In view of the appeal brief filed on June 11 2026, PROSECUTION IS HEREBY REOPENED. New grounds of rejections are set forth below.
To avoid abandonment of the application, appellant must exercise one of the following two options:
(1) file a reply under 37 CFR 1.111 (if this Office action is non-final) or a reply under 37 CFR 1.113 (if this Office action is final); or,
(2) initiate a new appeal by filing a notice of appeal under 37 CFR 41.31 followed by an appeal brief under 37 CFR 41.37. The previously paid notice of appeal fee and appeal brief fee can be applied to the new appeal. If, however, the appeal fees set forth in 37 CFR 41.20 have been increased since they were previously paid, then appellant must pay the difference between the increased fees and the amount previously paid.
A Supervisory Patent Examiner (SPE) has approved of reopening prosecution by signing below:
/JEFFREY M RUTKOWSKI/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2415
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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1, 19, 40-41, 45-59 and 63 filed on October 22, 2025 are pending.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim(s) 1 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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.
Claim 1, 19, 40-41, 45-59 and 63 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cha et al. (US 12,164,051 B2, hereinafter "Cha") in view of Jiang et al. (US 2022/0329370 A1, hereinafter "Jiang").
Regarding claims 1 and 40, Cha discloses a method and a wireless device (Cha, Fig. 35), the wireless comprising:
power supply circuitry configured to supply power to the wireless device (Cha, Fig. 35 255); and
processing circuitry (Cha, Fig. 35 210) configured to:
determine a configuration for sounding reference signal (SRS) transmission, the configuration determined at least in part based on information received from a network node (Cha, Col. 22 line 10-15 A UE receives, from a BS, RRC signaling (e.g., SRS-Config IE) including (an RRC parameter) usage set… The UE determines Tx beamforming for SRS resources to be transmitted based on SRS-SpatialRelation Info included in the SRS-Config IE); and
perform the SRS transmission according to the configuration (Cha, Col. 22 line 35-38 the UE transmits the corresponding SRS by applying the same spatial domain transmission filter as the spatial domain Rx filter).
Cha discloses slot lever configuration with at least one of: the configuration configures a transmission comb differently in different physical resource blocks (PRBs) spanning an SRS resource, the configuration configures a comb offset differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource, and the configuration configures a cyclic shift differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource (Cha, table 14) but does not explicitly disclose within an OFDM symbol.
Jiang from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein within an OFDM symbol, at least one of: the configuration configures a transmission comb differently in different physical resource blocks (PRBs) spanning an SRS resource, the configuration configures a comb offset differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource, and the configuration configures a cyclic shift differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource (Jiang, [0106, 0116] transmitting, by the user equipment, M sections of frequency sounding at a symbol to the network base station, wherein each section of the M sections comprises consecutive physical resource blocks (PRBs), M being a positive integer. Optionally and/or alternatively, the parameters may include a transmission comb (TransmissionComb ). The TransmissionComb may be one of the higher-level parameters, and may include at least one of the following: a comb size, a comb offset, or a cyclic shift).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS transmission disclosed by Cha and SRS configuration disclosed by Jiang with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve downlink CSI measurement based on uplink SRS transmission (Jiang, [0082]).
Regarding claims 45 and 63, Cha discloses wherein each of a plurality of PRBs of an SRS resource belongs to the same OFDM symbol (Cha, Col. 43 line 48-50 Comb-N form having a size N, an SRS resource RE may be configured/indicated or allocated per RE for every N frequency REs in one symbol).
Regarding claim 46, Cha discloses wherein at least one PRB of an SRS resource belongs to a different OFDM symbol than at least one other PRB of the SRS resource (Cha, Col. 48 line 16-18 the BS/location server may configure/indicate two different staggered RE patterns/types for the two SRS symbols).
Regarding claim 48, Cha discloses wherein the configuration varies a comb configuration over sounded PRBs in different SRS resources (Cha, Col. 48 line 4-7 a rule for creating different types of staggered RE patterns of SRS resources to be used for UE positioning according to the comb-N type and/or the number of SRS symbols may be defined/configured for the UE).
Regarding claim 49, Cha discloses wherein the information received from the network node explicitly signals a set of PRBs that are occupied by a given SRS and which transmission comb to use in each PRB (Cha, Col. 47 line 50-55 Receiving configuration/indication of comb-type (Comb-N (>=I)), comb-offset, and relative comb-offset for each SRS resource from the BS).
Regarding claim 51, Cha discloses wherein the information received from the network node indicates one out of multiple predetermined PRB allocations and comb configurations (Cha, Col. 22 line 13-16 The SRS-Config IE is used for an SRS transmission configuration. The SRS-Config IE includes an SRS-Resources list and a SRS ResourceSet list. Each SRS resource set refers to a set of SRS-resources).
Regarding claim 55, Cha discloses wherein the configuration configures a regular frequency-domain PRB pattern (Cha, Col. 14-19 a staggered RE pattern/type in a 15 Comb-2 type and a staggered RE pattern/type in a Comb-4 type).
Regarding claim 57, Cha discloses wherein the processing circuitry is further configured to:
receive the information used for determining the configuration for the SRS transmission from the network node via radio resource control (RRC) signaling (Cha, Col. 22 line 10-15 A UE receives, from a BS, RRC signaling (e.g., SRS-Config IE) including (an RRC parameter) usage set… The UE determines Tx beamforming for SRS resources to be transmitted based on SRS-SpatialRelation Info included in the SRS-Config IE).
Regarding claims 19 and 58, Cha discloses a method and a network node (Cha, Fig. 35), the network node comprising:
power supply circuitry configured to supply power to the wireless device (Cha, Fig. 35 255); and
processing circuitry (Cha, Fig. 35 210) configured to:
determine information indicating at least a portion of a configuration for sounding reference signal (SRS) transmission (Cha, Col. 21 line 56-58 The UE may be configured with one or more sounding reference signal (SRS) resource sets configured by (an RRC layer parameter) SRS-ResourceSet (by RRC signaling)); and
send the information to the wireless device (Cha, Col. 22 line 10-12 A UE receives, from a BS, RRC signaling).
Cha discloses slot level parameters with at least one of: the configuration configures a transmission comb differently in different physical resource blocks (PRBs) spanning an SRS resource, the configuration configures a comb offset differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource, and the configuration configures a cyclic shift differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource (Cha, table 14) but does not explicitly disclose within an OFDM symbol.
Jiang from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein within an OFDM symbol, at least one of: the configuration configures a transmission comb differently in different physical resource blocks (PRBs) spanning an SRS resource, the configuration configures a comb offset differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource, and the configuration configures a cyclic shift differently in different PRBs spanning the SRS resource (Jiang, [0106, 0116] transmitting, by the user equipment, M sections of frequency sounding at a symbol to the network base station, wherein each section of the M sections comprises consecutive physical resource blocks (PRBs), M being a positive integer. Optionally and/or alternatively, the parameters may include a transmission comb (TransmissionComb ). The TransmissionComb may be one of the higher-level parameters, and may include at least one of the following: a comb size, a comb offset, or a cyclic shift).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS transmission disclosed by Cha and SRS configuration disclosed by Jiang with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve downlink CSI measurement based on uplink SRS transmission (Jiang, [0082]).
Claims 41 and 59 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cha et al. (US 12,164,051 B2, hereinafter "Cha") in view of Jiang et al. (US 2022/0329370 A1, hereinafter "Jiang") and further in view of Samsung et al. (3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #66 R1-112521, August 22 – 26, 2011, hereinafter "Samsung").
Regarding claims 41 and 59, Cha does not explicitly disclose wherein the configuration for the SRS transmission comprises non-contiguous parts of a frequency-domain sounding bandwidth in a given orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol.
Samsung from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the configuration for the SRS transmission comprises non-contiguous parts of a frequency-domain sounding bandwidth in a given orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol (Samsung, section 3 Non-contiguous SRS Transmissions).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS resource disclosed by Cha and non-contiguous SRS resource disclosed by Samsung with a motivation to make this modification in order to avoid SRS overhead reduction (Samsung, section 1).
Claims 47 and 56 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cha et al. (US 12,164,051 B2, hereinafter "Cha") in view of Jiang et al. (US 2022/0329370 A1, hereinafter "Jiang") and further in view of Joseph et al. (US 2020/0059907 A1, hereinafter "Joseph").
Regarding claim 47, Cha does not explicitly disclose wherein the configuration varies a comb configuration over sounded PRBs in an irregular pattern.
Joseph from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the configuration varies a comb configuration over sounded PRBs in an irregular pattern (Joseph, [0076-0077] the RB range for SRS hops from PRBs 1-16 in a first time period to PRBs 33-48 in a second time period; randomize the hopping pattern. In other aspects, the RRC can indicate a range of applicable patterns, and the DCI can inform which patterns).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS resource disclosed by Cha and randomize hopping pattern of SRS resource disclosed by Joseph with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve communication signaling, resource utilization, and/or power savings (Joseph, [0091]).
Regarding claim 56, Cha does not explicitly disclose wherein the configuration configures an irregular frequency-domain PRB pattern.
Joseph from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the configuration configures an irregular frequency-domain PRB pattern (Joseph, [0076-0077] the RB range for SRS hops from PRBs 1-16 in a first time period to PRBs 33-48 in a second time period; randomize the hopping pattern. In other aspects, the RRC can indicate a range of applicable patterns, and the DCI can inform which patterns).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS resource disclosed by Cha and randomize hopping pattern of SRS resource disclosed by Joseph with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve communication signaling, resource utilization, and/or power savings (Joseph, [0091]).
Claim 50 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cha et al. (US 12,164,051 B2, hereinafter "Cha") in view of Jiang et al. (US 2022/0329370 A1, hereinafter "Jiang") and further in view of Li et al. (US 2015/0263830 A1, hereinafter "Li").
Regarding claim 50, Cha discloses bitmap but does not explicitly disclose wherein the information received from the network node comprise a first bit map indicating the set of PRBs that are occupied by the given SRS and a second bit map indicating which transmission comb to use in each PRB.
Li from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the information received from the network node comprise a first bit map indicating the set of PRBs that are occupied by the given SRS and a second bit map indicating which transmission comb to use in each PRB (Li, [0040-0041] srs-BandWidthConfig is the maximum bandwidth for the SRS and is a 3 bit parameter, together with the UE specific parameter srs-Bandwidth (2 bits), number of resource block (frequency bandwidth) allocated for SRS transmission… The UE specific parameters can include:… transmissionComb provides the transmission comb offset).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS resource disclosed by Cha and bitmap for SRS resource disclosed by Li with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve performance (Li, [0001]).
Claims 52-54 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Cha et al. (US 12,164,051 B2, hereinafter "Cha") in view of Jiang et al. (US 2022/0329370 A1, hereinafter "Jiang") and further in view of Islam et al. (US 2022/0045732 A1, Provisional application No. 63/063,161, filed on Aug. 7, 2020. hereinafter "Islam")
Regarding claim 52, Cha does not explicitly disclose wherein the configuration configures a subcarrier spacing (SCS) used for the SRS transmission differently than an SCS used for a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH).
Islam from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the configuration configures a subcarrier spacing (SCS) used for the SRS transmission differently than an SCS used for a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) (Islam, [0073] PUCCH can have a higher priority than SRS, which can have a higher priority than PUSCH)… reference band determining component 814 can determine the priority for the channels based on subcarrier spacing (SCS) (for example, channels having high SCS can have higher priority than channels having low SCS)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS resource disclosed by Cha and SRS and PUSCH subcarrier spacing disclosed by Islam with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve improved signal strength and quality when communicating with the base station (Islam, [0020]).
Regarding claim 53, Cha does not explicitly disclose wherein the SCS used for the SRS transmission is higher than the SCS used for the PUSCH.
Islam from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the SCS used for the SRS transmission is higher than the SCS used for the PUSCH (Islam, [0073] PUCCH can have a higher priority than SRS, which can have a higher priority than PUSCH)… reference band determining component 814 can determine the priority for the channels based on subcarrier spacing (SCS) (for example, channels having high SCS can have higher priority than channels having low SCS)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS resource disclosed by Cha and SRS and PUSCH subcarrier spacing disclosed by Islam with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve improved signal strength and quality when communicating with the base station (Islam, [0020]).
Regarding claim 54, Cha does not explicitly disclose wherein the SCS used for the SRS transmission is configured with usage beamManagement.
Islam from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the SCS used for the SRS transmission is configured with usage beamManagement (Islam, [0073] reference band determining component 814 can determine the priority for the channels based on whether DL beam RSs are included (for example, channels on CC with DL beam RS can have higher priority than channels on other CCs). In another example, reference band determining component 814 can determine the priority for the channels based on whether feedback is received corresponding to a higher or lower SCS).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified SRS resource disclosed by Cha and SRS and PUSCH subcarrier spacing disclosed by Islam with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve improved signal strength and quality when communicating with the base station (Islam, [0020]).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LUNA WEISSBERGER whose telephone number is (571)272-3315. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00am-5:30pm.
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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415
Prosecution Insights