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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 11/17/2025 has been entered.
Response to Amendment
The amendment to the claims filed on 11/17/2025 complies with the requirements of 37 CFR 1.121(c) and has been entered. Currently, Claims 1-15, 17-19, 22-24, 26-28, and 31-33 are cancelled. Claims 34-37 are new.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s Arguments/Remarks filed on 11/17/2025 have been fully considered and are persuasive regarding the original Chinese Patent Application CN202010093986 not containing FIGs. 8a, 8b, and 9 and certain paragraphs of Chen et al., U.S. Publication No. 2022/0393803 (hereinafter Chen-US). However, neither the figures nor the paragraphs were dispositive in the Final Office action of 06/06/2025. For example, the rejection of the independent claims cited to Ranta-Aho et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2022/0286235 (hereinafter Ranta-Abo) for teaching the bitmap indicating whether each of the plurality of HARO processes is enabled or disabled – See, e.g., Final OA, at page 7-8 (“Even if Chen did not explicitly teach the bitmap received by the UE indicating the enable/disable status of each process in a set of HARQ Processes associated with downlink data transmission, Ranta-Aho, teaching that . . .”). Furthermore, the case of disabled HARQ processes wherein “HARQ feedback is also performed for data transmission corresponding to the disabled HARQ processes, and feedback information is an NACK” – See Chen: [¶0142] is also disclosed in Chinese Patent Application CN202010093986. To be sure, WIPO certified CN202010093986 with a filing date of February 14, 2020.
For fairness to the Applicant, the original Chinese Patent Application CN202010093986, through machine translation, is used in the present Office Action, therefore this argument is also moot.
Specification
The title of the invention, “SOFT BUFFER MANAGEMENT METHOD AND DEVICE OF TERMINAL IN COMMUNICATION SYSTEM” is not descriptive because a soft buffer or operations related to a soft buffer are not claimed. The following title is suggested: “Method and Device for HARQ processes bitmaps.”
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 34-37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
A broad range or limitation together with a narrow range or limitation that falls within the broad range or limitation (in the same claim) may be considered indefinite if the resulting claim does not clearly set forth the metes and bounds of the patent protection desired. See MPEP § 2173.05(c).
In the present instance, for example, Claim 34, dependent from Amended Claim 16, recites the broad recitation “a number of the plurality of bits is greater than a number of the plurality of HARQ process identifiers,” and the claim also recites “wherein each bit included in the bitmap indicates whether an HARQ process of each of a plurality of HARQ process identifiers is enabled or disabled" which is the narrower statement of the range/limitation. Because the requirement in the independent claim is to have each bit of the bitmap assigned to the state of one HARQ process (enabled/disabled), there are no more bits left in the bitmap which are free/unassigned to a HARQ process so that to fulfill the requirement of “the plurality of bits is greater than a number of the plurality of HARQ process identifiers,” as recited by the dependent claim.
Therefore Claims 34-37 are considered indefinite because there is a question or doubt as to whether the feature introduced by such narrower language as “each bit included in the bitmap indicates whether an HARQ process of each of a plurality of HARQ process identifiers is enabled or disabled” is (a) merely exemplary of the remainder of the claim, and therefore not required, or (b) a required feature of the claims.
Therefore, Claims 34-37 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) for indefiniteness.
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 16, 20-21, 25, 29-30 and 34-37, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ranta-Aho et al., U.S. Patent Application No. 2022/0286235 (hereinafter Ranta-Aho) and further in view of Chen et al., Chinese Patent Application No. CN202010093986 (hereinafter Chen).
Regarding Amended Claim 16, teaches a method performed by a terminal in a communication system (a “method comprises receiving, at a second device from a first
device, a first indication of a plurality of candidate retransmission configurations” and “communicating with the first device using the target retransmission configuration” – See [¶0008], whereby “example of a retransmission configuration may be the HARQ process as defined in the 3GPP specifications1” – See [¶0063]), the method comprising:
receiving, from a base station, a bitmap indicating whether a hybrid automatic repeat
request (HARQ) feedback of each of a plurality of HARQ processes is enabled or disabled using a radio resource control (RRC) message wherein each bit included in the bitmap indicates whether an HARQ process of each of the plurality of HARQ process identifiers is enabled or disabled (“After the attachment of the second device 120 to the first device 110, the first device 110 broadcasts 510 initial (or default) retransmission configurations of HARQ processes in the cell supported by the first device 110,” e.g., for “the downlink transmissions . . . , a total number of 16 HARQ processes are disabled” and “the first device 110 may inform the second device 120 of one or more current retransmission configurations of one or more HARQ processes by a RRC message in a later stage” – See [¶¶0104-5], i.e., “the first device 110 can inform 530 the second device 120 of the new retransmission configurations for the HARQ processes, for example, via an RRC reconfiguration message” depending on the needs of running applications – See, e.g., [¶¶0107-8]; furthermore, “[i]n the example embodiment of FIG. 5, one x-bit message can be used for indicating the enabling state or the disabling state of the individual HARQ processes” whereby “for 16 HARQ processes between the first device 110 and the second device 120 . . . one bit can be configured for one HARQ process, and thus 16 bits can be used for indicating the states of the 16 HARQ processes” – See [¶0109])
identifying that each of the plurality of HARQ processes is enabled or disabled based on the bitmap (e.g., “the particular example of FIG. 6, HARQ processes 0-1 which are referenced as 610 are fully disabled, which means that they are disabled and no blind retransmission is configured for them” and “HARQ processes 12-15 which are referenced as 640 are enabled as in the legacy 3GPP standards” and wherein “HARQ processes 8-11 which are referenced as 630 are disabled” but “proactive K retransmissions are configured for them2” – See [¶0116] and Fig. 6 which obviously may be just a string of 16 bits with values of “1” and “0” corresponding to the respective HARQ process IDs protecting the downlink transmission);
identifying an HARQ-acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) codebook including a plurality of HARQ-ACK bits in response to downlink data (“mapping of uplink flows to the enabled HARQ processes can be configured to the second device 120” – See [¶0121])
Although Ranta-Aho teaches a case where feedback is sent even though the HARQ-ACK is disabled (“where the HARQ function is disabled, for example, no data is maintained in the buffer of the receiving device nor a retransmission is expected, but ACK/NACK information can be sent back to the transmitting device for a link adaptation purpose” – See [¶0072]), Ranta-Aho does not teach a HARQ-ACK codebook transmitted to the base station.
Chen teaches “[f]eedback method and related equipment for HARQ bitmap information of Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request” – See [¶0001] whereby for each TB sent “[t]he receiving end (e.g., the terminal) will send back the decoding result of the data received from the sending end to the sending end. If the decoding is correct, the feedback will be an acknowledgment (ACK); if the decoding is incorrect, the feedback will be a negative acknowledgment (NACK). If the sending end receives an ACK, it can transmit new data to the receiving end; if the sending end receives a NACK, it can retransmit the data to the receiving end. Both ACK and NACK can be referred to as HARQ feedback information” – See [¶n0004] the “HARQ bitmap information can also be called HARQ codebook” – See [¶n0006] whereby it is possible “to indicate a logical AND operation on the HARQ feedback information of at least one of the target transmission units and the HARQ feedback information of at least one of the non-target transmission units to obtain the HARQ bitmap information” – See [¶n0056], “the access network device configuring the target transmission unit and/or the non-target transmission unit through the RRC layer” – See [¶n0057].
Chen further teaches: transmitting, to the base station, the HARQ-ACK codebook,
wherein an HARQ-ACK bit in response to downlink data associated with a HARQ process of a disabled HARQ feedback is set as NACK in the HARQ-ACK codebook, in case of a first case3 (“in the case of semi-static scheduling, even if some HARQ processes are shut down, the data transmission of the corresponding shut-down HARQ processes will still receive HARQ feedback, and the feedback information will be NACK”, e.g., in Fig. 3, “the data transmission of the time slots corresponding to the disabled HARQ processes also feeds back NACK (denoted as N in the figure), wasting feedback resources” – See [¶n0131]), and
wherein the HARQ-ACK codebook does not include HARQ-ACK information in response to the downlink data associated with the HARQ process of the disabled HARQ feedback, in case of a second case (“the semi-static codebook does not include the reception status of downlink data that does not require HARQ feedback, thereby reducing the size of the feedback semi-static codebook and saving feedback resource overhead” – See [¶n0026]; e.g., “[w]hen the terminal generates a semi-static codebook, it does not directly feed back the codebook based on all downlink transmission time slots. Instead, it feeds back the codebook through the HARQ enable/disable process indicated by the access network device or the specific time slot configuration indicated by the access network device. This allows the codebook to feed back the reception status of downlink data that requires HARQ, while not feeding back the reception status of downlink data that does not require HARQ. This reduces the size of the semi-static codebook and saves on feedback resource overhead” – See [¶n0133]).
Thus, Ranta-Aho and Chen each teaches a method of a terminal receiving from a network node information about enabled or disabled HARQ processes for downlink transmitted data. A person of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention would have understood that the bitmap transmitted by the first device to the second device UE through RRC signaling wherein each bit indicates whether a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback of each of a plurality of HARQ processes in a HARQ process set is enabled or disabled, as disclosed by Ranta-Aho, could have been combined with the HARQ codebook generated in Chen because both they are complementary to each other, the bitmap informing the UE about the state of downlink HARQ processes and the HAQR codebook informing the base station about the result of receiving TB of data 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 reducing the overhead of downlink HARQ signaling, as taught in Chen.
Therefore, Amended Claim 1 is obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen.
Regarding Claim 20, dependent from Amended Claim 16, Ranta-Aho further teaches the method of claim 16, further comprising:
skipping of storing the downlink data associated with the disabled HARQ process, in case that decoding of the downlink data is failed (“the case where the HARQ function is disabled, for example, no data is maintained in the buffer of the receiving device nor a retransmission is expected” – See [¶0072], i.e., no matter whether the downlink TB is properly decoded or not, soft combining is not performed, while soft-combining is performed for HARQ-enabled downlink transmissions, as known in the art – See, e.g., [¶0116] (“the second device 120 may still be enhanced by soft combining of the K-repetitions in the buffer of the receiving device, even if the feedback function (ACK/NACK) may be disabled”); Chen:[¶n0122](“The receiver then performs soft combining of the retransmitted data and the previously received data before decoding, thus obtaining a more reliable data packet than decoding it separately. Then the merged data packets are decoded. If the decoding is correct, an ACK is sent; if it is still incorrect, a NACK is sent, and the process of ‘requesting retransmission and then performing soft merging’ is repeated” for HARQ-enabled transmissions); see also § 5.3.2.2, 3GPP TS 38.321 V15.8.0 (2019-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 15)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.321)).
Therefore, Claim 20 is obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen.
Regarding Amended Claim 21, Ranta-Aho teaches a method executed at a base station reciprocating the steps of the method of Amended Claim 16, i.e., transmitting, to a terminal, a bitmap indicating whether a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback of each of a plurality of HARQ processes is enabled or disabled using a radio resource control (RRC) message wherein each bit included in the bitmap indicates whether an HARQ process of each of a plurality of HARQ process identifiers is enabled or disabled – See, e.g., [¶0109] (“one bit can be configured for one HARQ process, and thus 16 bits can be used for indicating the states of the 16 HARQ processes”) and Fig. 6, wherein “HARQ processes 0-1 which are referenced as 610 are fully disabled” and “HARQ processes 12-15 which are referenced as 640 are enabled as in the legacy 3GPP standards” and considering “HARQ processes 2-7 which are referenced as 620 are disabled” – See [¶0116].
As explained in Regarding Amended Claim 16, supra, Chen further teaches receiving, from the terminal, an HARQ-acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) codebook including a plurality of HARQ-ACK bits in response to downlink data, wherein an HARQ-ACK bit in response to downlink data associated with a HARQ process of a disabled HARQ feedback corresponds to NACK in the HARQ-ACK codebook, in case of a first case, and wherein the HARQ-ACK codebook does not include HARQ-ACK information in response to the downlink data associated with the HARQ process of the disabled HARQ feedback, in case of a second case. Because ethe methods in Chen and Ranta-Aho are combinable for the reasons explained in Regarding Amended Claim 16, Amended Claim 21 is obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen.
Regarding Amended Claims 25 and 29, Ranta-Aho discloses a terminal of a communication system, e.g., UE 120 in Fig. 1, the terminal comprising: a transceiver; and a controller coupled with the transceiver (“the device 900 includes one or more processors 910, one or more memories 920 coupled to the processor 910, and one or more communication modules 940 coupled to the processor 910” which “is for bidirectional communications. The communication module 940 may have at least one antenna to facilitate communication. The communication interface may represent any interface that is necessary for communication with other network elements” – See [¶¶0181-82] and Fig. 9) and configured to perform the steps of Amended Claims 16 and 19, respectively. Because Amended Claims 16 and 19 are each obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen, and Amended Claims 25 and 29 do not contain additional steps to the previous ones, each Amended Claims 25 and 29 is also obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen.
Regarding Amended Claim 30, Ranta-Aho discloses a base station of a communication system (“The communication environment 100 may include a first device 110, which may be a satellite and provides wireless connection for a second device 120 within coverage 122, also referred to as a serving cell 122 among a plurality of cells supported by the first device 110” – See [¶0049] and Fig. 1), the base station comprising: a transceiver; and a controller coupled with the transceiver (“the device 900 includes one or more processors 910, one or more memories 920 coupled to the processor 910, and one or more communication modules 940 coupled to the processor 910” which “is for bidirectional communications. The communication module 940 may have at least one antenna to facilitate communication. The communication interface may represent any interface that is necessary for communication with other network elements” – See [¶¶0181-82] and Fig. 9) and configured to perform the steps of Amended Claim 21, including the step required by the first case, i.e., sending NACK for a disabled HARQ process feedback, and the required limitation of “a number of the plurality of bits is equal to . . . a number of the plurality of HARQ process identifiers”. Because Amended Claim 21 is obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen, and Amended Claim 30 does not contain additional steps, Amended Claim 30 is also obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen.
Regarding Claims 34 to 37, dependent from Amended Claims 16, 21, 25 and 30, respectively, each claim recites the same limitation to the bitmap sent by the base station of Amended Claims 21 and 30 to the terminal of Amended Claims 16 and 25, namely that each bit included in the bitmap indicates whether an HARQ process of each of a plurality of HARQ process identifier is enabled or disabled.
However, in a case where the narrow requirement of the independent Claims 16, 21, 25, and 30 is relaxed, for example, by requiring that each HARQ process state is represented by a bit in the bitmap, then Ranta-Aho further teaches that the bitmap includes a plurality of bits, and a number of the plurality of bits may be greater than a number of the plurality of HARQ process identifiers (e.g., as shown in Fig. 6, “HARQ processes 2-7 which are referenced as 620 are disabled, and proactive K retransmissions are configured for them, where K=2. HARQ processes 8-11 which are referenced as 630 are disabled, and proactive K retransmissions are configured for them, where K=4” – See [¶0116], i.e., a person of ordinary skills in the art would understand that additional bits in the bitmap have to be assigned for coding value of K, number of retransmissions, for each HARQ process, aside from the one bit representing the state of that HARQ process). For this reason, Claims 34-37 are obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen.
In sum, Claims 16, 20-21, 25, 29-30 and 34-37, as amended, are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as obvious over Ranta-Aho in view of Chen.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Matsuda et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20220294569 disclosing skipping of storing the downlink data associated with the disabled HARQ process, in case that decoding of the downlink data is failed;
Chang et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2020/0178288 disclosing grantless downlink control information including a bitmap which can include the HARQ-ACK of configured HARQ identifiers (IDs);
Chen Larsson et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2021/0050961 disclosing semi-statically configured HARQ codebook;
Chen, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0045800 discloses a method and device for configuring hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback between terminal nodes, which can accurately control whether HARQ feedback is sent on a Sidelink interface using a HARQ feedback enable rule;
Lei et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 20220385411 disclosing method and apparatus for one shot HARQ feedback;
Chen et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2022/0393803, disclosing that even in a case of semi-static scheduling, even if some HARQ processes are disabled, HARQ feedback is also performed for data transmission corresponding to the disabled HARQ processes, and feedback information is a NACK;
Muruganathan et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2023/0275705 teaches that a UE may override the disabling of HARQ ACK/NACK feedback and will apply the information indicated in the MAC CE activation/deactivation command;
Yin et al., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. US 2021/0314104 disclosing method and apparatus for configuring PUCCH resources for HARQ-ACK feedback of URLLC PDSCH transmission and determining if ACK feedback is on or off for HARQ-ACK feedback of the URLLC PDSCH transmission;
3GPP TS 38.331v15.8.0 (2019-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 15);
3GPP TS 38.213 V16.0.0 (2019-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16)”;
3GPP TS 38.321 V15.8.0 (2019-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol specification (Release 15)”;
3GPP TSG RAN WG1 Meeting #100-e, R1-2000199, Title: “Corrections on HARQ-ACK feedback,” Source: Huawei, HiSilicon, published, February 15, 2020, discloses corrections to 3GPP specifications related to one shot HARQ feedback;
3GPP TSG RAN WG1 Meeting #100-e, R1-2000997, Title: “Correction on HARQ process,” Source: ASUSTeK, February 6, 2020, discloses that HARQ process ID is signaled in the DCI applies to the first scheduled PUSCH. HARQ process ID is then incremented by 1 for subsequent PUSCHs in the scheduled order (with modulo operation as needed).
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.
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/L.G.G./ Examiner, Art Unit 2478
/JOSEPH E AVELLINO/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2478
1Ranta-Aho discusses how existing RRC parameters such as dl-DataToUL-ACK field of PUCCH-Config RRC information element can be used to dynamically enable/disable HARQ processes and retransmissions – See, e.g., [¶0087] and Table 4; see also 3GPP TS 38.331v15.8.0 (2019-12), ”Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Radio Resource Control (RRC) protocol specification (Release 15)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.331), at page 301-303, describing the dl-DataToUL-ACK field of PUCCH-Config RRC information element, indicating by an integer the slot where HARQ ACK/NACK can be transmitted, referencing § 9.1.2, 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.0.0 (2019-12), “Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16)” (hereinafter 3GPP TS 38.213) for its use when the UE is configured with pdsch-HARQ-ACK-Codebook = semi-static.
2 This feature would require additional bits in the bitmap to represent K but does not invalidate the example.
3 Section 9.1.2, 3GPP TS 38.213:50 teaches another case where HARQ-ACK bit in response to downlink data associated with a HARQ process of a disabled HARQ feedback is set as NACK in the HARQ-ACK codebook: “The UE reports NACK value(s) for HARQ-ACK information bit(s) in a HARQ-ACK codebook that the UE transmits in a slot not indicated by a value of a PDSCH-to-HARQ_feedback timing indicator field in a corresponding DCI format 1_0 or DCI format 1_1.”