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 .
The Examiner thanks the Applicant for the well-prepared amendment. The Examiner appreciates the Applicant’s effort to carefully analyze the Office action, and make appropriate arguments and amendments.
Status of Claims
Claims 1-19 and 35-39 responded on October 08, 2025 are pending, claims 1, 9, 12 and 35 are amended.
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.
Claims 1-5, 7, 9-15, 18-19 and 35-39 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ji et al. (US 2014/0219199 A1, hereinafter "Ji") in view of Mandelli et al. (WO 2021/073709 A1, hereinafter "Mandelli") and Son et al. (US 2017/0223689 A1, hereinafter "Son").
Regarding claim 1, Ji discloses a method of a radio base station of controlling sending of reference signals from a wireless communication device, comprising: determining, from an estimated characteristic of a communication channel established via each of a plurality of antennas of the wireless communication device, a measure of similarity in the estimated characteristics for at least two of the communication channels (Ji, [0013-14] when the transmitted control channel includes information for aperiodic channel SRS transmission of the UE, reception from the UE of uplink data through a first carrier and the channel SRS through a second carrier (i.e. at least two communication channels) and measurement of a channel state (i.e. a measure of similarity) by using the received channel SRS); but does not explicitly disclose if the similarity exceeds a similarity threshold value: instructing the wireless communication device to send further reference signals only on one of said at least two communication channels during a time period.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses if the similarity exceeds a similarity threshold value: instructing the wireless communication device to send further reference signals only on one of said at least two communication channels during a time period (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Ji in view of Mandelli does not explicitly disclose wherein determining the measure of similarity comprises comparing the estimated characteristic of one of the at least two communication channels with the estimated characteristic of another of the at least two communication channels.
Son from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein determining the measure of similarity comprises comparing the estimated characteristic of one of the at least two communication channels with the estimated characteristic of another of the at least two communication channels (Son, [0078] claim 28. the statistics on the channel qualities may include at least one of information on whether channel qualities of all of the beams satisfy a predetermined criterion or not, similarity of the channel qualities of all of the beams, information on whether channel qualities of all of the beams of a group satisfy a predetermined criterion, similarity of the channel qualities of all of the beams of the group, information on whether a channel quality of each of the beams satisfies a predetermined criterion, and similarity of the channel qualities of the beams satisfying the predetermined criterion (i.e. similarity threshold)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Son’s system for similarity threshold into Ji’s sounding process as modified by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to enhance spectral efficiency to increase the data transfer rate (Son, [0004]).
Regarding claim 2, Ji discloses receiving, from the wireless communication device, a reference signal transmitted via each of the plurality of antennas (Ji, [0013, 0032] when the control channel includes information for aperiodic channel SRS transmission of the UE; one carrier by using two or more antennas in a multi-antenna transmission scheme); and estimating, from the received reference signals, the characteristic of the communication channel established via each of the plurality of antennas (Ji, [0013] and measuring a channel state by using the received channel SRS).
Regarding claim 3, Ji discloses receiving, from the wireless communication device, an estimate of the characteristic of the communication channel established via each of the plurality of antennas (Ji, [0032, 0053] one carrier by using two or more antennas in a multi-antenna transmission scheme; When the UE reports a result of the channel measurement to the BS).
Regarding claim 4, Ji does not explicitly disclose receiving the further reference signals that the wireless communication device was instructed to send;
estimating, from the received further reference signals of said one of the at least
two communication channels, the characteristic of each of said at least two communication channels; and selecting a downlink configuration for each of said at least two communication channels based on the estimation.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving the further reference signals that the wireless communication device was instructed to send (Mandelli, pg.15 instructing 130 instructs at least one of the terminal and the base station to transmit a sounding signal for estimating a quality of a channel between the base station and the terminal periodically with the determined sounding period);
estimating, from the received further reference signals of said one of the at least
two communication channels, the characteristic of each of said at least two communication channels (Mandelli, pg. 16 the means for estimating 220 estimates at least one of a speed of the terminal and a future traffic from the terminal based on the sounding demand); and selecting a downlink configuration for each of said at least two communication channels based on the estimation (Mandelli, pg. 7 gNB informs UE on the sounding configuration, i.e. SRS-Config and SRS-Resource, which include the SRS period. In addition, gNB may configure UE with an SD update period (e.g. “SD-ConfigureUpdatePeriod”), in which the UE shall update the SD information. Then, based on these parameters, channel estimation is performed as usual).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve UE’s battery life (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claim 5, Ji discloses wherein the estimated communication channel characteristic comprises channel state information, CSI (Ji, [0053] the BS
transmits the CRS or the CSI-RS to allow the UE to perform the channel measurement. When the UE reports a result of the channel measurement to the BS).
Regarding claim 7, Ji does not explicitly disclose instructing the wireless communication device to send further reference signals only on one of said at least two communication channels during a time period.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses instructing the wireless communication device to send further reference signals only on one of said at least two communication channels during a time period (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claim 9, Ji discloses a method of a radio base station of controlling sending of reference signals from a wireless communication device, comprising: determining, from an estimated characteristic of a communication channel established via each of a plurality of antennas of the wireless communication device, a measure of channel quality from the estimated characteristics for at least two of the communication channels (Ji, [0013-14,0032] when the transmitted control channel includes information for aperiodic channel SRS transmission of the UE, reception from the UE of uplink data through a first carrier and the channel SRS through a second carrier (i.e. at least two communication channels) and measurement of a channel state (i.e. a measure of similarity) by using the received channel SRS; one carrier by using two or more antennas in a multi-antenna transmission scheme); but does not explicitly disclose if the channel quality exceeds a channel quality threshold value for only a subset of the at least two of the communication channels: instructing the wireless communication device to send further reference signals only on one of said at least two communication channels during a time period.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses if the channel quality exceeds a channel quality threshold value for only a subset of the at least two of the communication channels: instructing the wireless communication device to send further reference signals only on one of said at least two communication channels during a time period (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Ji in view of Mandelli does not explicitly disclose wherein the measure of channel quality is determined independently for each of the at least two communication channels.
Son from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the measure of channel quality is determined independently for each of the at least two communication channels (Son, [0078] claim 28. the statistics on the channel qualities may include at least one of information on whether channel qualities of all of the beams satisfy a predetermined criterion or not, similarity of the channel qualities of all of the beams, information on whether channel qualities of all of the beams of a group satisfy a predetermined criterion, similarity of the channel qualities of all of the beams of the group, information on whether a channel quality of each of the beams satisfies a predetermined criterion, and similarity of the channel qualities of the beams satisfying the predetermined criterion (i.e. similarity threshold)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Son’s system for similarity threshold into Ji’s sounding process as modified by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to enhance spectral efficiency to increase the data transfer rate (Son, [0004]).
Regarding claim 10, Ji discloses receiving, from the wireless communication device, a reference signal transmitted via each of the plurality of antennas (Ji, [0013, 0032] when the control channel includes information for aperiodic channel SRS transmission of the UE; one carrier by using two or more antennas in a multi-antenna transmission scheme); and estimating, from the received reference signals, the characteristic of the communication channel established via each of the plurality of antennas (Ji, [0013] and measuring a channel state by using the received channel SRS).
Regarding claim 11, Ji discloses receiving, from the wireless communication device, an estimate of the characteristic of the communication channel established via each of the plurality of antennas (Ji, [0032, 0053] one carrier by using two or more antennas in a multi-antenna transmission scheme; When the UE reports a result of the channel measurement to the BS).
Regarding claim 12, Ji discloses a method of a wireless communication device of controlling sending of reference signals to a radio base station comprising:
sending, to the radio base station, data enabling the radio base station to
determine a characteristic of a communication channel established via each of a plurality of antennas with which the wireless communication device is equipped (Ji, [0013-14] when the control channel includes information for aperiodic channel SRS transmission of the UE, receiving uplink data through a first carrier and a channel SRS through a second carrier; reception from the UE of uplink
data through a first carrier and the channel SRS through a second carrier, and measurement of a channel state by using the received channel SRS); but does not explicitly disclose receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals more often on at least one of the communication channels as compared to another of the channels during a time period.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals more often on at least one of the communication channels as compared to another of the channels during a time period (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Ji in view of Mandelli does not explicitly disclose wherein the instruction is based on a comparison between the estimated characteristics of the communication channels.
Son from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the instruction is based on a comparison between the estimated characteristics of the communication channels (Son, [0078] claim 28. the statistics on the channel qualities may include at least one of information on whether channel qualities of all of the beams satisfy a predetermined criterion or not, similarity of the channel qualities of all of the beams, information on whether channel qualities of all of the beams of a group satisfy a predetermined criterion, similarity of the channel qualities of all of the beams of the group, information on whether a channel quality of each of the beams satisfies a predetermined criterion, and similarity of the channel qualities of the beams satisfying the predetermined criterion).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Son’s system for similarity threshold into Ji’s sounding process as modified by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to enhance spectral efficiency to increase the data transfer rate (Son, [0004]).
Regarding claim 13, Ji does not explicitly disclose receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on one of at least two communication channels during a time period, the radio base station having determined from the received reference signals that said at least two communication channels has an associated similarity measure exceeding a similarity threshold value.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on one of at least two communication channels during a time period, the radio base station having determined from the received reference signals that said at least two communication channels has an associated similarity measure exceeding a similarity threshold value (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claim 14, Ji does not explicitly disclose receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on one of at least two communication channels during a time period, the radio base station having determined from the indication of the estimated characteristic of the communication channels that said at least two communication channels has an associated similarity measure exceeding a similarity threshold value.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on one of at least two communication channels during a time period, the radio base station having determined from the indication of the estimated characteristic of the communication channels that said at least two communication channels has an associated similarity measure exceeding a similarity threshold value (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claim 15, Ji does not explicitly disclose sending the further reference signals to the radio base station based on the received instruction.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses sending the further reference signals to the radio base station based on the received instruction (Mandelli, pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claim 16, Ji does not explicitly disclose receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send the further reference signals, for each of at least two sets of communication channels, only on one of the communication channels in each set during a time period.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send the further reference signals, for each of at least two sets of communication channels, only on one of the communication channels in each set during a time period (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claim 18, Ji does not explicitly disclose receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on a subset of at least two of the communication channels, the radio base station having determined from the received reference signals that only the subset of the at least two of the communication channels has a channel quality measure exceeds a channel quality threshold value.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on a subset of at least two of the communication channels, the radio base station having determined from the received reference signals that only the subset of the at least two of the communication channels has a channel quality measure exceeds a channel quality threshold value (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claim 19, Ji does not explicitly disclose receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on a subset of at least two of the communication channels, the radio base station having determined from the received reference signals that only the subset of the at least two of the communication channels has a channel quality measure exceeds a channel quality threshold value.
Mandelli from the same field of endeavor discloses receiving an instruction from the radio base station to send further reference signals only on a subset of at least two of the communication channels, the radio base station having determined from the received reference signals that only the subset of the at least two of the communication channels has a channel quality measure exceeds a channel quality threshold value (Mandelli, pg. 13 The gNB computes the SRS allocation with internal algorithms, exploiting SD in addition to other information available, and signals it to the UE; where the objective is to keep the quality of the CSI above a certain threshold while, minimizing the need for SRS; pg. 14 to trigger a proper increase/decrease of the frequency of SRS transmission at the right times, and allows a safe reduction of allocation when the terminal knows that it is static/not transmitting).
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 channel sounding reference disclosed by Ji and sounding interval disclosed by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve by reducing the amount of required signalling (Mandelli, pg. 9).
Regarding claims 35-39, these claims recite "a wireless communication device" that disclose similar steps as recited by the method of claims 12-16, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 12-16 as presented above.
Claim 6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ji et al. (US 2014/0219199 A1, hereinafter "Ji") in view of Mandelli et al. (WO 2021/073709 A1, hereinafter "Mandelli") and Son et al. (US 2017/0223689 A1, hereinafter "Son") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Chandrasekhar et al. (US 11,516,051 B2, hereinafter "Chandrasekhar").
Regarding claim 6, Ji does not explicitly disclose where the measure of similarity is based on covariance between one or more communication channel characteristics.
Chandrasekhar from the same field of endeavor discloses where the measure of similarity is based on covariance between one or more communication channel characteristics (Chandrasekhar, Col. 10 line 63-66 Col. 11 line 47-50 Level crossing rate and covariance methods suffer from increased sensitivity with reduced SNR and suffer from higher error when the UE speed is small; determine speed categories for multiple users, zero reliance on prior knowledge of system parameters (e.g. noise variance, Signal-to-Noise ratio, etc.) a low sensitivity to the level of noise, a reasonable computational complexity, and applicability for both wide-band and frequency hopping SRS measurements).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Chandrasekhar’s system for scheduling to send SRS into Ji’s sounding process as modified by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to estimating terminal speed is potentially useful for beam prediction considering the correlation in channel properties across the various beams used by the terminals (Chandrasekhar, [background]).
Claims 8 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ji et al. (US 2014/0219199 A1, hereinafter "Ji") in view of Mandelli et al. (WO 2021/073709 A1, hereinafter "Mandelli") and Son et al. (US 2017/0223689 A1, hereinafter "Son") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Chai et al. (US 2020/0204408 A1, hereinafter "Chai").
Regarding claim 8, Ji does not explicitly disclose instructing the wireless communication device to send the further reference signals more often via a communication channel having a higher channel quality.
Chai from the same field of endeavor discloses instructing the wireless communication device to send the further reference signals more often via a communication channel having a higher channel quality (Chai, [0141] triggering sending of an SRS based on uplink data provided in the present disclosure, a data packet arrival rate increases, and frequency of sending the SRS by a terminal device also increases correspondingly. Therefore, compared with using the 5 ms periodic SRS and an aperiodic SRS, by using the sending method of triggering sending of an SRS based on uplink data provided in the present disclosure, the network side device can obtain more accurate uplink channel quality, to schedule a more suitable resource for the terminal device).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Chai’s system for scheduling to send SRS into Ji’s sounding process as modified by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve SRS resource utilization and reduce resource waste (Chai, [abstract]).
Regarding claim 17, Ji does not explicitly disclose sending the reference signals more often via a communication channel having a higher channel quality.
Chai from the same field of endeavor discloses sending the reference signals more often via a communication channel having a higher channel quality (Chai, [0141] triggering sending of an SRS based on uplink data provided in the present disclosure, a data packet arrival rate increases, and frequency of sending the SRS by a terminal device also increases correspondingly. Therefore, compared with using the 5 ms periodic SRS and an aperiodic SRS, by using the sending method of triggering sending of an SRS based on uplink data provided in the present disclosure, the network side device can obtain more accurate uplink channel quality, to schedule a more suitable resource for the terminal device).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Chai’s system for scheduling to send SRS into Ji’s sounding process as modified by Mandelli with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve SRS resource utilization and reduce resource waste (Chai, [abstract]).
Conclusion
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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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415
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