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 .
Election/Restrictions
Claim 7-27 are withdrawn/cancelled from further consideration pursuant to 37 CFR 1.142(b) as being drawn to a nonelected invention, there being no allowable generic or linking claim. Election was made without traverse in the reply filed on 8/24/2026.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 5, 28, 35, 37, 43, 44, 48, 50 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Rajakarunanayake et al. Pub. No. US 20140004912 A1
Regarding Claim 1, Rajakarunanayake teaches an apparatus for wireless communications (Fig. 1 Unit 120 and Para 48, wireless communication device 120), comprising:
one or more processors (Para 91, processor);
one or more memories coupled with the one or more processors; and
instructions stored in the one or more memories and executable by the processor one or more processors (Para 91, a machine-readable medium may include any mechanism for storing or transmitting information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computing device) i.e., one or more memories coupled with the one or more processors; and
instructions stored in the one or more memories and executable by the processor one or more processors) to cause the apparatus to:
receive, in a cellular network, a broadcast signal (Para 48 and Fig. 1, the wireless communication device 110 may transmit a WPT broadcast that may be received by the wireless communication device 120 i.e., receive, in a cellular network, a broadcast signal) indicating one or more frequency resources within a channel bandwidth that are allocated for wireless energy transfer (Para 48 and 49, The WPT broadcast may include one or more times and corresponding durations i.e., frequency resources within a channel bandwidth in which the broadcasting device (e.g., wireless communication device 110) may supply radiative power i.e., allocated for wireless energy transfer);
receive a signal within the one or more frequency resources, the signal being available for wireless energy transfer in accordance with the broadcast signal (Para 50, the wireless communication device 120 may transmit the WPT mode notification to the wireless communication device 110, thereby establishing a radiative power delivery sequence between the wireless communications devices 110 and 120. The radiative power delivery sequence may be referred to as a WPT sequence i.e., receive a signal within the one or more frequency resources, the signal being available for wireless energy transfer in accordance with the broadcast signal and then Para 69 and Fig. 4 Step 404 disclose the radiative power is received by the wireless power harvester 240); and
perform energy harvesting using the signal received within the one or more frequency resources allocated for wireless energy transfer (Fig. 4 Step 408 and Para 70, the wireless communication device 220 converts the received radiative power into a DC charge i.e., wireless energy transfer. In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the radiative power is converted by the wireless power harvester 240 i.e., perform energy harvesting using the signal received within the one or more frequency resources allocated for wireless energy transfer).
Regarding Claim 5, Rajakarunanayake teaches wherein the broadcast signal indicates respective sets of one or more frequency resources that are configured for wireless energy transfer within respective bandwidth parts (Para 70).
Regarding Claim 28, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 1.
Regarding Claim 35, Rajakarunanayake teaches wherein the signal available for wireless energy transfer is dedicated for energy transfer or comprises physical uplink control channel signaling, physical uplink shared channel signaling, sidelink signaling, signal shaping signaling, or a combination thereof (Para 48).
Regarding Claim 37, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 5.
Regarding Claim 43, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 35.
Regarding Claim 44, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 1 and further teaches a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing code for wireless communications, the code comprising instructions executable by one or more processors (Para 91).
Regarding Claim 48, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 5.
Regarding Claim 50, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 1.
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.
The factual inquiries 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.
Claim(s) 2, 29, 45, 51 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajakarunanayake et al. Pub. No. US 20140004912 A1 in view of Rui Zhang MIMO Broadcasting for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer dated 2011.
Regarding Claim 2, Rajakarunanayake does not specifically teach wherein the instructions are further executable by the one or more processors to cause the apparatus to: perform additional energy harvesting using one or more additional signals received outside of the one or more frequency resources, the one or more additional signals being for wireless information transfer.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Rui Zhang teaches See Page 1 Sec 1 Introduction Col 2 L 22-27 that for time-switching, each antenna at the receiver periodically switches between the energy harvester and information decoder, while for power splitting, the received signal at each antenna is split into two signal streams with different powers, one for energy harvesting and the other for information decoding i.e., perform additional energy harvesting using one or more additional signals received outside of the one or more frequency resources, the one or more additional signals being for wireless information transfer.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method of Rajakarunanayake with the method of Rui Zhang so that when the terminal does not have fixed power supply the system should harvest energy from a signals transmitted by other terminals (See Introduction Para 2).
Regarding Claim 29, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 2.
Regarding Claim 45, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 2.
Regarding Claim 51, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 2.
Claim(s) 3, 30, 46 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajakarunanayake et al. Pub. No. US 20140004912 A1 in view of Khan et al. Pub. No. US 20180109150 A1
Regarding Claim 3, Rajakarunanayake does not specifically teach receive a master information block, a system information block, or both, wherein the master information block, the system information block, or a combination thereof indicates the one or more frequency resources.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Khan teaches the downlink wireless energy transfer (WET) signals and uplink wireless information transfer (WIT) signals are scheduled according to frames. That is, the wireless signals communicated between the base station and the device include time and/or frequency blocks within frames, and WET and WIT signals are scheduled within the time and/or frequency blocks of the frames i.e., receive a master information block, a system information block, or both, wherein the master information block, the system information block, or a combination thereof indicates the one or more frequency resources (Para 74).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method of Rajakarunanayake with the method of Khan so as to provide a system that enable self-sustainable, autonomous and greed system by harvesting energy from incident RF signals (See Khan Para 2).
Regarding Claim 30, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 3.
Regarding Claim 46, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 3.
Claim(s) 4, 6, 36, 38, 47, 49 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rajakarunanayake et al. Pub. No. US 20140004912 A1 in view of Elkotby et al. Pub. No. US 20220225402 A1
Regarding Claim 4, Rajakarunanayake does not specifically teach receive a bitmap or an index of a bitmap that identifies the one or more frequency resources.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Elkotby teaches the EH WTRU(s) can configure their CQI subgroup number i.sub.s through the reception of a control message that contain one or more of the following information elements: One or more thresholding values that can split/separate the time/frequency resource grid. A bit map indicating the separation domain (e.g., time, frequency, or both) i.e., receive a bitmap or an index of a bitmap that identifies the one or more frequency resources (Para 177-179).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method of Rajakarunanayake with the method of Elkotby so WTRU can use these parameters to determine and configure their feedback transmission using signaled and/or preconfigured mapping functions (See Elkotby Para 181).
Regarding Claim 6, Rajakarunanayake does not specifically teach wherein the channel bandwidth corresponds to a licensed spectrum.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Elkotby teaches these frequencies may be in licensed spectrum (Para 32).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine the method of Rajakarunanayake with the method of Elkotby so as to as to employ MIMO technology and should be utilize multiple transceiver for each sector of the cell (See Elkotby Para 32).
Regarding Claim 36, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 4.
Regarding Claim 38, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 6.
Regarding Claim 47, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 4.
Regarding Claim 49, it has been rejected for the same reasons as claim 6.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 31-34, 39-42 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: The prior art reference fail to teach the limitation of “wherein: the channel bandwidth comprises a first bandwidth part preceding the one or more frequency resources in a frequency domain and a second bandwidth part following the one or more frequency resources in the frequency domain, the first bandwidth part and the second bandwidth part corresponding to a same subcarrier spacing; and the signal available for wireless energy transfer comprises an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing waveform with the same subcarrier spacing as the first bandwidth part and the second bandwidth part” OR “wherein: the channel bandwidth comprises a first bandwidth part preceding the one or more frequency resources in a frequency domain and a second bandwidth part following the one or more frequency resources in the frequency domain, the first bandwidth part corresponding to a first subcarrier spacing and the second bandwidth part corresponding to a second subcarrier spacing; and the signal available for wireless energy transfer comprises an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing waveform with the first subcarrier spacing, and the signal available for wireless energy transfer is separated from the second bandwidth part in the frequency domain by a guard band; or the signal available for wireless energy transfer comprises the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing waveform with the second subcarrier spacing, and the signal available for wireless energy transfer is separated from the first bandwidth part in the frequency domain by the guard band” OR “wherein: the channel bandwidth comprises a first bandwidth part preceding the one or more frequency resources in a frequency domain and a second bandwidth part following the one or more frequency resources in the frequency domain, the first bandwidth part corresponding to a first subcarrier spacing and the second bandwidth part corresponding to a second subcarrier spacing; and the signal available for wireless energy transfer comprises an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing waveform with a third subcarrier spacing different from the first subcarrier spacing and the second subcarrier spacing, and wherein the signal available for wireless energy transfer is separated from the first bandwidth part in the frequency domain by a first guard band and is separated from the second bandwidth part in the frequency domain by a second guard band” OR “wherein: the channel bandwidth comprises a first bandwidth part preceding the one or more frequency resources in a frequency domain and a second bandwidth part following the one or more frequency resources in the frequency domain, the first bandwidth part corresponding to a first subcarrier spacing and the second bandwidth part corresponding to a second subcarrier spacing; and the signal available for wireless energy transfer comprises an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing waveform with a plurality of subcarrier spacings comprising at least the first subcarrier spacing in a first portion adjacent to the first bandwidth part in the frequency domain and the second subcarrier spacing in a second portion adjacent to the second bandwidth part in the frequency domain”. These limitations in combination of other elements are neither found nor disclosed in prior art as a whole.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Su et al. Pub. No. US 20240298235 A1 - CONTROLLING WIRELESS POWER TRANSFER
Balasubramanian et al. Pub. No. US 20220248432 - Method for using wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) for harvesting energy from uplink signal of other WTRU, involves harvesting radio frequency energy from uplink transmissions of groups of other WTRUs using selected receive beam
WO 2017160723 A1 - DISTRIBUTED WIRELESS CHARGING SYSTEM AND METHOD
Improved Energy Efficiency of Massive MIMO-OFDM in Battery-Limited IoT Networks – 2018
Integrated Data and Energy Communication Network: A Comprehensive Survey – 2018
The Race to 5G Era; LTE and Wi-Fi - 2018
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NIZAR N. SIVJI
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2647
/NIZAR N SIVJI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2647
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