DETAILED ACTION
Applicant's submission filed on 11 November 2025 has been entered. Claims 17, 18, 25, 26, 33, 34, and 37 are currently amended; claims 1-16 and 36 are cancelled; claims 19-24, 27-32, and 35 are previously presented; no claims have been added. Claims 17-35 and 37 are pending and ready for examination.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to the claims have been considered but are moot in view of the new grounds of rejection.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 14 October 2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 text of those sections of Title 35, U.S. Code not included in this action can be found in a prior Office action.
Claims 17-19, 22-27, 30-35, and 37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chang et al. (US 2019/0254013 A1), hereafter referred Chang, in view of WO 2019/063777 A1, hereafter referred Acosta, further in view of WO 2010/031470 A1, hereafter referred Lohr.
Regarding claim 17, Chang teaches a user equipment (UE) for wireless communication comprising:
at least one memory (Chang, Fig. 5, [0084]-[0086]; computer platform 500 may be suitable as use as UEs and include memory coupled to one or more processors); and
at least one processor (Chang, Fig. 5, [0084]-[0086]; computer platform 500 may be suitable as use as UEs and include memory coupled to one or more processors) coupled with the at least one memory and configured to cause the UE to:
receive a narrowband downlink control channel control signal (Chang, [0045]; NB-IoT UE 101 obtains and properly decodes the PDCCH to obtain a DCI message, where upon detection on a given serving cell of an NPDCCH with DCI format N1, N2 ending in subframe n intended for the UE, the UE decodes the corresponding NPDSCH transmission according to the NPDCCH information) including a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) index and a resource assignment index (Chang, [0042]; the DCI format includes a 3 bit resource assignment field, a 4 bit MCS field, a 4 bit repetition number field); and
receive a narrowband downlink shared channel using a plurality of consecutive downlink subframes (Chang, [0045] and [0060]; for receiving the NPDSCH transmission, the UE decodes, starting in n+5 DL subframe for NB-IoT FDD, n+5 subframe for MF NB-IoT, the corresponding NPDSCH transmission in N consecutive NB-IoT DL subframe(s) ni, with i=0, 1, …, N-1 according to the NPDCCH information where subframe n is the last subframe in which the NPDCCH is transmitted) and a set of one or more consecutive subcarriers (Chang, Fig. 2, [0029]-[0033]; resource grid 200A comprises a number of RBs which can be PRBs which are defined as N consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain. For DL NB physical channels including NPDSCH have resources mapped to according to resource grid 200A).
Chang does not expressly teach wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type.
However, Acosta teaches wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type (Acosta, Table 5, p. 17-18; a TBS table as designed for PUSCH in CE mode A, reused to adopt the RU concept for supporting the sub-PRB technique by using up to 6 RU, where the table allows determining the TBS (the number of PRBs) by referencing the table for the TBS index and the resource assignment index (number of resource units for sub-PRB allocations), and the table illustrates a first set of values and second set of values, corresponding to QPSK or 16QAM modulation scheme)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang to include the above recited limitations as taught by Acosta in order to allow for efficient resource utilization (Acosta, p. 3, lines 25-31).
Chang in view of Acosta does not expressly teach wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index.
However, Lohr teaches wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index (Lohr, p. 28; when signaling a resource assignment indicating this specially designated transport block size (i.e. the number of resource blocks allocated for the transmission according to the resource allocation field of the resource assignment and the modulation and coding scheme index thereof is resulting in the specially designated transport block size)).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta to include the above recited limitations as taught by Lohr in order to allow soft combining of different transmissions of a data packet (Lohr, p. 27).
Regarding claim 25, Chang teaches a network equipment (NE) for wireless communication, comprising:
at least one memory (Chang, Fig. 4, [0075]-[0076]; infrastructure equipment 400 may be implemented as a base station includes memory circuitry that may be coupled with processors of the application circuitry 405); and
at least one processor (Chang, Fig. 4, [0075]-[0076]; infrastructure equipment 400 may be implemented as a base station includes memory circuitry that may be coupled with processors of the application circuitry 405) coupled with the at least one memory and configured to cause the NE to:
transmit a narrowband downlink control channel (Chang, [0045]; NB-IoT UE 101 obtains and properly decodes the PDCCH to obtain a DCI message, where upon detection on a given serving cell of an NPDCCH with DCI format N1, N2 ending in subframe n intended for the UE, the UE decodes the corresponding NPDSCH transmission according to the NPDCCH information) including a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) index and a resource assignment index (Chang, [0042]; the DCI format includes a 3 bit resource assignment field, a 4 bit MCS field, a 4 bit repetition number field); and
transmit a narrowband downlink shared channel using a plurality of consecutive downlink subframes (Chang, [0045] and [0060]; for receiving the NPDSCH transmission, the UE decodes, starting in n+5 DL subframe for NB-IoT FDD, n+5 subframe for MF NB-IoT, the corresponding NPDSCH transmission in N consecutive NB-IoT DL subframe(s) ni, with i=0, 1, …, N-1 according to the NPDCCH information where subframe n is the last subframe in which the NPDCCH is transmitted) and a set of one or more consecutive subcarriers (Chang, Fig. 2, [0029]-[0033]; resource grid 200A comprises a number of RBs which can be PRBs which are defined as N consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain. For DL NB physical channels including NPDSCH have resources mapped to according to resource grid 200A).
Chang does not expressly teach wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type.
However, Acosta teaches wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type (Acosta, Table 5, p. 17-18; a TBS table as designed for PUSCH in CE mode A, reused to adopt the RU concept for supporting the sub-PRB technique by using up to 6 RU, where the table allows determining the TBS (the number of PRBs) by referencing the table for the TBS index and the resource assignment index (number of resource units for sub-PRB allocations), and the table illustrates a first set of values and second set of values, corresponding to QPSK or 16QAM modulation scheme)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang to include the above recited limitations as taught by Acosta in order to allow for efficient resource utilization (Acosta, p. 3, lines 25-31).
Chang in view of Acosta does not expressly teach wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index.
However, Lohr teaches wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index (Lohr, p. 28; when signaling a resource assignment indicating this specially designated transport block size (i.e. the number of resource blocks allocated for the transmission according to the resource allocation field of the resource assignment and the modulation and coding scheme index thereof is resulting in the specially designated transport block size)).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta to include the above recited limitations as taught by Lohr in order to allow soft combining of different transmissions of a data packet (Lohr, p. 27).
Regarding claim 33, Chang teaches a method performed by a user equipment (UE), the method comprising:
receiving a narrowband downlink control channel (Chang, [0045]; NB-IoT UE 101 obtains and properly decodes the PDCCH to obtain a DCI message, where upon detection on a given serving cell of an NPDCCH with DCI format N1, N2 ending in subframe n intended for the UE, the UE decodes the corresponding NPDSCH transmission according to the NPDCCH information) including a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) index and a resource assignment index (Chang, [0042]; the DCI format includes a 3 bit resource assignment field, a 4 bit MCS field, a 4 bit repetition number field); and
receiving a narrowband downlink shared channel using a plurality of consecutive downlink subframes (Chang, [0045] and [0060]; for receiving the NPDSCH transmission, the UE decodes, starting in n+5 DL subframe for NB-IoT FDD, n+5 subframe for MF NB-IoT, the corresponding NPDSCH transmission in N consecutive NB-IoT DL subframe(s) ni, with i=0, 1, …, N-1 according to the NPDCCH information where subframe n is the last subframe in which the NPDCCH is transmitted) and a set of one or more consecutive subcarriers (Chang, Fig. 2, [0029]-[0033]; resource grid 200A comprises a number of RBs which can be PRBs which are defined as N consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain. For DL NB physical channels including NPDSCH have resources mapped to according to resource grid 200A).
Chang does not expressly teach wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type.
However, Acosta teaches wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type (Acosta, Table 5, p. 17-18; a TBS table as designed for PUSCH in CE mode A, reused to adopt the RU concept for supporting the sub-PRB technique by using up to 6 RU, where the table allows determining the TBS (the number of PRBs) by referencing the table for the TBS index and the resource assignment index (number of resource units for sub-PRB allocations), and the table illustrates a first set of values and second set of values, corresponding to QPSK or 16QAM modulation scheme)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang to include the above recited limitations as taught by Acosta in order to allow for efficient resource utilization (Acosta, p. 3, lines 25-31).
Chang in view of Acosta does not expressly teach wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index.
However, Lohr teaches wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index (Lohr, p. 28; when signaling a resource assignment indicating this specially designated transport block size (i.e. the number of resource blocks allocated for the transmission according to the resource allocation field of the resource assignment and the modulation and coding scheme index thereof is resulting in the specially designated transport block size)).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta to include the above recited limitations as taught by Lohr in order to allow soft combining of different transmissions of a data packet (Lohr, p. 27).
Regarding claim 37, Chang teaches a method performed by a network equipment (NE), the method comprising:
transmitting a narrowband downlink control channel (Chang, [0045]; NB-IoT UE 101 obtains and properly decodes the PDCCH to obtain a DCI message, where upon detection on a given serving cell of an NPDCCH with DCI format N1, N2 ending in subframe n intended for the UE, the UE decodes the corresponding NPDSCH transmission according to the NPDCCH information) including a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) index and a resource assignment index (Chang, [0042]; the DCI format includes a 3 bit resource assignment field, a 4 bit MCS field, a 4 bit repetition number field); and
transmitting a narrowband downlink shared channel using a plurality of consecutive downlink subframes (Chang, [0045] and [0060]; for receiving the NPDSCH transmission, the UE decodes, starting in n+5 DL subframe for NB-IoT FDD, n+5 subframe for MF NB-IoT, the corresponding NPDSCH transmission in N consecutive NB-IoT DL subframe(s) ni, with i=0, 1, …, N-1 according to the NPDCCH information where subframe n is the last subframe in which the NPDCCH is transmitted) and a set of one or more consecutive subcarriers (Chang, Fig. 2, [0029]-[0033]; resource grid 200A comprises a number of RBs which can be PRBs which are defined as N consecutive subcarriers in the frequency domain. For DL NB physical channels including NPDSCH have resources mapped to according to resource grid 200A).
Chang does not expressly teach wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type.
However, Acosta teaches wherein the channel is associated with a 16 quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) type and a transport block size (TBS); the TBS is determined by referencing a combination of a TBS index and the resource assignment index in a table comprising a first set of TBS values corresponding to a modulation type different from the 16 QAM type and a second set of TBS values corresponding to the 16 QAM type; and the modulation type comprises a quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation type (Acosta, Table 5, p. 17-18; a TBS table as designed for PUSCH in CE mode A, reused to adopt the RU concept for supporting the sub-PRB technique by using up to 6 RU, where the table allows determining the TBS (the number of PRBs) by referencing the table for the TBS index and the resource assignment index (number of resource units for sub-PRB allocations), and the table illustrates a first set of values and second set of values, corresponding to QPSK or 16QAM modulation scheme)
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang to include the above recited limitations as taught by Acosta in order to allow for efficient resource utilization (Acosta, p. 3, lines 25-31).
Chang in view of Acosta does not expressly teach wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index.
However, Lohr teaches wherein the TBS index is determined as a function of the MCS index (Lohr, p. 28; when signaling a resource assignment indicating this specially designated transport block size (i.e. the number of resource blocks allocated for the transmission according to the resource allocation field of the resource assignment and the modulation and coding scheme index thereof is resulting in the specially designated transport block size)).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta to include the above recited limitations as taught by Lohr in order to allow soft combining of different transmissions of a data packet (Lohr, p. 27).
Regarding claims 18, 26, and 34, Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr teaches the UE of claim 17, the NE of claim 25, and the method of claim 33 above. Further, Chang teaches wherein the TBS index is further determined by a scaling factor (Chang, [0057]; the NPUSCH can be mapped to the resource units, where the block of complex-valued symbols is multiplied with the amplitude scaling factor in order to conform to the transmit power and mapped in sequence with the subcarriers assigned for transmission of NPUSCH).
Regarding claims 19, 27, and 35, Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr teaches the UE of claim 17, the NE of claim 25, and the method of claim 33 above. Chang in view of Acosta does not expressly teach wherein the 16 QAM type is determined by the MCS index and the resource assignment index.
However, Lohr teaches wherein the 16 QAM type is determined by the MCS index and the resource assignment index (Lohr, p. 9; Modulation scheme can be calculated from using the modulation scheme information and the resource information).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta to include the above recited limitations as taught by Lohr in order to allow soft combining of different transmissions of a data packet (Lohr, p. 27).
Regarding claims 22 and 30, Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr teaches the UE of claim 17 and the NE of claim 25 above. Chang in view of Acosta does not expressly teach wherein the plurality of consecutive downlink subframes is determined by the resource assignment index and the 16 QAM type.
However, Lohr teaches wherein the plurality of consecutive downlink subframes is determined by the resource assignment index and the 16 QAM type (Lohr, p. 28; when signaling a resource assignment indicating this specially designated transport block size (i.e. the number of resource blocks allocated for the transmission according to the resource allocation field of the resource assignment and the modulation and coding scheme index thereof is resulting in the specially designated transport block size)).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta to include the above recited limitations as taught by Lohr in order to allow soft combining of different transmissions of a data packet (Lohr, p. 27).
Claims 20 and 28 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr as applied to claims 19, 27, and 35 above, and further in view of Ryu et al. (US 2021/0037477 A1), hereafter referred Ryu.
Regarding claims 20 and 28, Chang in view of Lohr in view of Luo in view of Jiang further in view of Einhaus teaches the UE of claim 19 and the NE of claim 27 above. Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr does not expressly teach wherein the 16 QAM type is further determined by a scaling factor.
However, Ryu teaches wherein the 16 QAM type is further determined by a scaling factor (Ryu, [0053]; the UE may be configured to determine a modulation and coding scheme based on the operating mode of the UE and the selected power scaling factor).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr to include the above recited limitations as taught by Ryu in order to ensure the information is transmitted correctly (Ryu, [0053]).
Claims 21 and 29 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chang in view of Acosta in view of Lohr further in view of Ryu as applied to claims 20 and 28 above, and further in view of Abdoli et al. (US 2021/0127414 A1), hereafter referred Abdoli.
Regarding claims 21 and 29, Chang in view of Acosta in view of Lohr further in view of Ryu teaches the UE of claim 20 and the NE of claim 28 above. Chang in view of Acosta in view of Lohr further in view of Ryu does not expressly teach wherein the scaling factor is determined by the resource assignment index.
However, Abdoli teaches wherein the scaling factor is determined by the resource assignment index (Abdoli, [0244]; the resource assignment can include a transport block scaling factor).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta in view of Lohr further in view of Ryu to include the above recited limitations as taught by Abdoli in order to allow the UE to reconnect to the network faster when utilizing power saving modes (Abdoli, [0003]).
Claims 23, 24, 31, and 32 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr as applied to claims 17 and 25 above, and further in view of Jiang et al. (US 2015/0382328 A1), hereafter referred Jiang.
Regarding claims 23 and 31, Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr teaches the UE of claim 17 and the NE of claim 25 above. Further, Chang teaches wherein the narrowband downlink control channel includes a first field, and wherein the first field indicates a set of one or more subcarriers (Chang, [0041]; DCI format includes a 6 bit subcarrier indication of NPRACH and a 4 bit MCS field).
Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr does not expressly teach wherein the first field indicates the 16 QAM type.
However, Jiang teaches wherein the first field indicates the 16 QAM type (Jiang, [0063]; 6 bits are used in the DCI to indicate the downlink MCS such as 16QAM).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr to include the above recited limitations as taught by Jiang in order to cause the UE to receive the downlink data according to the indication information indicating the modulation mode (Jiang, [0043]).
Regarding claims 24 and 32, Chang in view of Acosta in view of Lohr further in view of Jiang teaches the UE of claim 23 and the NE of claim 31 above. Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr does not expressly teach wherein the first field includes 6 bits, and wherein at least state values 19 to 25 indicate the 16 QAM type.
However, Jiang teaches wherein the first field includes 6 bits, and wherein at least state values 19 to 25 indicate the 16 QAM type (Jiang, [0063]; 6 bits are used in the DCI to indicate the downlink MCS such as 16QAM).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the invention to create the invention of Chang in view of Acosta further in view of Lohr to include the above recited limitations as taught by Jiang in order to cause the UE to receive the downlink data according to the indication information indicating the modulation mode (Jiang, [0043]).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. See PTO-892.
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). Applicant is reminded of the extension of time policy as set forth in 37 CFR 1.136(a).
A shortened statutory period for reply to this final action is set to expire THREE MONTHS from the mailing date of this action. In the event a first reply is filed within TWO MONTHS of the mailing date of this final action and the advisory action is not mailed until after the end of the THREE-MONTH shortened statutory period, then the shortened statutory period will expire on the date the advisory action is mailed, and any nonprovisional extension fee (37 CFR 1.17(a)) pursuant to 37 CFR 1.136(a) will be calculated from the mailing date of the advisory action. In no event, however, will the statutory period for reply expire later than SIX MONTHS from the mailing date of this final action.
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/R.M./Examiner, Art Unit 2416
/NOEL R BEHARRY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2416
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