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 .
DETAILED ACTION
Status of the Application
This is in response to the preliminary amendments filed on 09/13/2024. Claims 14-17 have been canceled; claims 1-13 and 18 are pending and presented for examination.
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.
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.
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.
Claims 1 – 13 and 18 are rejected under 35 USC 103 as being unpatentable over Kainulainen et al (WO Pub. No. 2011/0235632 A1) in view of Leng et al (US Pub. No. 2025/0048200 A1) and further in view of Pan et al (CN 118433924 A), translated is provided
Regarding claim 1, Kainulainen discloses “identifying, by a Centralized Unit (CU), a capability of a UE to perform Timing Advance (TA) measurement of Layerl/layer2 Triggered Mobility (LTM) candidate cells” (see Kainulainen ¶ 0015, transmitting, by the UE, UE capability indication towards the network node related to capability to support Layer 1 / Layer 2 (L1/L2) triggered mobility (LTM) operation and related to support of pre-processing at least part of a radio resource control reconfiguration message related to Layer 1 / Layer 2 (L1/L2) triggered mobility (LTM); figure 7A and ¶ 0023;The capability information is received by the Centralized unt (CN); ¶ 0139 ; A LTM configuration (LTM config) may comprise whether UE 110 is able to perform a RACH-less access procedure (e.g., by evaluating timing advance (TA) configuration)), “based on UE capability information received from the UE” (see Kainulainen figure 7 and ¶ 0198; The CU will determine Capability of the UE based on the capability information received from the UE), “transmitting, by the CU, the UE capability information to a serving Distributed Unit (DU), during configuration preparation of the LTM in the UE”( see Kainulainen figure 7A and ¶ 0199; The CU transmit UE LTM capability information to source DU ). Also, Kainulainen teaches the claimed feature of “transmitting, by the CU, the UE capability information to a candidate/target DU associated with an LTM candidate/target cell selected from the LTM candidate cells.”(See Kainulainen figure 7A and ¶ 0204; CU transmit the UE configuration to one or more (e.g., all) candidate target cells (target DU(s)).
Kainulainen does not appear to explicitly disclose that the capability information including determine if the UE capable performing TA for LTM candidate cell”.
However, Leng discloses “that the capability information including determine if the UE capable performing TA for LTM candidate cell” (See Leng abstract and ¶ 0014). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Kainulainen and Leng before him or her, to modify the invention of Kainulainen to determine and indicate if the UE can perofrm TA for LTM candidate cell. The suggestion for doing so would have been because The inclusion of enhanced broadband mechanisms requiring high speeds and low latencies has necessitated more sophisticated handover mechanisms. Accordingly, conditional handovers (CHOs) and separately, layer 1/layer 2 triggered mobility (LTM) have been introduced to provide additional conditions for specific networks or slices thereof to increase handover speed (¶ 0004).
The combination of Kainulainen and Leng does not appear to explicitly disclose “receiving, by the CU, an acknowledgement from the serving DU and/or the candidate/target DU indicating non-allocation of Physical Random-Access Channel (PRACH) resources to the UE for performing Uplink (UL) synchronization to acquire TA of the LTM candidate/target cell”.
However, Pan discloses “receiving, by the CU, an acknowledgement from the serving DU and/or the candidate/target DU indicating non-allocation of Physical Random-Access Channel (PRACH) resources to the UE for performing Uplink (UL) synchronization to acquire TA of the LTM candidate/target cell” (See Pan Page 15, last 2 paragraphs; indication information to indicate PRACH resource provided used for TA acquisition; if the PRACH resource is used for ordinary random access, then indicating PRACH resources cannot be allocated for TA Acquisition ). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan before him or her, to modify the invention of Kainulainen to identify whether PRACH resources for TA acquisition will be allocated or not. The suggestion for doing so would have been to reduce resource waste and it is important to improve wireless interface efficiency and coverage (page 2, first paragraph).
Regarding claim 2, claim 1 is incorporated as stated above. In addition, the combination of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan further discloses “wherein the UE capability information is received from the UE in a Radio Resource Control (RRC) message during RRC setup procedure or subsequently.”; (see Kainulainen ¶ 0015, ¶ 0191).
Regarding claim 3, claim 1 is incorporated as stated above. In addition, the combination of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan further discloses “wherein the UE capability information is transmitted to the candidate/target DU during preparation of the LTM candidate/target cell”; (see Kainulainen 0178; perform LTM preparation (Tpreparation) before the cell switch command and ¶ 0204; CU transmit the UE configuration to one or more (e.g., all) candidate target cells (target DU(s)) prior to LTM switch decision).
Regarding claim 4, claim 1 is incorporated as stated above. In addition, the combination of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan further discloses “configuring the UE to perform UE capability based TA measurement of the LTM candidate cells, on receiving the UE capability information”; (see Kainulainen ¶ 0139 and Leng ¶ 0014).
Regarding claim 5, Kainulainen discloses “receiving, by a serving Distributed Unit (DU), User Equipment (UE) capability information indicating a capability of a UE to perform Timing Advance (TA) measurement of LTM candidate cells” ”( see Kainulainen figure 7A and ¶ 0199; The CU transmit UE LTM capability information to source DU; ¶ 0015, the UE capability indication towards the network node related to capability to support Layer 1 / Layer 2 (L1/L2) triggered mobility (LTM) operation and related to support of pre-processing at least part of a radio resource control reconfiguration message related to Layer 1 / Layer 2 (L1/L2) triggered mobility (LTM); ¶ 0139 ; A LTM configuration (LTM config) may comprise whether UE 110 is able to perform a RACH-less access procedure (e.g., by evaluating timing advance (TA) configuration)), “from a Centralized Unit (CU), during configuration preparation of the LTM in the UE” (see Kainulainen figure 7 and ¶ 0198; The CU will determine Capability of the UE based on the capability information received from the UE; figure 7A and ¶ 0199; The CU transmit UE LTM capability information to source DU), “transmitting, by the CU, the UE capability information to a serving Distributed Unit (DU), during configuration preparation of the LTM in the UE”( see Kainulainen figure 7A and ¶ 0199; The CU transmit UE LTM capability information to source DU ). Also, Kainulainen teaches the claimed feature of “transmitting, by the CU, the UE capability information to a candidate/target DU associated with an LTM candidate/target cell selected from the LTM candidate cells.”(See Kainulainen figure 7A and ¶ 0204; CU transmit the UE configuration to one or more (e.g., all) candidate target cells (target DU(s)).
Kainulainen does not appear to explicitly disclose that the capability information including determine if the UE capable performing TA for LTM candidate cell”.
However, Leng discloses “that the capability information including determine if the UE capable performing TA for LTM candidate cell” (See Leng abstract and ¶ 0014). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Kainulainen and Leng before him or her, to modify the invention of Kainulainen to determine and indicate if the UE can perofrm TA for LTM candidate cell. The suggestion for doing so would have been because The inclusion of enhanced broadband mechanisms requiring high speeds and low latencies has necessitated more sophisticated handover mechanisms. Accordingly, conditional handovers (CHOs) and separately, layer 1/layer 2 triggered mobility (LTM) have been introduced to provide additional conditions for specific networks or slices thereof to increase handover speed (¶ 0004).
The combination of Kainulainen and Leng does not appear to explicitly disclose “transmitting, by the serving DU, an acknowledgement to the CU indicating non- allocation of Physical Random-Access Channel (PRACH) resources for performing Uplink (UL) synchronization to acquire TA of an LTM candidate/target cell selected from the LTM candidate cells”.
However, Pan discloses “transmitting, by the serving DU, an acknowledgement to the CU indicating non- allocation of Physical Random-Access Channel (PRACH) resources for performing Uplink (UL) synchronization to acquire TA of an LTM candidate/target cell selected from the LTM candidate cells” (See Pan Page 15, last 2 paragraphs; indication information to indicate PRACH resource provided used for TA acquisition; if the PRACH resource is used for ordinary random access, then indicating PRACH resources cannot be allocated for TA Acquisition ). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, having the teachings of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan before him or her, to modify the invention of Kainulainen to identify whether PRACH resources for TA acquisition will be allocated or not. The suggestion for doing so would have been to reduce resource waste and it is important to improve wireless interface efficiency and coverage (page 2, first paragraph).
Regarding claim 6, claim 5 is incorporated as stated above. In addition, the combination of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan further discloses “transmitting a cell Identification (ID) of the LTM candidate/target cell to the UE to determine the TA of the LTM candidate/target cell.”; (see Kainulainen ¶ 0115; Leng ¶ 0184).
Regarding claim 7, claim 6 is incorporated as stated above. In addition, the combination of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan further discloses “wherein the cell ID of the LTM candidate/target cell is transmitted in a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) order to the UE to compute the TA of the candidate/target cell”; (see Kainulainen ¶ 0172).
Regarding claim 8, claim 6 is incorporated as stated above. In addition, the combination of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan further discloses “wherein the cell ID of the LTM candidate/target cell is transmitted in an LTM cell switch command to the UE to compute the TA of the candidate/target cell.”; (see Kainulainen ¶ 0014; discloses the cell switch request include information related to the target cell, which should include the ID of the target cell; Leng ¶ 0203; upon receiving the cell switch command, the UE initiates cell switching to the target BS by applying the measure TA when a valid TA is not included in the cell switch command. When a valid TA is included in the cell switch command, the UE initiates cell switching to the target BS by apply the valid TA ).
Regarding claim 9, claim 6 is incorporated as stated above. In addition, the combination of Kainulainen, Leng and Pan further discloses “wherein the UE determines the TA of the LTM candidate/target cell based on receiver (Rx) timing difference between a current serving cell of the UE and the LTM candidate/target cell, and TA of the current serving cell”; (see Kainulainen ¶ 0017 ¶ 0018 and ¶ 0023; Leng; ¶ 0181; the UE may derive frame timing difference between a reference cell (e.g., serving cell) and a target cell. In this scenario, if the TA measurement configuration includes an indication that the SFTD is utilized for TA estimation, it can implicitly indicate that the downlink timing between the reference cell and the target cell is not synchronized, and the UE may use the derived DL SFN and frame timing difference between the reference cell and the target cell for TA estimation ).
Claims 10-13 are the Unit claims corresponding to the method claims 1-4 that have been rejected above. Applicant attention is directed to the rejection of claims 1 - 4. Claims 10-13 are rejected under the same rational as claim 1-4.
Claim 18 is the Non-transitory computer readable medium claim corresponding to the method claim 1 that has been rejected above. Applicant attention is directed to the rejection of claim 1. Claim 18 is rejected under the same rational as claim 1.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to KHALED M KASSIM whose telephone number is (571)270-3770. The examiner can normally be reached 9:00 am - 5:00 PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/KHALED M KASSIM/supervisory patent examiner, Art Unit 2475
Prosecution Insights