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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The IDS statements filed to date have been considered by the examiner.
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) 1-4, 6-8, 10-14, 16-18, and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Vrind et al., US 2020/0260404, (“Vrind”).
Independent Claims
Regarding claim 1, Vrind teaches “A method performed in a wireless communication system, the method comprising:
establishing a data connection between one or more user equipments (UEs) and a terrestrial cell (paragraph no. 0045, “At step 100, a data-session is established between several UEs with the terrestrial network”);
receiving one or more feedback parameters from each of the one or more UEs via the data connection (paragraph no. 0047, “At step 102, the UEs responds back with feedback-information or FACT, which is used by the network to select the UEs, which may be served with an augmented aerial cell by either CA or DC. The feedback parameters pertain to the current network traffic flow and mobility”; see Table 1 in paragraph no. 0043 for the FACT parameters); and
assigning an aerial cell to a first UE, among the one or more UEs, based on at least one of the one or more feedback parameters received from the first UE and a number of the one or more UEs present in a coverage area of the aerial cell (paragraph no. 0048, “At step 104, the UEs are selected for an aerial network through at least one DBS-cell based on information of the UE determined from at least one parameter. For example, the selection of UEs comprise calculating a weighted average based on one or more parameter for the UE at least based on a neural-network model executed by a TBS or a pre-existing DBS”),
wherein the coverage area is part of a terrestrial coverage area of the terrestrial cell” (see Fig. 3 which shows that the aerial coverage is included within the terrestrial coverage).
Regarding independent claim 11, this independent claim is a corresponding apparatus claim of the method claim 1 and recites similar subject matter. As such, the rationale behind the above rejection of claim 1 applies with equal force to this independent claim and as further amplified below to highlight the minor differences between the claims.
Regarding independent claim 11, a processor is implicit either in the gNB as shown in Fig. 1 or the network disclosed in e.g., paragraph no. 0044.
Dependent Claims
Regarding claims 2 and 12, Vrind teaches “connecting the first UE with the aerial cell in a dual connectivity (DC) mode” (paragraph no. 0047).
Regarding claims 3 and 13, Vrind teaches “wherein receiving the one or more feedback parameters comprises at least one of: receiving the one or more feedback parameters after an expiry of a time period; receiving the one or more feedback parameters after occurrence of at least one trigger event; or receiving the one or more feedback parameters based on a request from the terrestrial cell” (the last alternative limitation is taught in paragraph no. 0046).
Regarding claims 4 and 14, Vrind teaches “wherein assigning the aerial cell comprises:
determining based on the one or more feedback parameters of the first UE satisfying a corresponding threshold value; and
assigning the aerial cell for an aerial scheduling period based on a determination that the one or more feedback parameters satisfy the corresponding threshold value” (paragraph no. 0007).
Regarding claims 6 and 16, Vrind teaches “determining a trajectory of the aerial cell based on a location of the first UE, a number of the one or more UEs present in the aerial coverage area, and the one or more feedback parameters from the first UE; and connecting the first UE with the aerial cell based on the determined trajectory of the aerial cell” (see paragraph no. 0043 and Table 1 FACT parameters including probability of staying in the same zone for next ASP, at least one UE being present in the aerial coverage area and any one of the remaining parameters such as channel quality measurement; see paragraph no. 0049, “At step 106, the network indicates, to the drone cells, to reposition to serve the UEs of interest” and paragraph no. 0051, “At step 108, an aerial communication link is established between the selected UE and the DBS cell by deploying one or more Low Altitude Platform Station (LAPS) as a DBS in accordance with the determined position of DBS-cell to thereby augment network connectivity of the selected UE”).
Regarding claims 7 and 17, Vrind teaches “wherein the one or more feedback parameters comprise a channel quality index (CQI), an inference load (ILD), or a mobility status of the corresponding UE” (Table 1, paragraph no. 0043).
Regarding claims 8 and 18, Vrind teaches “wherein the CQI indicates a signal strength of a terrestrial signal associated with the terrestrial cell” (Table 1, paragraph no. 0043: Channel Quality measurement parameter).
Regarding claims 10 and 20, Vrind teaches “wherein the mobility status of the corresponding UE indicates a probability of the corresponding UE to stay static in the aerial coverage area for an aerial scheduling period” (Table 1, paragraph no. 0043: Probability of staying … next ASP parameter).
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.
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.
Claim(s) 5 and 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vrind in view of Sha et al., US 2023/0026782, (“Sha”).
Regarding claims 5 and 15, Vrind teaches “splitting an inference task to be executed on the first UE with a processing element associated with the aerial cell” (see paragraph nos. 0047 and 0048) but not “an edge server associated with the terrestrial cell.”
Sha teaches that a UE offloads some of its AI model computations to an edge server associated with a terrestrial base station (see Fig. 1 and paragraph nos. 0029 and 0030).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Vrind by incorporating the teachings of Sha to enable the UE to offload some of its AI model computations to a device in close proximity that has more resources (e.g., compute, storage, network, etc.) than the UE, as suggested by Sha in paragraph no. 0029.
Claim(s) 9 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Vrind in view of Kadri et al., US 2023/0072082, (“Kadri”).
Regarding claims 9 and 19, Vrind implicitly teaches “wherein the ILD indicates maximum load of an inference task based on available computation power with the corresponding UE” (see Table 1 and paragraph no. 0047 which discloses a neural network model used by the UE to determine the feedback parameters) but does not teach “wherein the ILD is determined based on required tera operations per second (TOPS) to execute the inference task and an available power to execute the inference task” as recited in claims 9 and 19.
Kadri teaches that a TOPS/W (indication of performance per power) is one metric associated with a DNN accelerator which is based on artificial intelligence, see paragraph no. 0025. Hence, Kardi teaches the limitation “wherein the ILD is determined based on required tera operations per second (TOPS) to execute the inference task and an available power to execute the inference task” and remedies the deficiencies of Vrind.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Vrind by incorporating the teachings of Kadri to enable the UE to use a known AI metric in its use of the neural network to determine the feedback parameters to be sent to the network.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
See the abstract of Vivanco, US 2024/0121673 and the abstract of the NPL publication entitled “Feedback-based algorithm for aerial cell’s trajectory using deep learning for efficient in 6G.” Both references are relevant at least to the independent claims.
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/WON TAE C KIM/Examiner, Art Unit 2414
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