other network entity capable of packet handling, can use the priority information to decide how to handle the packet.”); ¶ [0262], (“Packets are classified according to the PDU sets in PDU Families to which they belong so differentiated QoS that considers PDU Family and PDU set classification can be applied according to policy provisioned on the SMF…currently Priority Level indicates a priority in scheduling resources among QoS Flows.”) is to determine the FEC source packet or the FEC repair packet to which the buffering operation is to be applied based on priority of the FEC source packet and the FEC repair packet. - See Fig. 17, ¶ [0360], (“using multilevel priority fields can enable the application to differentiate the priority level based on packet handling…some PDU/PDU sets may be at a low priority because late delivery has a lower impact…some packets may be at a higher priority to ensure timely delivery,”); ¶ [0222], (“Differentiated QoS handling may be provided for PDUs that are members of different PDU sets in these families (e.g. a packet that is a member of I-Frame PDU set is given priority over a packet that is a member of a P-Frame PDU set).”); ¶ [0303], (“If FEC is used, k and n-k shall convey the number of source and repair packets of the FEC block to which the PDU set belongs.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi with Kammachi to include buffering operation is to be applied based on priority of the packets, as taught by Kammachi. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to improve packet handling, as suggested by Kammachi, Support differentiated QoS handling considering different importance of PDU sets, e.g. eligible drop packets belong to a less important PDU set to reduce the resource wasting. - ¶ [0089]
Claim 11 is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 3 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 4, 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stoica et al. (US 20260088930, hereinafter, “Stoica”) in view of Navrátil et al. (US 20220006563, hereinafter, “Navrátil”), and further in view of Talebi Fard et al. (US 20250274810, hereinafter, “Talebi”) and Tang et al. (US 20200084829, hereinafter, “Tang”).
Claim 4. Combination of Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi teaches The method of claim 2, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Combination of Stoica and Navrátil does not explicitly teach:
wherein, when the buffering operation is able to be performed in the UPF, a buffering action rule (BAR) is transmitted to the UPF,
However, Talebi teaches:
wherein, when the buffering operation is able to be performed in the UPF, a buffering action rule (BAR) is transmitted to the UPF, – in ¶ [0073], (“SMF 314…may control the handling of the PDU session by the selected UPF by providing rules for packet handling (PDR, FAR”); ¶ [0087], (“The UPF 405 may perform traffic forwarding in accordance with a FAR…the FAR may indicate that a packet associated with a particular PDR is to be forwarded, duplicated, dropped, and/or buffered…If a packet is to be buffered, the FAR may indicate a buffering action rule (BAR)…UPF 405 may perform data buffering of a certain number downlink packets”) and
Combination of Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi does not explicitly teach:
wherein, when the buffering operation is unable to be performed in the UPF, the buffering operation is performed on the SMF.
However, Tang teaches:
wherein, when the buffering operation is unable to be performed in the UPF, the buffering operation is performed on the SMF. – in ¶ [0110], (“…if the UPF does not have a capability of buffering downlink data, the SMF entity 208 may select the SMF entity 208 as a buffer device.”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi with Tang to include when the buffering operation is unable to be performed in the UPF, the buffering operation is performed on the SMF, as taught by Tang. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to improve packet handing, as suggested by Tang, a problem that downlink data received by a terminal is out of order is avoided. - ¶ [0025]
Claim 12 is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 4 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 7, 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Stoica et al. (US 20260088930, hereinafter, “Stoica”) in view of Navrátil et al. (US 20220006563, hereinafter, “Navrátil”), and further in view of Talebi Fard et al. (US 20250274810, hereinafter, “Talebi”) and Pan et al. (US 20240314696, hereinafter, “Pan”).
Claim 7. Combination of Stoica and Navrátil teaches The method of claim 6, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
Combination of Stoica and Navrátil does not explicitly teach:
further comprising: receiving, from the SMF, a buffering action rule (BAR) related to determination of buffering of the packet;
However, Talebi teaches:
further comprising: receiving, from the SMF, a buffering action rule (BAR) related to determination of buffering of the packet; – in ¶ [0073], (“SMF 314…may control the handling of the PDU session by the selected UPF by providing rules for packet handling (PDR, FAR”); ¶ [0087], (“The UPF 405 may perform traffic forwarding in accordance with a FAR…the FAR may indicate that a packet associated with a particular PDR is to be forwarded, duplicated, dropped, and/or buffered…If a packet is to be buffered, the FAR may indicate a buffering action rule (BAR)…UPF 405 may perform data buffering of a certain number downlink packets”)
Combination of Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi does not explicitly teach:
determining whether to perform a buffering operation for the packets included in downlink data based on the BAR; and performing the buffering operation.
However, Pan teaches:
determining whether to perform a buffering operation for the packets included in downlink data based on the BAR; - in ¶ [0167], (“a new trigger condition tag is added to a buffering action rule (BAR) in a packet detection rule (PDR), and a value of the tag indicates whether the BAR is valid…when the tag is 1…the BAR takes effect, and the UPF buffers the downlink data of the UE in the inactive state in the UPF according to the BAR. When the tag is 0…the BAR is invalid, and the UPF stops buffering”) and performing the buffering operation. – in ¶ [0165], (“the UPF receives the indication information #4 sent by the SMF, and buffers the downlink data…¶ [0167], (a new trigger condition tag is added to a buffering action rule (BAR) in a packet detection rule (PDR), and a value of the tag indicates whether the BAR is valid…when the tag is 1…the BAR takes effect, and the UPF buffers the downlink data…”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified Stoica, Navrátil, and Talebi with Pan to include determining whether to perform a buffering operation, as taught by Pan. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to reduce signaling overhead, as suggested by Pan, thereby improving data transmission continuity and reducing signaling exchange. - ¶ [0120]
Claim 14 is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 7 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Conclusion
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/SHIMA WASEL/Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2475
/KHALED M KASSIM/supervisory patent examiner, Art Unit 2475
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