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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, see page 2-4, filed on 02/27/2026, with respect to the rejection(s) of claims 19, 27 and 33 under 35 U.S.C 13 have been fully considered and are persuasive. Therefore, the rejection has been withdrawn. However, upon further consideration, a new ground(s) of rejection is made in view of Xin et al (US 9,629,016 B2).
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.
Claims 19-20, 22-28, 30-34, 36-38 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Guo et al. (US 2018/0083680) in view of Nam et al. (US 2018/0278314), further in view of Xin et al (US 9,629,016 B2).
Regarding claims 19, 27, 33, Guo teaches an apparatus for a user equipment (UE), the apparatus comprising: memory and processing circuitry, wherein, the processing circuitry is configured to:
for each of one or more beams, measure Layer 1 reference signal received power (L1-RSRP) of one or more channel state information reference signals (CSI-RSs) during a beam measurement period for L1-RSRP measurements (paragraph [0152]; “The UE is configured to measure the beam-specific RSRP, RSRQ, CQI, PMI, RI, CSI of all indicated CSI-RS resources”, it’s noted that beam-specific RSRP is layer one RSRP), where the CSI-RSs are transmitted from a base station (BS) via different directional beams ([0160]; “As illustrated in FIG. 10, a gNB [base station] sends the UE-specific CSI-RS configuration to the UE, in which there are one or multiple CSI-RS processes and each CSI-RS process contains one or more CSI-RS and each CSI-RS resources contain one or more CSI-RS antenna ports”), wherein
encode (FIG. 3, TX Processing Circuitry 315 and paragraph [0073]) a beam report for sending to the BS that includes, for each of the one or more beams, the corresponding L1-RSRP of the corresponding CSI-RS measured over the beam measurement period for L1-RSRP measurements (paragraph [0153]; “In some embodiments, the CSI-beam state information that the UE is configured to report includes one or more than one of the followings: the beam ID of one CSI-RS resource; beam-specific RSRP; beam-specific RSRQ; CQI measured CSI-RS conveyed in one CSI-RS resource; PMI and RI measured from CSI-RS conveyed in one CSI-RS resource; or CSI measured from CSI-RS conveyed in one CSI-RS resource”).
Guo does not explicitly disclose that the beam measurement period for L1-RSRP measurements spans multiple time slots.
However, Nam, in the same field of endeavor as Guo, discloses that the beam measurement period for L1-RSRP measurements spans multiple time slots ([0163]; “For the first set of CSI-RS resources, a UE is allowed to make measurement across multiple time slots to derive beam-specific RSRPs (i.e., no measurement restriction is applied in time domain), and the measurement quantity, e.g., RSRPs/RSRQs can correspond to a time-averaged value”).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present invention to utilize the teaching of Nam in the system disclosed by Guo for the advantage of improving accuracy since averaging L1-RSRP measurement over multiple time slots reduces the impact of instantons fading, noise, and interference, leading to a more reliable estimate of signal strength.
Guo in view of Nam doesn’t explicitly teach that the measurement period for signal measurements is larger than a reporting interval.
In the same field of endeavor, Xin teaches that the measurement period for signal measurements is larger than a reporting interval (Col 7, lines 52-56: “Regarding the period reporting way, the period for reporting the CSI-RSRP information can be equal to or not equal to the measurement period T”; also see Col 8, line 8-10: “if the measurement period T is too long, then it will …for the CSI-RSRP demand”, it’s noted that CSI-RSRP is one kind of L1-RSRP).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the teaching of Xin in the system disclosed by Guo in view of Nam as to decouple the reporting interval from the measurement period – letting the network independently configure how of the UE reports versus how long it measures/averages. This gives the predictable benefits of network flexibility: the BS can obtain reports at the cadence it needs without being locked into to the measurement period length, and can use either periodic or event triggered reporting as conditions require.
Regarding claim 20, 28, 34, the aforementioned references further teach: the processing circuitry is configured to periodically encode the beam report for sending to the BS in accordance with the beam measurement period for L1_RSRP measurements (see Guo, paragraph [0160]; “If the CSI-RS transmission is periodic, the CSI-beam state information report trigger message can configure the UE to measure the CSI-beam state information based on the periodic CSI-RS transmission. The UE reports the CSI-beam state information, which can contain beam ID, beam-specific RSRP, CQI, PMI, RI and/or CSI that are measured from the CSI-RS signal transmitted on the antenna ports of each CSI-RS resource.”) [Nam also discloses reporting can be periodic or aperiodic in paragraph [0158]).
Regarding claim 22, 30, 36, the aforementioned references further teach wherein the processing circuitry is configured to encode the beam report for sending to the BS in response to downlink control information (DCI) received from the BS over a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) (see Guo, paragraph [0128]; “In one example, the TRP could use signal in MAC-CE or L1 signaling (e.g., DCI) to indicate the UE to report the beam state information in nrPUSCH”).
Regarding claim 23, 31, 37, the aforementioned references further teach wherein the processing circuitry is configured to average a number N L1-RSRPs for the beam report, where the number N is received from the BS (see Nam, [0159]; “The additional information may comprise information on a subset of CSI-RS resources for UE to measure. This information helps to reduce the burden of UE measurement when the full set of cell-specific CSI-RS resources is large. The subset is selected from the set of K CSI-RS resources.”; and [0163]; “For the first set of CSI-RS resources, a UE is allowed to make measurement across multiple time slots to derive beam-specific RSRPs (i.e., no measurement restriction is applied in time domain), and the measurement quantity, e.g., RSRPs/RSRQs can correspond to a time-averaged value”).
Regarding claim 24, 32, 38, the aforementioned references further teach wherein the processing circuitry is configured to average a plurality of L1-RSRPs for the beam report from a CSI-RS received in different slots (see Nam, [0163]; “For the first set of CSI-RS resources, a UE is allowed to make measurement across multiple time slots to derive beam-specific RSRPs (i.e., no measurement restriction is applied in time domain), and the measurement quantity, e.g., RSRPs/RSRQs can correspond to a time-averaged value.”).
Regarding claim 25, the aforementioned references further teach: antennas (see Guo, FIG. 2, antennas 205a-205n); and a transceiver coupled to the antennas and to the processing circuitry (see Guo, FIG. 2, RF transceiver 210a-210n).
Regarding claim 26, the aforementioned references further teach that the base station is a gNodeB of 3GPP 5G New Radio (see Guo, [0051]; “Base stations may provide wireless access in accordance with one or more wireless communication protocols, e.g., 5G 3GPP new radio interface/access (NR), long term evolution (LTE), LTE advanced (LTE-A), high speed packet access (HSPA), Wi-Fi 802.11a/b/g/n/ac, etc.”).
Claims 21, 29 and 35 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Guo et al. (US 2018/0083680) in view of Nam et al. (US 2018/0278314), further in view of Xin et al (US 9,629,016 B2), further in view of Koskela, et al (WO 2019/003059 A1).
Regarding Claim 21, 29 and 35, the aforementioned references teach all of the limitations except applying a sliding window for averaging a plurality of L1-RSRP measurements.
However, Koskela disclose applying a sliding window for averaging a plurality of L1-RSRP measurements ([0042], “the UE determines the number of HighQuality beams based on the higher layer (e.g. L2/L3, moving average filter) filtered beam measurements. Higher layer beam filtering, such as moving average is used to filter L1 measurements (L1 measurement e.g. RSRP may consist of N -L1 samples”, it’s noted that moving average is equivalent to applying a sliding window for averaging).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the teaching of Koskela in the system disclosed Guo in view of Nam and Xin in order to smooth out short-term fading and measurement noises across the plurality of L1-RSRP samples, producing a more reliable and stable beam measurement for reporting.
Conclusion
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/SIMING LIU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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