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 .
Continued Examination Under 37 CFR 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 CFR 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 12/04/2025 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The amendment to the claims filed on 12/04/2025 complies with the requirements of 37 CFR 1.121(c) and has been entered. Objection to Amended Claim 8 is withdrawn. Rejection of Amended Claim 23 under § 112(a) is withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 12/04/2025 have been fully considered as follows:
Regarding the amendment of independent claims to require “group-based downlink control information (DCI) transmission including a plurality of acknowledgement (ACK) blocks for a plurality of respective UEs,” the limitation overcomes the rejection under §102 over Bai et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0124739 (hereinafter Bai). However, further search of this specific subject matter revealed Yu et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2018/0219665 (hereinafter Yu) as prior art reference. Therefore, a new ground of rejection was found for the independent claims under §103.
The dependent claims being substantially the same, §103 rejections remain in force except for Claim 30 wherein the subject matter “providing the beam report based on a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process index of an uplink (UL) HARQ process for the autonomous TCI state update, wherein the HARQ process index is predefined or configured via higher layer signaling” is allowable based on more refined search of prior art.
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 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 1-3, 6-8, 11-12, 14, 16-17, 19-21, and 23-28, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bai et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0124739 (hereinafter Bai) and further in view of Yu et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2018/0219665 (hereinafter Yu).
Regarding Amended Claim 1, Bai teaches a user equipment (UE), comprising: radio frequency (RF) circuitry; a memory; and processing circuitry configured to execute instructions stored in the memory to cause the UE (“an apparatus is provided for wireless communication. The apparatus comprises: a memory; and at least one processor coupled to the memory. The at least one processor is configured to: receive scheduling information . . . from a base station,” i.e., contains RF circuitry – See [¶0006] and Fig. 3; and “the UE 104 and the base station 180 may be respectively configured to control and coordinate autonomous updating by the UE of Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) states” – See [¶0058] and Fig. 1) to:
transmit, via the RF circuitry, a beam report to indicate an autonomous transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state update from a first TCI state to a second TCI state for a serving cell (“(2) if the UE is configured with a maximum number (N) of configurable TCI states, the UE reports the autonomous update by replacing an entry in a TCI state list with a qualified updated TCI state, (3) the UE selects the entry in the TCI state list to replace based on an ID, (4) the UE reports the autonomous update to the base station and replaces a TCI state ID in a PDSCH TCI state list with a TCI state ID associated with a reported CSI-RS resource, (5) the UE reports the autonomous update to the base station by revising content of a TCI state configuration ID in a PDSCH TCI state list to reflect a TCI state ID associated with a reported CSI-RS resource, and/or (6) the UE revises the content by revising a reference signal in a QCL information field of the corresponding TCI state configuration to reflect a TCI state ID associated the reported CSI-RS resource ID” – See [¶0127], whereby “the reported TCI states may already be configured for the downlink channel ( e.g., PDSCH and/or PDCCH)” – See [¶0178], e.g., by using “Enhanced TCI States Activation/Deactivation for UE specific PDSCH[/PDCCH] MAC CE, which is a feature of some 5G NR specifications” – See [¶0169]; and whereby each TCI State is described in ASN.1 format per each serving cell index – See [¶0092]; see also 3GPP TS 38.321:121-122 (defining: “TCI State ID: This field indicates the TCI state identified by TCI-StateId as specified in TS 38.331 [5]”; 3GPP TS 38.331:660-661 (defining the IE TCI-State which “associates one or two DL reference signals with a corresponding quasi-colocation (QCL) type” wherein the TCI state is identified by “TCI-StateId [which] is used to identify one TCI-State configuration” and the QLC-Info field indicating the cell value of type ServCellIndex as “[t]he UE's serving cell in which the referenceSignal is configured. If the field is absent, it applies to the serving cell in which the TCI-State is configured. The RS can be located on a serving cell other than the serving cell in which the TCI-State is configured”); in sum, Bai teaches (1) UE autonomous update per TCI state ID and per serving cell index indicated for each TCI state ID that is autonomously updated, and (2) RS measurement may be done by the UE on a serving cell other than the serving cell configuring a TCI state for the UE);
monitor for a group-based downlink control information (DCI) transmission including a plurality of acknowledgement (ACK) blocks for a plurality of respective UEs (“[t]he physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) carries DCI within one or more control channel elements (CCEs)” – See [¶0063] and “if the UE transmits the CSI report within a PUSCH, the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) identifier (ID) as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report,” i.e., the ACK comes in a DCI – See [¶0120]);
determine an ACK or a negative acknowledgement (NACK) indicating whether the beam report was decoded (“autonomous updates are controlled and coordinated based on whether an acknowledgement (ACK) for the CSI report is received by the UE” – See [¶0088]; and “the UE does not perform an autonomous TCI state update . . . if no ACK is received” – See [¶0089]),
in response to determining the ACK, activate the second TCI state of the autonomous TCI state update (“If an ACK is received, it may be useful for the UE to delay an autonomous update of a TCI state to allow for receipt of TCI instructions from the base station” – See [¶0089], e.g., “the UE 402 only autonomously updates the TCI state if the UE 402 first determines that it is permitted to do so” – See [¶0098] or “based on a common set of predetermined rules or conditions, which may be preconfigured ( e.g., programmed) at the UE 402 and at the base station 404” and “allow the base station 404 to be prepared to receive and process signal transmissions based on autonomously updated TCI states”– See [¶0099] and Figs. 4 and 5); and
in response to determining the NACK, re-transmit the beam report (“if no ACK is received, there may be issues preventing proper communication between the base station and the UE” – See [¶0089], then, depending on “the type of CSI-RS (e.g., periodic CSI-RS, aperiodic CSI-RS, semi-persistent CSI-RS” – See [¶0090], e.g., if CSI-RS was performed on a grant Type 2 provided by PDCCH with cg-RetransmissionTimer configured1 a retransmission occurs when this timer expires).
Bai does not teach a group-based downlink control information (DCI) transmission including a plurality of acknowledgement (ACK) blocks for a plurality of respective UEs wherein the determination is based on the monitoring and an ACK index corresponding to an ACK block for the UE from the plurality of ACK blocks for the plurality of respective UEs, and wherein the ACK index is configured by higher layer signaling.
Yu teaches a group-based downlink control information (DCI) transmission including a plurality of acknowledgement (ACK) blocks for a plurality of respective UEs (“a method of transmitting feedback information comprising receiving, by a base station, uplink data separately sent by a plurality of user equipments (UEs) . . . determining, by the base station, feedback information for uplink data sent by each of the plurality of UEs, where the feedback information indicates an acknowledgement (ACK) or a negative acknowledgement (NACK)” and “transmitting, by the base station by using one control channel, a plurality of pieces of feedback information respectively corresponding to the uplink data sent by the plurality of UEs.” – See [¶0008] and Fig. 1, e.g., the base station uses “a second DCI format for simultaneously performing an ACK feedback or a NACK feedback on uplink data of a plurality of UEs and a plurality of pieces of uplink data of one UE” – See [¶0086])
Yu further teaches wherein the determination is based on the monitoring and an ACK index corresponding to an ACK block for the UE from the plurality of ACK blocks for the plurality of respective UEs (“The quantity of feedback information included in the control channel is represented by N, and N indicates that feedback information may be sent to N UEs by using one control channel” – See [¶0128] and the “UE determines a location that is of an ACK feedback or a NACK feedback sent by the base station to the UE and that is in DCI carried on an M-PDCCH . . . according to at least one piece of the following information,” e.g., “determining, by the UE according to a sequence index that is of a media access control random access response MAC RAR sent by the base station to the UE and that is in an RAR message, the location that is of the feedback information and that is in the downlink control information” – See [¶0131]) and
wherein the ACK index is configured by higher layer signaling (“the base station may configure, by using the radio resource control signaling or the media access control signaling, the quantity of feedback information included in the control channel” – See [¶0128], e.g., “[t]he UE implicitly obtains, according to a sequence index that is of a MAC RAR sent by the base station to the UE and that is in an RAR message, the location that is of the ACK/NACK feedback sent by the base station to the UE and that is in the DCI” – See [¶0133], i.e., the index is configured by higher layer signaling).
Thus, Bai and Yu each teaches a UE and a method of monitoring a DCI containing feedback information for a previous UE PUSCH transmission. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have understood that the DCI containing ACK/NACK for multiple UEs whereby each UE identifies its corresponding ACK/NACK based on the monitoring of the DCI and an index configured by higher level signaling, e.g., the preamble sequence of a MAC RAR message, could have been substituted in for the DCI sent through a PDCCH in Bai because both provide for ACK/NACK feedback to a specific UE PUSCH transmission. Furthermore, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been able to carry out the substitution through techniques known in the art. Finally, the substitution achieves the predictable result of sending ACK/NACK feedback to multiple UEs to reduce the amount of system resources usage and overhead, as taught by Yu.
Therefore, Amended Claim 1 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 2, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai further teaches the UE of claim 1 wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the UE to:
receive the DCI transmission via a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) and containing an ACK corresponding to a decoding status of the beam report (“The physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) carries DCI within one or more control channel elements (CCEs)” – See [¶0063] and “the UE determines whether to autonomously update a TCI state based on whether an ACK is received from the base station in response to a CSI report transmitted from the UE to the base station,” e.g. “the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) identifier (ID) as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” to confirm that the CSI report was correctly decoded at the MAC layer – See [¶0120]).
However, Bai does not teach an ACK radio network temporary identifier (ACK-RNTI) that indicates the ACK or the NACK corresponding to a decoding status of the beam report.
Yu further teaches this limitation (“the UE determines, by using a scrambling code, whether the M-PDCCH carries DCI used to transmit a plurality of ACKs/NACKs,” whereby “[a] feasible manner is to define a special scrambling code,” e.g., “the special scrambling code may be a specific radio network temporary identifier RNTI (RNTI for short), such as an acknowledgement-RNTI, an M-PDCCH scrambled by using the special RNTI is the M-PDCCH that carries the plurality of ACKs/NACKs” – See [¶0105]).
Therefore, Claim 2 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 3, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai further teaches the UE will monitor for the DCI transmission based on an X number of symbols or slots after transmission of the beam report (“[w]hen the CSI report is transmitted in a PUSCH, the ACK may be a UL grant scheduling a new transmission using the same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) identifier (ID) as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See [¶0089], [¶0120] and Fig. 11, step 1102, i.e., the UE is configured with a cg-RetransmissionTimer as explained in Note 1 supra; furthermore, 3GPP TS 38.321:66 teaches that “RRC configures the following parameters when retransmissions on configured uplink grant is configured: –cg-RetransmissionTimer: the duration after a configured grant (re)transmission of a HARQ process when the UE shall not autonomously retransmit that HARQ process” and “periodicity: periodicity of the configured grant,” whereby a person of ordinary skills in the art would know that RRC configurations are defined by 3GPP TS 38.331 V16.5.0 (2021-06), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.331), e.g., at page 393-394, the “cg-RetransmissionTimer Indicates the initial value of the configured retransmission timer (see TS 38.321 [3]) in multiples of periodicity” wherein different “periodicities are supported depending on the configured subcarrier spacing [symbols],” i.e., the UE will monitor the DCI for an ACK after transmission of the beam report for at least cg-RetransmissionTimer expressed in multiple of periodicities, a periodicity being an integer X of symbols; additionally, the UE waits for cg-minDFI-Delay symbols, a “minimum duration (in unit of symbols) from the ending symbol of the PUSCH to the starting symbol of the PDCCH containing the downlink feedback indication (DFI) carrying HARQ-ACK for this PUSCH. The HARQ-ACK received before this minimum duration is not considered as valid for this PUSCH” – See id.)
wherein X is an integer greater than zero that is predefined, configured by a radio resource control (RRC) signaling, or reported by a UE capability (e.g., the periodicity and/or the periodicityExt is a parameter of the RRC IE ConfiguredGrantConfig used to configure uplink transmission without dynamic grant, with specific values of 2, 7 or n modulo 12, with n having values between 1 and 5120 depending on the subcarrier spacing of the serving cell/BWP – See 3GPP TS 38.331:394; or cg-minDFI-Delay symbols means 7 or m modulo 14, with m between 1 and 16 – See id.:393; see also Bai:[¶¶0059-60] (“UEs are configured with the slot format (dynamically through DL control information (DCI), or semi-statically/statically through radio resource control (RRC) signaling) through a received slot format indicator (SFI)” and “for slot configuration 0 and numerology there are 14 symbols/slot and 2μ slots/subframe” whereby “subcarrier spacing and symbol length/duration are a function of the numerology”)).
Therefore, Claim 3 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 6, dependent from Claim 3, Bai in view of Yu further teaches the UE of claim 3, wherein the DCI transmission schedules if the CSI report is transmitted within a PUSCH, the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same HARQ ID as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See Bai:[¶0136], i.e., when the DCI contains a grant for a new transmission the ACK is determined; “for PUSCHs in a same HARQ process, that is, for both an initially transmitted PUSCH and a retransmitted PUSCH, ACK/NACK feedbacks corresponding to uplink data in the same HARQ process are on a same location in the DCI” and “the UE can determine, from the location, feedback information of initially transmitted uplink data and feedback information of retransmitted uplink data that are sent by the base station to the UE” – See Yu:[¶0099]).
Therefore, Claim 6 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 7, dependent from Amended Claim 1, the UE of Bai contains processing circuitry further configured to cause the UE to:
determine the ACK or the NACK via a dedicated search space (SS) or a dedicated control resource set (CORESET) of a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) wherein the dedicated SS or the dedicated CORESET is configured per bandwidth part (BWP), per component carrier (CC) or per frequency band ((“The physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) carries DCI within one or more control channel elements (CCEs), each CCE including nine RE groups (REGs), each REG including four consecutive REs in an OFDM symbol” – See [¶0062] and Fig. 2A, whereby the PDCCH (and the DCI containing the ACK/NACK) is decoded based on a received slot format indicator (SFI) which is configured to the UE “semi-statically/statically through radio resource control (RRC) signaling” – See [¶0059]; furthermore the UE “identif[ies] an indication of the associated TRP for each of the CSI-RS resource sets based on which CORESET receives a DCI” – See [¶0187], i.e., the UE is configured with (at least) a CORESET identifying a search space for resources used in the communication with the base station; e.g., the ServingCellConfigCommon used to configure cell specific parameters of a UE's serving cell configures controlResourceSetZero and searchSpaceZero which are used in any common or UE-specific search spaces to search for downlink control information received on the PDCCH – See 3GPP TS 38.331:625-627; furthermore, the “ControlResourceSet used to configure a time/frequency control resource set (CORESET) in which to search for downlink control information” is defined as a RRC level information element that contains, among other fields, a coresetPoolIndex field which gets a CORESET pool ID defined by the network, and a ControlResourceSetId field which identifies the CORESET instance, and “[t]he controlResourceSetId is unique among the BWPs of a serving cell” – See 3GPP TS 38.331 at page 398-400; hence, a dedicated CORESET is configured per bandwidth part (BWP)).
Therefore, Claim 7 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 8, dependent from Claim 7, Bai further teaches the UE of claim 7, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the UE to:
monitor the dedicated SS or the dedicated CORESET a number of symbols or slots after transmission of the beam report based on a timer duration (because “if the CSI report is received within a PUSCH, the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same HARQ ID as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See, e.g., [¶0123], the cg-RetransmissionTimer must be configured for the UE HARQ process as explained in Note 1 supra; therefore, the UE monitoring for the PDCCH carrying the DCI from the base station whereby “[t]he CORESET pool ID is an indication of TRP,” i.e., the base station – See [¶0168] will wait for at least cg-RetransmissionTimer duration before a retransmission)
determine the NACK in response to the timer duration expiring before detecting the ACK by decoding a DCI (a UE would determine a NACK and retransmit the beam report if the cg-RetransmissionTimer expires and no DCI carrying a grant with the same HARQ process ID was received).
Therefore, Claim 8 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 11, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai further teaches the UE of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the UE to:
transmit the beam report via a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC CE) by at least one of: a periodic transmission, a semi-persistent transmission, or an aperiodic transmission (“autonomous updates of TCI states are controlled and coordinated based on the . . . . . the type of CSI report (e.g., aperiodic CSI report, semi-persistent CSI report) by setting as a default that the base station is to expect an autonomous update of a TCI state when . . . a CSI report is aperiodic or semipersistent, and that no autonomous update of a TCI state is expected to occur when the CSI-RS is periodic” – See [¶0090]; furthermore, a MAC CE may be used to send a CSI report as part of “MAC layer functionality associated with . . . scheduling information reporting, error correction through HARQ” – See [¶0066], e.g., based on the MAC PDU containing a specific MAC header and MAC CE; see also §§ 5.18.2 & 3, 3GPP TS 38.321:80 describing how the network activates configured Semi-persistent CSI-RS resource sets of a Serving Cell by sending the SP CSI-RS Resource Set Activation/Deactivation MAC CE and select among the configured aperiodic CSI trigger states of a Serving Cell by sending the Aperiodic CSI Trigger State Subselection MAC CE),
determine the ACK in response to receiving a DCI scheduling a new transmission for a same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process as a HARQ process for the beam report (“When the CSI report is transmitted in a PUSCH, the ACK may be a UL grant scheduling a new transmission using the same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) identifier (ID) as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See [¶0089], [¶0120] and Fig. 11, step 1102; therefore an UL grant (e.g., received in a DCI carrying the ACK) with same HARQ ID is an indication that the beam report was successfully decoded).
Therefore, Claim 11 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 12, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai further teaches the UE of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the UE to:
activate the second TCI state of the autonomous TCI state update in response to determining the ACK based on an action delay of N symbols or slots (the UE “waits a configurable period of time after receiving the ACK to autonomously update a TCI state” – See [¶0088] and “[i]f an ACK is received, it may be useful for the UE to delay an autonomous update of a TCI state to allow for receipt of TCI instructions from the base station” – See [¶0089], [¶0121] and Fig. 11 at step 1108, i.e., an offset of N symbols applies),
wherein N is an integer greater than zero that is predefined, configured by an RRC signaling, or reported by a UE capability (e.g., each serving cell may configure through RRC IE ServingCellConfig field the enableBeamSwitchTiming parameter for “the beam switching triggering behaviour as defined in clause 5.2.1.5.1 of TS 38.214 [19]” – See 3GPP TS 38.331:621; whereby § 5.2.1.5.1, 3GPP TS 38.214 V16.6.0 (2021-06), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for data (Release 16)” (hereinafter TS 38.214, stating, at page 59, that “there is a scheduling offset between a last symbol of the PDCCH carrying the DCI” with the ACK for the CSI report and the application of the new TCI-State, i.e., “the UE reported threshold beamSwitchTiming, as defined in [13, TS 38.306]”); see 3GPP TS 38.306 V16.5.0 (2021-06), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; User Equipment (UE) radio access capabilities (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.306), at page 29-48, providing that the UE Capability BandNR parameters defines the beamSwitchTiming of value (sym224 or sym336) to be used “to determine UE expectation/behaviour for aperiodic CSI-RS for tracking and latency requirements”).
Therefore, Claim 12 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 14, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai further teaches the UE wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:
configure the beam report based on one or more measurements of at least one of: a synchronization signal block (SSB) or a channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS) (“a base station may indicate to the UE that a downlink signal (e.g., a PDCCH and/or a PDSCH signal) will use the same beam as a reference signal (e.g., CSI-RS or SS block) configured for the UE” – See [¶0076] whereby “[t]he base station may schedule the UE to receive a CSI-RS on multiple candidate beams” and the “UE may perform a CSI-RS beam sweep to measure the reference signal received power (RSRP) of the CSI-RS for each candidate beam. The base station may configure the UE for a channel state information (CSI) report associated with the CSI-RS beam sweep and the UE may report the top K beams in terms of RSRP, where K represents a positive integer” – See [¶0078]; further “reporting an update of a TCI state are disclosed” whereby “the UE may report up to K beams (corresponding to K TCI states) with RSRP” – See [¶0091])
wherein the beam report comprises at least one of: an SSB resource index (SSBRI) associated with the SSB or a CSI-RS resource index (CRI) associated with the CSI-RS, and one or more beam qualities corresponding to the at least one of: the SSBRI or the CRI (“autonomous updates of TCI states are controlled and coordinated based on . . . the type of CSI report (e.g., aperiodic CSI report, semi-persistent CSI report)” – See [¶0090] whereby in a report of TCI states, “a TCI state may include the source reference signal (RS) (e.g., CSI-RS) for the TCI state” – See [¶0093] and Table 1 showing elements ‘cri-rs’ of value type ‘Resource ID’ and ‘ssb’ of value type ‘SSB-Index’ identifying the measured CSI-RS (or SSB used as RS) in the report; furthermore, the CSI reporting framework is standardized to contain associated beam qualities, e.g., the ‘cri-RSRP’ and ‘ssb-Index-RSRP’ qualities measured for the indicated ‘cri’ and ‘ssb-index’– See 3GPP TS 38.331:410 (showing fields of the CSI-ReportConfig Information Element; and, in one example, “the base station determines whether the UE will autonomously update its TCI state by receiving an RSRP value, an SINR value, an RSRQ value, or other metric based on a measurement of the CSI-RS, from the UE and comparing to a threshold” – See [¶0112]).
Therefore, Claim 14 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Amended Claim 16, Bai in view of Yu teaches a base station comprising: radio frequency (RF) circuitry; a memory; and processing circuitry (“The apparatus includes: a memory; and at least one processor coupled to the memory. The at least one processor is configured to: transmit scheduling information that schedules a CSI-RS to a user equipment UE” and “receive an autonomously updated TCI state from the UE if the apparatus permits the UE to autonomously update the TCI state” – See Bai:[¶0008]) configured to execute instructions stored in the memory to cause the base station to:
transmit, via the RF circuitry, higher layer signaling to a user equipment (UE) to configure an acknowledgement (ACK) index for determining an ACK or a negative acknowledgment (NACK) for a beam report from a plurality of ACK blocks in a group-based downlink control information (DCI) transmission (when using a “DCI format for simultaneously performing an ACK feedback or a NACK feedback on uplink data of a plurality of UEs” – See Yu:[¶0086], “[t]he quantity of feedback information included in the control channel is represented by N, and N indicates that feedback information may be sent to N UEs by using one control channel” whereby “before sending the control channel, the base station may send, to the UE, the quantity of feedback information included in the control channel,” e.g., “the base station may configure, by using the radio resource control signaling,” i.e., RRC signaling, “the quantity of feedback information included in the control channel” – See Yu:[¶0129] and “one UE determines a location that is of an ACK feedback or a NACK feedback sent by the base station to the UE and that is in DCI carried on an M-PDCCH” using information that “includes an identifier of the UE, information about resources used by the UE to send uplink data, a transmission parameter of the control channel, or the quantity of feedback information carried on the control channel; or determining, by the UE according to a sequence index that is of a media access control random access response MAC RAR sent by the base station to the UE and that is in an RAR message, the location that is of the feedback information and that is in the downlink control information” – See Yu:[¶0131])
receive the beam report from the UE based on an autonomous transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state update (“autonomous updates of TCI states at a UE may be controlled and coordinated based on configuration parameters from a base station by . . . indicating in a CSI report configuration whether an autonomous beam update is permitted and will be performed” – See Bai:[¶0084], and “the base station determines whether the UE will autonomously update its TCI state by receiving an RSRP value, an SINR value, an RSRQ value, or other metric based on a measurement of the CSI-RS, from the UE” – See Bai:[¶0112], and if an “applicable threshold is exceeded” then “the base station waits to receive a report ( e.g., a CSI report) from the UE of its autonomously updated TCI state” – See Bai:[¶0113]); and
transmit, via the RF circuitry, the group-based DCI transmission including the plurality of ACK blocks based on whether the beam report was decoded successfully (“transmitting, by the base station by using one control channel, a plurality of pieces of feedback information respectively corresponding to the uplink data sent by the plurality of UEs.” – See Yu:[¶0008] and Fig. 1, whereby the “TCI reports transmitted from a UE to the base station may be properly received at the base station and hence the base station will be informed of any autonomously updated TCI states at the UE” – See Bai:[¶0086] and “the base station 404 may transmit an ACK 409 to the UE 402 if the CSI report 408 is successfully received at the base station 404” – See [¶0096] and Fig. 4, wherein “[t]he controller/processor 375 is also responsible for error detection using an ACK and/or NACK protocol” – See Bai:[¶0072] and Fig. 3; i.e., the base station transmits the ACK/NACK blocks in a group-based DCI based on whether each beam report from each UE was decoded successfully).
Therefore, Amended Claim 16 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 17, dependent from Amended Claim 16, Yu further teaches the base station of claim 16, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the base station to: transmit the DCI transmission based on a radio network temporary identifier (RNTI) specific to indicating the ACK or the NACK (“if a size of DCI that is of an M-PDCCH and that carries a plurality of ACKs/NACKs is the same as a size of DCI that is of an M-PDCCH and that is used to schedule other downlink data or uplink data, the UE determines, by using a scrambling code, whether the M-PDCCH carries DCI used to transmit a plurality of ACKs/ NACKs” by using “a special scrambling code,” e.g., “the special scrambling code may be a specific radio network temporary identifier RNTI (RNTI for short), such as an acknowledgement-RNTI, an M-PDCCH scrambled by using the special RNTI is the M-PDCCH that carries the plurality of ACKs/NACKs” – See [¶0105])
wherein the RNTI is predefined or configured via a radio resource control (RRC) signaling (e.g., § 4.4, 3GPP TS 38.331, at page 30-31, states that “RRC protocol includes the following main functions: . . . assignment/modification of UE identity (C-RNTI, full I-RNTI, etc.),” and, at page 601, the RRC IE RNTI-Value as an integer between 0-65535, i.e., a value configured by RRC).
Therefore, Claim 17 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 19, dependent from Amended Claim 16, Bai further teaches the base station of claim 16, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the base station to:
monitor a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) or a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) (“the base station transmits one or more indicator(s) to the UE . . . where the one or more indicators includes one or more of a CSI-RS configuration within an RRC message, a CSI-RS report configuration message within an RRC message, and DCI that schedules the CSI reports” – See [¶0106]; i.e., the UE is “configured to transmit the CSI report within one of a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) or a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH)” – See [¶0239], and the base station monitors UL channels for the scheduled CSI reports)
based on X number of symbols or slots after transmission of the beam report before transmitting the DCI, wherein the DCI is configured to schedule a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) or the PUSCH (the base station should not transmit for “the minimum duration (in unit of symbols) from the ending symbol of the PUSCH to the starting symbol of the PDCCH containing the downlink feedback indication (DFI) carrying HARQ-ACK for this PUSCH” – See 3GPP TS 38.331:390-96, describing the cg-minDFI-Delay parameter of the RRC IE ConfiguredGrantConfig; whereby “if the CSI report is received within a PUSCH, the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same HARQ ID as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See Bai:[¶0123], i.e., the ACK is contained in a DCI scheduling a PDSCH or a PUSCH transmission)
wherein X is an integer greater than zero that is predefined, configured by a radio resource control (RRC) signaling, or reported by a UE capability (the cg-minDFI-Delay number of symbols is configured through RRC as a parameter of the ConfiguredGrantConfig field – see 3GPP TS 38.331: 390-96).
Therefore, Claim 19 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 20, dependent from Amended Claim 16, the base station in Bai is further configured to:
allocate an uplink (UL) hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process for the autonomous TCI state update based on a HARQ process index that is predefined or configured via higher layer signaling (“the base station determines whether a UE will autonomously update a TCI state based on whether an ACK was transmitted to the UE in response to a CSI report received from the UE within an uplink channel (e.g., PUSCH and/or PUCCH). For example, if the CSI report is received within a PUSCH, the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same HARQ ID as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report,” e.g., the new transmission is the updated TCI/beam report and the HARQ process ID is predefined by the UE when transmitting the previous CSI report – See [¶0123] and Fig. 4, showing the UE sending the report with autonomous update of TCI state at step 416; and “the UE to apply an autonomously updated TCI state only after receiving an ACK for the CSI report,” e.g., in a new transmission grant with the same HARQ process ID – See [¶0089]);
wherein the DCI schedules a transmission for the UL HARQ process based on the beam report (“autonomous updates are controlled and coordinated based on whether an acknowledgement (ACK) for the CSI report is received by the UE” – See [¶0088], i.e., the new transmission is scheduled with the same HARQ process ID if the CSI report was correctly received, otherwise another HARQ process must be used) or a re-transmission for the UL HARQ process (e.g., as disclosed in 3GPP TS 38.321:47, “[i]f cg-RetransmissionTimer is configured, retransmissions with the same HARQ process may be performed on any configured grant configuration if the configured grant configurations have the same TBS,” i.e., the scheduled transmission for the UL HARQ process may be used for a re-transmission if the received HARQ process ID is different)
wherein scheduling the transmission for the UL HARQ process indicates the ACK, and wherein the retransmission indicates the NACK (“if the CSI report is received within a PUSCH, the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same HARQ ID as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See [¶0123], i.e., scheduling a new transmission with the same HARQ process ID means an ACK; and “it may be better that the UE does not perform an autonomous TCI state update since, if no ACK is received, there may be issues preventing proper communication between the base station and the UE” – See [¶0089], i.e., scheduling a new transmission with a different HARQ process ID or not receiving feedback in time, e.g., before a timer expires, means a NACK). In addition, Yu also teaches that the same UL HARQ process ID received in the DCI means ACK (“in one HARQ process, the base station may transmit, on a same location in the downlink control information, feedback information corresponding to initially transmitted uplink data and feedback information corresponding to retransmitted uplink data” – See [¶0135]).
Therefore, Claim 20 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 21, dependent from Amended Claim 16, the base station in Bai is configured to transmit the DCI in a dedicated search space (SS) or a dedicated control resource set (CORESET) configured with the same limitations as recited in Claim 7, without other limitations.
In addition, Bai teaches transmit the DCI via an old beam or a beam selected from the beam report (“a base station may indicate to the UE that a downlink signal (e.g., a PDCCH and/or a PDSCH signal) will use the same beam as a reference signal (e.g., CSI-RS or SS block) configured for the UE” – See [¶0076]; or “the UE receives scheduling information for a downlink data channel based on the updated TCI states” – See [¶0191] and Figs. 24-25, wherein the scheduling is sent in a DCI).
Because Claims 7 and 16, as amended, are obvious over Bai in view of Yu, Claim 21 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Amended Claim 23, dependent from Amended Claim 16, Bai further teaches the base station of claim 16 wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the base station to:
receive the beam report based on CSI-reportConfig) that indicates whether the beam report is transmitted based on the CSI report may be in a PUSCH and/or a PUCCH” – See [¶0088], whereby “[t]he PUCCH may be located as indicated in one configuration” – See [¶0065] and Fig. 2D, and further this configuration may be RRC IE CSI-reportConfig which is used to configure “a semi-persistent report sent on PUCCH on the cell in which the CSI-ReportConfig is included . . . See TS 38.214 [19], clause 5.2.1” wherein the field pucch-CSI-ResourceList “[i]ndicates which PUCCH resource to use for reporting on PUCCH” – See 3GPP TS 38.331:409-414; i.e., the legacy PUCCH transmission is used for reporting based on the indication in the CSI-ReportConfig configuration received from the base station).
Therefore, Amended Claim 23 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Amended Claim 24, dependent from Amended Claim 16, Bai further teaches wherein the processing circuitry of the base station is further configured to cause the base station to:
in response to the beam report being associated with a plurality of beams (“The base station may schedule the UE to receive a CSI-RS on multiple candidate beams” and “may configure the UE for a channel state information (CSI) report associated with the CSI-RS beam sweep and the UE may report the top K beams in terms of RSRP, where K represents a positive integer” – See [¶0078] and “the UE 402 and the base station 404 perform consistent and coordinated TCI state update operations based on a shared and predetermined set of conditions or rules, which may be set forth in wireless communication standards (e.g., 3GPP standards) and implemented at the UE 402 and the base station 404” – See [¶0102] and Fig. 4)
provide the ACK with a beam based on a beam quality from the plurality of beams associated with the beam report (e.g., the “autonomous updates of TCI states at a UE may be controlled and coordinated based on reference signal (RS) measurement results” whereby “the UE may determine whether a reported RSRP of a reported beam is larger than a threshold and, if so, the UE may autonomously update a TCI state” – See [¶0085], and also “the base station determines whether the UE will autonomously update its TCI state by receiving an RSRP value, an SINR value, an RSRQ value, or other metric based on a measurement of the CSI-RS, from the UE and comparing to a threshold” and “may compare the measured metric (e.g., the RSRP value, SINR value, RSRQ value) to a configurable first power threshold” whereby “both the UE and the base station are programmed with or configured with the same threshold values so that the two devices reach the same determination based on the measured metric” – See [¶0112], i.e., the ACK with the updated TCI state of a beam is based on a beam quality),
wherein the beam report includes a TCI index and a beam quality associated with the beam of the plurality of beams (“the CSI report further includes an indication for each TCI state in the CSI report for indicating whether the TCI state is updated by the UE” – See [¶0128], i.e., a TCI index is associated with each updated TCI state – See, e.g., Fig. 22, and “the base station receives a CSI report (e.g., for reporting the TCI) that includes an indication of the TCI state and an associated measured metric” – See [¶0128] and Fig. 14).
Therefore, Amended Claim 24 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 25, dependent from Amended Claim 16, Bai further teaches the base station wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the base station to:
receive the beam report comprising different reference signals (RSs) that are associated with a TCI state in the autonomous TCI state update (“the UE determines whether to autonomously update a TCI state by measuring one or more of a reference signal received power (RSRP), a signal-to-interference plus-noise ratio (SINR), a reference signal received quality (RSRQ), or other metrics based on a measurement of the CSI-RS and comparing to a threshold” – See [¶0108]; and “the base station receives a CSI report (e.g., for reporting the TCI) that includes an indication of the TCI state and an associated measured metric” – See [¶0128] and Fig. 14, each TCI state ID associated with a measured RS, identified either by a either a CSI-RS ID or a SSB Index – See [¶0093] and Table 1, and “UE may report the top K beams in terms of RSRP, where K represents a positive integer. The UE may autonomously update the TCI state for a downlink channel (e.g., PDCCH and/or PDSCH) based on the CSI-RS” and “The base station may schedule the downlink channel (e.g., PDCCH and/or PDSCH) using the updated TCI state on the replaced beams. This procedure can save signaling overhead by avoiding one or more MAC-CE transmissions to update the TCI state configuration for the downlink channel” – See [¶0081]);
determine an updated beam based on a TCI state index associated with the beam report (“the UE replaces the TCI states that are not currently configured and are among the top K TCI states in the report” by the measured metric – See [¶0092], wherein “a TCI state may be updated by replacing a TCI state ID in a PDSCH TCI state list with a TCI state ID associated with the reported CSI-RS resource” – See [¶0095] and the “UE may also indicate whether the TCI state update has been automatically performed in the report” – See [¶0173]) and at least one of:
a highest beam quality among a plurality of beams, a priority order of the plurality of beams, or an indication of the updated beam from a higher layer signaling (when “the UE replaces the TCI states that are not currently configured and are among the top K TCI states in the report” by RSRP, “if the UE is configured with fewer than N TCI states, then the UE first tries to append the reported qualified TCI states in the TCI state list. One the TCI list is full, the UE then replaces a current TCI state with the reported qualified TCI state based on a predefined rule, such as a rule specifying that the UE replace the current TCI state based on the order of its ID (also referred to as a TCI state ID). For example, the UE may replace a TCI state associated with a smallest TCI state ID (e.g., a TCI state ID number having the smallest value) first” – See [¶0092], i.e., the priority order is the smallest TCI state ID updated first); and
provide the ACK for the updated beam to be activated (“if the CSI report is transmitted within a PUSCH, the ACK schedules a new transmission using a same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) identifier (ID) as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See [¶0136], i.e., a DCI may carry the ACK and schedule the uplink with the smallest TCI state ID codepoint of the DCI 'Transmission Configuration Indication' field – See, e.g., § 6.1.3.14 of 3GPP TS 38.321; furthermore the base station may provide an ACK by activating the updated TCI state through MAC CE but that would be suboptimal to autonomous TCI update, as explained, supra, – See [¶0081]).
Therefore, Claim 25 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 26, dependent from Amended Claim 16, Bai further teaches wherein the processing circuitry of the base station is further configured to cause the base station to:
provide an indication of whether the beam report is to be configured for a downlink (DL) TCI update, an uplink (UL) TCI update or both to DL TCI update and the UL TCI update to enable a user equipment (UE) to update a TCI state based on the indication (“FIG. 23 illustrates portions of a MAC subheader 2300 for TCI States Activation/Deactivation” via MAC-CE, wherein “[t]he MAC subheader 2300 includes various fields, as shown, for listing the activation/deactivation status of TCI states along with a coreset pool ID, a serving cell ID, and a BWP ID” wherein the BWD ID indicates UL or DL BWP for which “TCI states are updated, such as the TCI states listed in the MAC PDU 2300” – See [¶0170]; furthermore, each octet in Fig. 23 may contain a link indicator, for UL, DL, or joint UL/DL, inside each Tk octet associated with a TCI State ID to be reported)
Therefore, Claim 26 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Amended Claim 27, Bai also teaches a baseband processor for a user equipment (UE), the baseband processor configured to, when executing instructions stored in a memory (“elements may be implemented as a ‘processing system’ that includes one or more processors,” e.g., “baseband processors,” whereby “[o]ne or more processors in the processing system may execute software” – See [¶0045] and “[i]f implemented in software, the functions may be stored on or encoded as one or more instructions or code on a computer readable medium” – See [¶0046]) perform operations comprising: the steps performed by the UE of Amended Claim 1. Because Amended Claim 1 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu, Amended Claim 27 is also obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Regarding Claim 28, dependent from Amended Claim 27, it recites the same limitations as disclosed with the same language in Claim 17, and no additional limitations. Because Claims 17 and 27, as amended, are obvious over Bai in view of Yu, Claim 28 is also obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
In sum, Claims 1-3, 6-8, 11-12, 14, 16-17, 19-21, and 23-28, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Bai in view of Yu.
Claim 10 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bai in view of Yu as applied to Amended Claim 1 above, and further in view of Awad et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0361247 (hereinafter Awad).
Regarding Amended Claim 10, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai in view of Yu further teaches processing circuitry further configured to cause the UE to:
start a timer at X number of symbols or slots after transmission of the beam report wherein X is an integer greater than zero that is predefined, configured by a RRC signaling, or reported by a UE capability (“UEs are configured with the slot format . . . semi-statically/statically through radio resource control (RRC) signaling . . . through a received slot format indicator (SFI)” as applied “to a 5G/NR frame structure” – See [¶0059] and “configuration parameters from a base station . . . indicating in a CSI report configuration whether an autonomous beam update is permitted and will be performed” or “indicating via dynamically signaling from the base station to the UE whether autonomous update is allowed for all CSI reports (e.g., in a DCI scheduling AP CSI report)” – See [¶0084], whereby the CSI-ReportConfig Information Element “is used . . . to configure a semi-persistent or aperiodic report sent on PUSCH triggered by DCI received on the cell in which the CSI-ReportConfig is included (in this case, the cell on which the report is sent is determined by the received DCI)” – See 3GPP TS 38.331:409, and whereby, the UE sends the CSI Report on a PUSCH with HARQ process enabled after receiving the IE ConfiguredGrantConfig which “is used to configure uplink transmission without dynamic grant” either “via RRC (type1) or provided via the PDCCH (addressed to CS-RNTI) (type2) . . . in one BWP of a serving cell” – See id.: 390 indicating in the cg-minDFI-Delay parameter “the minimum duration (in unit of symbols) from the ending symbol of the PUSCH [carrying the CSI report with the HARQ process enabled] to the starting symbol of the PDCCH containing the downlink feedback indication (DFI) carrying HARQ-ACK for this PUSCH. The HARQ-ACK received before this minimum duration is not considered as valid for this PUSCH (see TS 38.213 [13], clause 10.5)” – See id.:393; therefore, the UE may wait for cg-minDFI-Delay symbols before starting a timer for decoding a received HARQ-ACK).
Yu further teaches that the timer must be start at X number of symbols or slots after transmission of the beam report (“ACK/NACK feedback starts to be transmitted after n subframes after transmission of a PUSCH ends” but for a DCI to multiplex feedback for two UEs with different subframes offsets after transmission of the PUSCH ends “in DCI of one M-PDCCH for transmission, the ACK/NACK feedbacks for the two UEs, the base station needs to modify timing of the ACK/NACK feedbacks,” e.g., “the base station starts to feed back an ACK or a NACK to the UE 1 at a specific moment, and starts to feed back an ACK or a NACK to the UE 2 at a specific moment. The specific moment may be predetermined in a standard” – See [¶0139], i.e., the timer for receiving the feedback at the UE is started at the specific moment after the transmission of the beam report).
Although a person of ordinary skills in the art would appreciate that the timer is reset in response to the base station explicitly requesting a retransmission of the CSI report, Bai in view of Yu does not teach reset the timer in response to receiving a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) to trigger a retransmission for the beam report or an aperiodic beam report.
Awad discloses a communication device “transmitting a first signal comprising uplink data, and monitoring for reception of a Downlink Control Information, DCI, signal having the determined acknowledgement identifier” whereby “the DCI signal comprises an indication of downlink radio resources forming a Physical Downlink Shared Channel, PDSCH, reserved for the transmission of one or more acknowledgements or negative acknowledgements, ACK/NACKs, wherein one of the one or more ACK/NACKs is for reception by the communications device in response to the transmission of the first signal” – See [¶0008]. Awad specifically teaches the UE configured to receive a downlink control information (DCI) based on an ACK radio network temporary identifier (ACK-RNTI) that indicates the ACK or the NACK corresponding to a decoding status of a previously transmitted signal, e.g., a beam report (“a DCI may be transmitted by a gNodeB addressed with an ACK-RNTI” after “a UE transmits the small data transmission in the uplink, [and] monitors a new DCI addressed with ACK-RNTI in the downlink” wherein “the DCI schedules resources for a PDSCH that contains ACK feedbacks for one or more UEs” – See [¶0110]).
Awad, like Bai, teaches that in NR, “a UE transmits UL data using a Configured Grant (CG)” and “a timer (configuredGrantTimer) is started for the corresponding HARQ process” – See [¶0098]; see also 3GPP TS 38.331:393-94. Awad further teaches a timer used instead of explicit HARQ-ACK feedback, whereby the UE may reset the timer in response to receiving a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) to trigger a retransmission for the beam report a UE starts a timer per HARQ process whenever there is an uplink data transmission” and “[t]he gNB has a chance to ask for retransmission of the uplink data transmission by PDCCH scheduling before the timer expires” – See [¶0133]; furthermore, “if an uplink grant for this Serving Cell has been received on the PDCCH for the MAC entity's C-RNTI. . . if the uplink grant is for MAC entity's C-RNTI, and the identified HARQ process is configured for a configured uplink grant: start or restart the configuredGrantTimer for the corresponding HARQ process, if configured,” whereby a retransmission request from the base station will be addressed to the UE C-RNTI and will contain the HARQ process corresponding to the first CSI Report transmission – See 3GPP TS 38.321:41).
Thus, Bai in view of Yu and Awad each teaches a UE sending UL data on a configured grant and a timer started for the HARQ process corresponding to the scheduled UL transmission, e.g., a CSI-Report. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have understood that the timer started by the UE after a transmission with corresponding HARQ process enabled, which timer is reset if the UE receives a retransmission request of the uplink data transmission by PDCCH scheduling, as taught by Awad, could have been combined with the wait time of cg-minDFI-Delay as taught by Bai in view of Yu, because together they provide for a minimum wait time and a maximum wait time for the UE to expect the base station to send a valid PDCCH transmission requesting a retransmission. Furthermore, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been able to carry out the combination through techniques known in the art. Finally, the combination achieves the predictable result of sending an implicit NACK to the UE through the explicit retransmission request, hence cutting down UE’s wait time until a timer such as the configuredGrantTimer expires, as taught by Awad, in a case where the UE is not configured with cg-RetransmissionTimer, as taught by Bai in view of Yu.
Therefore, Claim 10 is obvious over Bai in view of Yu and further in view of Awad.
Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bai in view of Yu as applied to Amended Claim 1 above, and further in view of 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #105-e meeting, R1-2105296, Title: "Moderator summary for offline discussion on multi-beam enhancement: CA QCL and unified TCI for 'other signals/channels'"; Source: Samsung; May, 2021(hereinafter R1-2105296).
Regarding Claim 13, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai in view of Yu further teaches the UE of claim 1, wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to cause the UE to:
in response to more than one reference signal (RS) corresponding to a TCI state (the “QCL information for a TCI state may include the source reference signal (RS) (e.g., CSI-RS) for the TCI state” whereby the qcl-type may be “typeD,” i.e., defined by spatial Rx parameters– See Bai:[¶0093], and, as shown in Fig. 27, when the “UE receives downlink signals 2706 from an mTRP base station 2750, which may include CSI-RS scheduling signals . . . [t]he scheduling signals may schedule multiple CSI-RS for UE to measure” whereby “the corresponding TCI states for the CSI-RS resource sets correspond to beams from different TRPs. The UE identifies the TRP ID (CORESET pool index) of each CS I-RS resource set (1) based on which CORESET receives the scheduling DCI . . . or (2) based on the configuration of the CSI-RS resource set” – See Bai:[¶0198]). However, Bai does not teach that in this case the UE measures and reports a beam quality for the TCI state based on the RS that provides a quasi co-location (QCL)-TypeD indication.
R1-2105296 discloses in relationship with multiple carriers/BWPs, e.g., multiple TRPs, that in “Rel.17 unified TCI framework, [a single RRC pool of TCI states is used] for common TCI state ID update and activation to provide common QCL information and/or common UL TX spatial filter(s) across a set of configured CCs/BWPs” and “a CC-specific source RS can be determined from the indicated common TCI state ID to provide QCL Type-D indication” whereby “[t]he determined CC-specific source RSs for the set of configured CCs/BWPs are further associated with a same QCL-TypeD RS.” Therefore, even when there are more than one reference signal (RS) corresponding to a TCI state, the UE will use the RS that provides a quasi-co-location (QCL)-TypeD indication as CSI-RS for reporting.
Thus, Bai in view of Yu and R1-2105296 each discloses more than one reference signal (RS) corresponding to a TCI state. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have understood that the choice of the RS that provides a quasi-co-location (QCL)-TypeD indication in R1-2105296 could have been substituted in for the CSI-RS reporting with multiple RS corresponding to one TCI state in Bai in view of Yu because both provide RS for the UE on a certain carrier channel or BWP. Furthermore, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been able to carry out the substitution through techniques known in the art. Finally, the substitution achieves the predictable result of allowing separate QCL-Type D RS for each of the CCs/BWPs as taught in R1-2105296.
Therefore, Claim 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Bai in view of Yu and further in view of R1-2105296.
Claims 15 and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bai in view of Yu as applied to Amended Claims 1 and 16 above, and further in view of Park et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2023/0292335 (hereinafter Park).
Regarding Claim 15, dependent from Amended Claim 1, Bai in view of Yu further teaches the UE wherein the beam report is associated with an updated TCI state (“the base station receives a CSI report (e.g., for reporting the TCI) that includes an indication of the TCI state and an associated measured metric, where the CSI report further includes an indication for each TCI state in the CSI report for indicating whether the TCI state is updated by the UE” – See Bai:[¶0128] and Fig. 14). For example, Bai teaches “the UE may report the top K beams in terms of RSRP, where K represents a positive integer. The UE may autonomously update the TCI state for a downlink channel (e.g., PDCCH and/or PDSCH) based on the CSI-RS. The base station may schedule the downlink channel (e.g., PDCCH and/or PDSCH) using the updated TCI state on the replaced beams” – See Bai:[¶0081]. Bai also teaches the “MAC subheader 2300 includes various fields, as shown, for listing the activation/deactivation status of TCI states along with a coreset pool ID, a serving cell ID, and a BWP ID” – See [¶0170] and Fig. 23, wherein each Tk octet may contain indication of UL or DL or both; therefore, the MAC PDU format for reporting has an indication whether downlink or uplink or both TCI states are updated with each of the top K reported beams.
However, in case Bai in view of Yu does not explicitly teach wherein the beam report includes an indication whether the beam report is associated with an uplink (UL) TCI update, a downlink (DL) TCI update, or both the UL TCI update and the DL TCI update per reported beam or per report instance of the beam report, Park teaches the UE providing an indication whether the beam report is associated with an uplink (UL) TCI update, a downlink (DL) TCI update, or both the UL TCI update and the DL TCI update per reported beam (“The TCI-indication MAC-CE of N octets may comprise at least a first number of Tk fields and a link indicator (field), where the link indicator may (selectively) indicate either a downlink or an uplink (e.g., a 1-bit link indicator, or a 2-bit link indicator)” – See [¶0466] and Fig. 26, wherein the 1-bit link indicator may be set to “indicating that the TCI-indication MAC-CE of N octets indicates ( e.g., updates) first TCI(s) of the first plurality of TCIs (for downlink beam indication)” or “for uplink beam indication,” or “the link indicator may further indicate 'both downlink and uplink', e.g., a joint/ common (downlink and uplink) TCI, where the link indicator may be a 2-bit link indicator” – See [¶0467]. Because Park teaches multiple type of MAC-CEs, Park teaches the UE sending the beam report and the indication of uplink (UL) TCI update, a downlink (DL) TCI update, or both the UL TCI update and the DL TCI update per reported beam.
Thus, Park and Bai in view of Yu each teaches beam reporting and using MAC CEs to update TCI states. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have understood that the use of MAC CEs to send both beam report and associated TCI state update per reported beam as taught in Park could have been substituted in for the reporting of the top K beams in terms of RSRP together with indicating the autonomous update of corresponding TCI states for uplink, downlink or joint uplink/downlink by the UE to the base station in Bai in view of Yu, because both mechanisms serve the purpose of informing the base station about a configured CSI at the UE. Furthermore, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have been able to carry out the substitution through techniques known in the art. Finally, the substitution achieves the predictable result of allowing faster update of the base station with the TCI states for the measured beams at the UE, as taught in Park.
Therefore, Claim 15 is rejected in the alternative as being obvious over Bai in view of Yu and further in view of Park.
Regarding Claim 26, dependent from Amended Claim 16, in the alternative that Bai in view of Yu does not explicitly teach the base station limitation: provide an indication of whether the beam report is to be configured for a downlink (DL) TCI update, an uplink (UL) TCI update, or both DL TCI update and the UL TCI update to enable the UE to update a TCI state based on the indication, Park teaches medium access control control-element (MAC CE) indicating activation of a transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state whereby multiple “MAC CEs may be inserted at the beginning of a MAC PDU for downlink transmissions (as shown in FIG. 4B) and at the end of a MAC PDU for uplink transmissions” and “MAC CEs may be used as “activation/deactivation MAC CEs” or “channel state information (CSI) reporting” – See [¶0077]; see also Fig. 18B which “shows an example of a DL MAC PDU [where] Multiple MAC CEs, such as MAC CE 1 and 2, may be placed together” – See [¶0223].
Park further teaches a MAC CE sent by the base station providing an indication whether the activated beam report shall be associated with an uplink (UL) TCI update, a downlink (DL) TCI update, or both the UL TCI update and the DL TCI update per reported beam (“The TCI-indication MAC-CE of N octets may comprise at least a first number of Tk fields and a link indicator (field), where the link indicator may (selectively) indicate either a downlink or an uplink (e.g., a 1-bit link indicator, or a 2-bit link indicator)” – See [¶0466] and Fig. 26, wherein the 1-bit link indicator may be set to “indicating that the TCI-indication MAC-CE of N octets indicates (e.g., updates) first TCI(s) of the first plurality of TCIs (for downlink beam indication)” or “for uplink beam indication,” or “the link indicator may further indicate 'both downlink and uplink', e.g., a joint/ common (downlink and uplink) TCI, where the link indicator may be a 2-bit link indicator” – See [¶0467].
Therefore, Claim 26 is rejected in the alternative as being obvious over Bai in view of Yu and further in view of Park.
In sum, Claims 15 and 26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being obvious over Bai in view of Yu and further in view of Park.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 30 is 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 an examiner's statement of reasons for allowance:
Regarding Claim 30, dependent from Amended Claim 27, the UE in Bai in view of Yu comprises the baseband processor of Amended Claim 27 wherein the operations further comprise:
providing the beam report based on a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process index of an uplink (UL) HARQ process for the autonomous TCI state update (“the base station receives a CSI report (e.g., for reporting the TCI) that includes an indication of the TCI state and an associated measured metric, where the CSI report further includes an indication for each TCI state in the CSI report for indicating whether the TCI state is updated by the UE” – See Bai:[¶0128]; furthermore, “a location that is in the downlink control information and that is of feedback information corresponding to initially transmitted uplink data corresponding to a hybrid automatic repeat request HARQ process is the same as a location that is in the downlink control information and that is of feedback information corresponding to retransmitted uplink data corresponding to the HARQ process” so that “the UE can determine, from the location, feedback information of initially transmitted uplink data and feedback information of retransmitted uplink data that are sent by the base station to the UE” – See Yu:[¶0135], i.e., the UE may use a specific HARQ process ID for transmitting the CSI report and the UE recognizes in the downlink control information feedback),
wherein the DCI schedules a transmission for the UL HARQ process based on the beam report or triggers a re-transmission for the UL HARQ process, wherein a scheduling of the transmission based on an updated TCI of the beam report indicates that the beam report is decoded successfully as the ACK, and the triggering of the retransmission indicates that the beam report is not decoded successfully as the NACK (taught by Bai in view of Yu as explained in Regarding Claim 20 supra where the same limitation is required using the same language).
However, Bai in view of Yu does not teach wherein the HARQ process index is predefined or configured via higher layer signaling. Furthermore, 3GPP TS 38.321 referenced by Bai teaches, at page 42, that “[f]or configured uplink grants configured with cg-RetransmissionTimer, the UE implementation selects an HARQ Process ID among the HARQ process IDs available for the configured grant configuration” and defines formula for calculating HARQ Process ID; then in NOTE 5 at page 43, that if “cg-RetransmissionTimer is not configured, a HARQ process is not shared between different configured grant configurations in the same BWP,” i.e., the UE has the freedom of HARQ process ID choice for an uplink (UL) HARQ process for the autonomous TCI state update rather than receiving a predefined HARQ ID. In addition, for UL transmissions, only HARQ process identifier 0 is predefined for “UL transmission with UL grant in RA Response or for UL transmission for MSGA payload” – See id.:44. No other prior art was found disclosing a predefined of configured via higher layer signaling, e.g., RRC or MAC CE, a HARQ Process ID for autonomous TCI state update.
Therefore, this subject matter is allowable.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Lee et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2018/0049172 discloses receiving the control information by multiple UEs via the group-based transmission and determining the ACK or the NACK associated with an uplink signal based on an ACK index from among resource blocks shared among different UEs;
Yi et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2018/0123742 discloses method and apparatus to transmit multiple uplink (UL) grants for multiple user equipments (UEs), receive UL data from the multiple UEs, and transmit a group-common PHICH as a response to the UL data received from the multiple UEs;
Da Silva, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2023/0362817 teaches a UE user equipment (UE) configured to communicate with a wireless network via a master cell group (MCG) and a secondary cell group (SCG) reporting quality metrics of CSI-RS associated with TCI states measured on one serving cell and configured and reporting on a different cell;
Nam et al, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0028613 discloses techniques for cross-carrier sounding with aperiodic channel state information reference signals (CSI-RS);
Akkarakaran et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2019/0081763 discloses method and apparatus for resource allocation for transmission of an acknowledgment (ACK)/negative acknowledgment (NACK) payload using implicit resource mapping based on at least one of a scrambling identifier or one of a plurality of control resource sets (CORESETs);
Farag et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2024/0032036 discloses method and an apparatus for beam management to determine, based on the one or more TCI state IDs, TCI states for data channels and control channels;
Muruganathan et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2023/0396375 discloses method and apparatus providing Downlink Control Information (DCI)-based Transmission Configuration Indicator (TCI) state update with flexible channel selection in NR;
3GPP TS 38.331 V16.5.0 (2021-06), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 16)”;
3GPP TS 38.214 V16.6.0 (2021-06), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for data (Release 16)”;
3GPP TS 38.306 V16.5.0 (2021-06), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; User Equipment (UE) radio access capabilities (Release 16)”;
3GPP TS 38.321 V16.5.0 (2021-06), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 16)”.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LUCIA GHEORGHE GRADINARIU whose telephone number is (571)272-1377. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:00am - 5:00pm EST.
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.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joseph AVELLINO can be reached at (571)272-3905. 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.
/L.G.G./ Examiner, Art Unit 2478
/JOSEPH E AVELLINO/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2478
1The timer must be configured so that “a UL grant scheduling a new transmission [may be] using the same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) identifier (ID) as the PUSCH carrying the CSI report” – See [¶0089] and 3GPP TS 38.321V16.5.0(2021-06) “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP 38.321), Note 5, at page 43, stating that “If cg-RetransmissionTimer is not configured, a HARQ process is not shared between different configured grant configurations in the same BWP,” but “[i]f cg-RetransmissionTimer is configured, retransmissions with the same HARQ process may be performed on any configured grant configuration” – See id., at page 47.