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 Objections
Claims 1 and 11 are objected to because claims recite “equipipment”. It should recite “equipment”. Appropriate correction is needed.
Claim Interpretation
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(f):
(f) Element in Claim for a Combination. – An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
The following is a quotation of pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph:
An element in a claim for a combination may be expressed as a means or step for performing a specified function without the recital of structure, material, or acts in support thereof, and such claim shall be construed to cover the corresponding structure, material, or acts described in the specification and equivalents thereof.
This application includes one or more claim limitations that do not use the word “means,” but are nonetheless being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, because the claim limitation(s) uses a generic placeholder that is coupled with functional language without reciting sufficient structure to perform the recited function and the generic placeholder is not preceded by a structural modifier. Such claim limitation is: “a BWP analytics module” in claim 11.
Because this/these claim limitation(s) is/are being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, it/they is/are being interpreted to cover the corresponding structure described in the specification as performing the claimed function, and equivalents thereof.
If applicant does not intend to have this/these limitation(s) interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph, applicant may: (1) amend the claim limitation(s) to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph (e.g., by reciting sufficient structure to perform the claimed function); or (2) present a sufficient showing that the claim limitation(s) recite(s) sufficient structure to perform the claimed function so as to avoid it/them being interpreted under 35 U.S.C. 112(f) or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, sixth paragraph.
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 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.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1, 6, 8-10-11 and 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by DHUA; Shyamal et al US 20260129627 A1 priority 8/30/23 (see para [0001] and attached file), hereinafter DHUA.
Regarding claims 1 and 11, DHUA teaches, a method for optimizing bandwidth part (BWP) management for 5G wireless network, comprising:
periodically analyzing, by a BWP analytics module located at one of near-real-time radio access network intelligent controller (near-RT RIC) or a distributed unit (DU) of a gNodeB (gNB) (DHUA [95] “In other words, the system 1300 may be referred as the base station 705, the UE 701, a device, a network node (e.g., distributed unit (DU), near-real time RAN intelligent controller (near RT-RIC).”; Fig. 10 and related description in [89] describes ‘time windows’ implying periodically analyzing), BWP peformance mesasures for at least one of a physical resource block (PRB) utilization difference, a delay violation percentage corresponding to a percentage of logical channels not able to meet delay requirements for quality of service (QoS) profile assigned to the logical channels, a throughput, and interference levels of a BWP to classify the BWP (DHUA [10] “The method includes identifying at least one of a plurality of BWP level metrics … for each of the plurality of BWPs for a current time window in the corresponding BWP among the plurality of BWPs”; [69] “In continuation with the above example, the channel conditions metric (C.sub.n[t]) represents an average number of bits allowed to be sent by each of the plurality of UEs using a resource block (RB) in the current time window t.sub.w=1.”, teaches throughput of a BWP performance measure. Satisfies “at least one of” criteria; [49] “BWPs have an important factor that can determine to a large extent the performance that a BWP can serve, i.e., the collisions/congestion due to the coexisting traffic in the channels of each BWP.”, teaches interference level of a BWP performance measure. Satisfies “at least one of” criteria);
periodically analyzing, by the BWP analytics module, at least one of PRB utilization, throughput, and delay requirements of at least one user equipipment (UE) (DHUA [10] “The method includes identifying … a plurality of user equipment (UE) level metrics ”; [53] “Optimal BWP assignment for each UE is a must to better meet the varying quality of service (QoS) requirements of all UE which helps provide a greater end-user experience.”, QoS requirement of UE can be interpreted as delay requirement”. Satisfies “at least one of” criteria; [67] “UE level metrics may include but is not limited to, a UE traffic queue size metric (B.sub.u[t]), a head of line (HoL) delay metric (D.sub.u[t]), an incoming packets size metric (P.sub.u[t]), an outgoing packets size metric (L.sub.u[t]), and an encoding metric (Y.sub.u[t]) and UE channel conditions metric (C.sub.u[t]) of the UE.”. Satisfies “at least one of” criteria; [75] “FIG. 10 illustrates an AI model for managing the plurality of BWPs in the wireless communication system, such as the NR system, according to an embodiment of the disclosure” and [76], teaches a BWP analytics model); and
categorizing, by the BWP analytics module, the at least one UE into one of a plurality of BWP classifications based on the analyzing of the at least one of PRB utilization, throughput, and delay requirements (Categorizing a UE into a BWP is interpreted as assigning the UE to the BWP. DHUA [6] “3GPP introduced bandwidth part (BWP) in NR, in order to serve different UE requirements, such as power saving, differing traffic requirements like higher/lower data rate, delay sensitivity, service type, or the like, at a more granular level.”, teaches BWP is assigned to UE based on different UE requirements; [73] “determining, by the base station 705, a BWP assignment policy based on the calculated (or identified) at least one of the plurality of BWP level metrics and the plurality of UE level metrics… Accordingly, in an embodiment of the disclosure, the BWP assignment policy may be determined to maximize the throughput of the NR system”; [76] “The AI model 1000 then determines a BWP assignment policy 1001 based on the exponentially weighted average of each of the plurality of UE level metrics, the exponentially weighted average of each of the plurality of BWP level metrics, ...”).
With respect to claim 11, claim recites the identical features of claim 1 for a corresponding system. Therefore, it is subjected to the same rejection.
Regarding claim 6, DHUA teaches the method, as outlined in the rejection of claim 1.
DHUA further teaches, further comprising: periodically analyzing, by the BWP analytics module, an interference level of a BWP; and if a percentage of PRBs in the BWP have an interference greater than an average interference of the BWP, identifying the BWP as a candidate for modification (Claim is interpreted as identifying BWP as having high interference and apply BWP management. DHUA [49], [103] teaches, collision/congestion due to other coexisting technologies (i.e., interference) is a BWP performance measure, and a BWP is identified for a change due to experiencing higher interference).
Regarding claims 8 and 18, DHUA teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 1 and 11.
DHUA further teaches, wherein the BWP analytics module is at the near-RT RIC and subscribes to the BWP performance measures from the DU, the method further comprising: analyzing the BWP performance measures at the near-RT RIC to determine an optimal set of BWPs (DHUA [95, [101] read on the claims, e.g., [95] “In other words, the system 1300 may be referred as the base station 705, the UE 701, a device, a network node (e.g., distributed unit (DU), near-real time RAN intelligent controller (near RT-RIC).”; [101] “the system 1300 may be implemented as a part of the near-real time RAN intelligent controller (Near RT-RIC) module of the DU. The Near-RT RIC leverages embedded intelligence and is responsible for per-UE RB management, interference detection, quality of service (QoS) management, or the like. … As the inter-node communication is easily taken care for the worker node, the DU node can pass all the statistics information to the AI model 1000, where the AI model 1000 can form the state and provide appropriate actions in each time window. These actions can then be communicated back to the DU node for the BWP reassignment.”).
Regarding claims 9 and 19, DHUA teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 8 and 18.
DHUA further teaches, wherein the BWP analytics module at the near-RT RIC is configured to send the optimal BWP set to the DU based on the analysis of the BWP performance measures (DHUA [95, [101] read on the claims, e.g., [95] “In other words, the system 1300 may be referred as the base station 705, the UE 701, a device, a network node (e.g., distributed unit (DU), near-real time RAN intelligent controller (near RT-RIC).”; [101] “the system 1300 may be implemented as a part of the near-real time RAN intelligent controller (Near RT-RIC) module of the DU. The Near-RT RIC leverages embedded intelligence and is responsible for per-UE RB management, interference detection, quality of service (QoS) management, or the like. … As the inter-node communication is easily taken care for the worker node, the DU node can pass all the statistics information to the AI model 1000, where the AI model 1000 can form the state and provide appropriate actions in each time window. These actions can then be communicated back to the DU node for the BWP reassignment.”).
Regarding claims 10 and 20, DHUA teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 1 and 11.
DHUA further teaches, wherein the BWP analytics module is at the gNB-DU and is configured to analyze BWP performance measures present at the gNB-DU to determine an optimal set of BWPs (DHUA [95, [101] read on the claims, e.g., [95] “In other words, the system 1300 may be referred as the base station 705, the UE 701, a device, a network node (e.g., distributed unit (DU), near-real time RAN intelligent controller (near RT-RIC).”; [101] “the system 1300 may be implemented as a part of the near-real time RAN intelligent controller (Near RT-RIC) module of the DU. The Near-RT RIC leverages embedded intelligence and is responsible for per-UE RB management, interference detection, quality of service (QoS) management, or the like. … As the inter-node communication is easily taken care for the worker node, the DU node can pass all the statistics information to the AI model 1000, where the AI model 1000 can form the state and provide appropriate actions in each time window. These actions can then be communicated back to the DU node for the BWP reassignment.”).
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.
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.
Claims 2-5 and 12-16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over DHUA, as applied to the rejection of claims 1 and 11 above, in view of IDS Reference YAN; Haidong US 20210266920 A1, hereinafter YAN.
Regarding claims 2 and 12, DHUA teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 1 and 11.
DHUA does not expressly teach, however, in the same field of endeavor, YAN teaches, further comprising: analyzing, by the BWP analytics module, the number of UEs per each one of the plurality of BWP classification to implement one of a plurality of BWP management actions, wherein the BWP classifications for the UEs include: resource-intensive UEs; resource-delay-intensive UEs; and resource-light UEs (YAN [0102] “Operation 103: When load of the first BWP exceeds a load threshold, the base station sends indication information to the terminal, to indicate the terminal to operate in a second BWP.”, and [103] “the base station may periodically obtain load information of each BWP.”, and [104] “terminal load quantity is used as an indicator for measuring a load status of a BWP” teach, number of UUs per BWP is used for BWP management; [147] “the base station may compare obtained delay spread information of the terminal …”, and [148] “Service Type (a Service Type is a Size of a Service Packet of the Terminal, Including a Large-Packet Service Type and a Small-Packet Service Type)”, and [149] “Specifically, for the service type, the base station may compare an obtained service type of the terminal ...”, teach, UEs can be resource-delay-intensive UEs, resource-intensive UEs, or resource-light UEs).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of DHUA to include the features as taught by YAN above in order to provide a BWP allocation method, to avoid low resource utilization due to unicity of an allocation manner to some extent (YAN [0008]).
Regarding claims 3 and 13, DHUA, in view of YAN, teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 2 and 12.
YAN further teaches, further comprising: in the case the number of resource-intensive UEs exceeds a specified threshold for maximum resource-intensive UEs, one of i) increasing the number of resource blocks (RBs) in the BWP, ii) transferring at least some of the resource-intensive UEs from the BWP to another BWP that is underloaded, or iii) creating a new BWP and transferring at least some of the resource-intensive UEs to the new BWP (YAN [103], [147], [149], teaches, either switching to another BWP or creating a BWP with required SCS, based on service types, delay spread or load compared to thresholds. The same technique can be applied to the recited claims).
Regarding claims 4 and 14, DHUA, in view of YAN, teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 2 and 12.
YAN further teaches, further comprising: in the case the number of resource-delay-intensive UEs exceeds a specified threshold for maximum resource-delay-intensive UEs, one of i) using a higher subcarrier spacing (SCS) for the BWP, ii) transferring at least some of the resource-delay-intensive UEs from the BWP to another BWP having a higher SCS, or iii) creating a new BWP having a higher SCS, and transferring at least some of the resource-delay-intensive UEs to the new BWP (YAN [103], [147], [149], teaches, either switching to another BWP or creating a BWP with required SCS, based on service type, delay spread or load compared to thresholds. The same technique can be applied to the recited claims).
Regarding claims 5 and 15, DHUA, in view of YAN, teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 2 and 12.
YAN further teaches, further comprising: in the case the number of resource-light UEs exceeds a specified threshold for maximum resource-light UEs, one of i) reducing the number of RBs in the BWP, ii) transferring at least some of the resource-light UEs from the BWP to another BWP that has a lower number of RBs and is underloaded, or iii) creating a new BWP as a subset of the current BWP and transferring at least some of the UEs to the new BWP (YAN [103], [147], [149], teaches, either switching to another BWP or creating a BWP with required SCS, based on service type, delay spread or load compared to thresholds. The same technique can be applied to the recited claims).
Regarding claim 16, DHUA, in view of YAN, teaches system, as outlined in the rejection of claim 12.
DHUA further teaches, wherein the BWP analytics module is configured to: analyze the interference levels of a BWP; and if a percentage of PRBs in the BWP has an interference greater than an average interference of the BWP, identify the BWP as a candidate for modification (Claim is interpreted as identifying BWP as having high interference and apply BWP management. DHUA [49], [103] teaches, collision/congestion due to other coexisting technologies (i.e., interference) is a BWP performance measure, and a BWP is identified for a change due to experiencing higher interference).
Claims 7 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over DHUA, as applied to the rejection of claims 1 and 11 above, in view of DREILING; Ryan Patrick US 20240292277 A1, hereinafter DREILING.
Regarding claims 7 and 17, DHUA teaches the method/system, as outlined in the rejection of claims 1 and 11.
DHUA does not expressly teach, however, in the same field of endeavor, DREILING teaches, further comprising: analyzing the BWP performance measures to estimate a threshold to determine an optimal set of BWPs (DREILING [32] “the setting module 311 may be configured to set or define a first usage threshold for the access node 300. The setting module 311 may additionally be configured to set or define a second usage threshold for the access node 300, … Any of the thresholds … may be based on … a current BWP allocation, “, teaches, defining (=estimating) threshold based on current BWP allocation; [56] teaches, configuring an additional BWP (=optimal set of BWPs) from the threshold utilization).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the invention of DHUA to include the features as taught by DREILING above in order to provide methods of managing network resources (e.g., by dynamically allocating and de-allocating frequency resources to various RATs) in a telecommunications network (DREILING [0003]).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
WANG; Min US 20220039096 A1, SELECTING A BANDWIDTH PART (BWP);
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/MAHBUBUL BAR CHOWDHURY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2475
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