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 allowance or after an Office action under Ex Parte Quayle, 25 USPQ 74, 453 O.G. 213 (Comm'r Pat. 1935). 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, prosecution in this application has been reopened pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 06/09/2026 has been entered.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/09/2026 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 10/22/2025 have been fully considered but they are not moot in view of new ground(s).
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.
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 16-17, 19-23, 25-27, 29-33, and 35 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Papasakellariou (US 20180167931) in view of Yeo et al. (US 20190273582) (cited in IDS filed on 06/09/2026).
Regarding claim 16, Papasakellariou discloses a wireless transmit/receive unit (WTRU) comprising: a processor and a transceiver (Fig. 3) which are configured to:
receive configuration information including information associated with a code block group (CBG)-based type of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback (explicit signaling can be by including a " HARQ-ACK report" field in either or both DL DCI formats; [0234].
gNB configures the UE with a "HARQ-ACK codeword length" field in a DCI format. UE determines a HARQ-ACK codeword length after a detection of a DL DCI format. The DL DCI format can include a "CBG counter" field that indicates a number of a CBG; [0247-0248]),
receive a first downlink control information (DCI) associated with a first downlink transmission (DCI format scheduling a PDSCH transmission is referred to as DL DCI format; [0223]),
receive the first downlink transmission that comprises at least one transport block (TB), wherein the at least one TB comprises a plurality of CBGs, and wherein each of the CBGs comprises one or more code blocks (CBs) (HARQ-ACK information can be dimensioned with finer granularity than per TB and can correspond to a group of data CBs in a data TB for a respective HARQ process; [0244].
DL DCI format can include a "CBG counter" field that indicates a number of a CBG where a number of CBGs increases sequentially first within a TB and then across TBs based on an ascending order of a slot index or of a DL cell index associated with a transmission of a TB; [0248]), and
transmit a first TB-based HARQ feedback associated with the first downlink transmission based on the first DCI including information indicating a TB-based type of HARQ feedback is to be provided for the first downlink transmission (UE detects a DL DCI format and determines a TB size, for example from a resource allocation field and from a MCS field to determine a number of HARQ-ACK information bits N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB for the TB, for example, from a HARQ-ACK information bits number field or from higher layer configuration of N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max 2610. From the TB size, the UE determines a number of CBs, for example as N.sub.CB.sup.TB=┌TBS/CBS.sub.max┐ where TBS is the TB size in bits and CBS.sub.max is a predetermined maximum CB size in bits, and a number of CBGs as N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB (N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB=min(N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max,N.sub.CB.sup.TB)) 2620. The UE determines N.sub.CB.sup.CBG=┌N.sub.CB.sup.TB/N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB┐ CBs per CBG for first mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) CBGs 2630 and determines N.sub.CB.sup.CBG=└N.sub.CB.sup.TB/N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB┘ CBs per CBG for last N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB−mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) CBGs 2635. The UE generates mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) HARQ-ACK information bits for first (or last) mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) CBGs 1140 and generates N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB−mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) HARQ-ACK information bits for last (or first) N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB−mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) CBGs 2645. Finally, the UE serially allocates mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) HARQ-ACK information bits followed by N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB−mod(N.sub.CB.sup.TB,N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB) HARQ-ACK information bits in a HARQ-ACK codeword; [0264-0265]),
wherein the first TB-based HARQ feedback includes a plurality of HARQ-ACK information bits, for a first TB of the first downlink transmission, having a length which is equal to a maximum number of CBGs configured for the first TB of the first downlink transmission (As different TBs can be associated with different HARQ processes and can include a different number of CBGs, each HARQ process for a respective TB can be associated with a different number of HARQ-ACK information bits that is equal to a number of CBGs in the TB; [0246].
gNB can configure to a UE a maximum number of CBGs per TB, or equivalently a maximum number N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max of HARQ-ACK information bits per TB (N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max=N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.CW in case of one slot). The value of N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max (number of CBG per TB) can be configured to a UE by higher layers or can be specified in a system operation; [0249]).
Papasakellariou does not expressly disclose each of the HARQ-ACK information bits has a same value.
In an analogous art, Yeo discloses each of the HARQ-ACK information bits has a same value (if the number of CBs C is 15 and M is 4, K.sub.+ becomes 3, and K.sub.− becomes 1. That is, 3 CB groups include ┌C/M┐=┌15/4┐=4 CBs, and one CB group includes CBs. Accordingly, CB 1 to CB 4 belong to CB group 1, and CB 5 to CB 8 belong to CB group 2. Further, CB 9 to CB 12 belong to CB group 3, and CB 13 to CB 15 belong to CB group 4. That is, the terminal transmits M-bit HARQ-ACK feedback to the base station using an uplink control channel. If transmission of CB group i has succeeded, the i-th bit is set to 1 in the M-bit HARQ-ACK feedback, and if transmission of CB group i has failed, the i-th bit is set to 0 in the M-bit HARQ-ACK feedback; [0248]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to add the features taught by Yeo into the system of Papasakellariou in order to efficiently perform communication between a base station and a terminal by configuring frequency bandwidths or radio resource regions to have different sizes (Yeo; [0016]).
Regarding claim 17, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo, particularly Papasakellariou discloses wherein each of the HARQ-ACK information bits for the first TB of the first downlink transmission indicates whether or not the first TB of the first downlink transmission was successfully decoded (UE initializes a HARQ-ACK codeword with ‘NACK’ values, such as binary zeros, and subsequently populates the HARQ-ACK codeword with actual HARQ-ACK values based on decoding outcomes for data CBs. Therefore, for a single cell, when N.sub.CB.sup.TB<N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.CW, N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.CW−N.sub.CB.sup.TB bits have a ‘NACK’ value; [0247]).
Regarding claim 19, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo, particularly Papasakellariou discloses wherein the processor and the transceiver are configured to: receive a second DCI associated with a second downlink transmission; receive the second downlink transmission that comprises at least one TB, wherein the at least one TB comprises a second plurality of CBGs, and wherein each of the CBGs of the second plurality of CBGs comprises one or more second CBs (UE can report HARQ-ACK information for multiple CBs of a TB, or for multiple DL cells where the UE is configured to receive PDSCH transmissions, or for multiple slots where the UE is configured to receive PDSCH transmissions. Incorrect detection of a HARQ-ACK information codeword by a gNB will require re-scheduling and retransmission of all data CBs; [0214].
A number of additional NDI bits in a DL DCI format can be equal to N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max in order for the NDI bits to uniquely identify CBGs for retransmission. A number of N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max NDI bits are included in a DL DCI format even when there are fewer than N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max CBGs in a data TB, that is when N.sub.CB.sup.TB<N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.TB,max, in order to maintain a predetermined number of NDI bits that a UE needs to know in order to detect a DL DCI format; [0251]), and
transmit a second CBG-based HARQ feedback associated with the second downlink transmission based on the second DCI including information indicating that the CBG-based type of HARQ feedback is to be provided for the second downlink transmission (explicit signaling can be by including a " HARQ-ACK report" field in either or both DL DCI formats; [0234].
gNB configures the UE with a "HARQ-ACK codeword length" field in a DCI format; [0247].
UE determines a HARQ-ACK codeword length after a detection of a DL DCI format. The DL DCI format can include a "CBG counter" field that indicates a number of a CBG; [0248],
UE initializes a HARQ-ACK codeword with `NACK` values, such as binary zeros, and subsequently populates the HARQ-ACK codeword with actual HARQ-ACK values based on decoding outcomes for data CBs; [0247].
DL DCI format scheduling transmission of one or more TBs to a UE can include a " HARQ-ACK codeword location" field, that indicates a location for a first HARQ-ACK information bit from a number of HARQ-ACK information bits that the UE generates in response to a reception of TBs scheduled by the DL DCI. A HARQ-ACK codeword location" field provides similar functionality as a " CBG counter" field and a DL DCI format can include one of these two fields; [0256].
When a UE correctly detects all data CBs in a CBG, the UE generates an ACK value (binary one); otherwise, the UE generates a NACK value. Therefore, a DL DCI format can indicate a number of CBGs per TB and a location for associated HARQ-ACK information bits in a HARQ-ACK codeword; [0258]),
wherein the second CBG-based HARQ feedback includes a plurality of HARQ-ACK information bits, for the CBGs of a first TB of the second downlink transmission, having a length equal to a number of the CBGs of the first TB of the second downlink transmission (For configuration of NCBCBG=4 CBs per CBG, a first TB includes N=8 CBs and HARQ-ACK information corresponds to NHARQ-ACKTB= 2 CBGs, while a second TB includes NCBTB=2 CBs and HARQ-ACK information is provided for a NHARQ-ACKTB= 1 CBG. As different TBs can be associated with different HARQ processes and can include a different number of CBGs, each HARQ process for a respective TB can be associated with a different number of HARQ-ACK information bits that is equal to a number of CBGs in the TB; [0246]).
Regarding claim 20, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo, particularly Papasakellariou discloses wherein the HARQ-ACK information bits for the first TB of the second downlink transmission have respective values indicating whether or not a corresponding one of the CBGs of the first TB of the second downlink transmission was successfully decoded (UE initializes a HARQ-ACK codeword with ‘NACK’ values, such as binary zeros, and subsequently populates the HARQ-ACK codeword with actual HARQ-ACK values based on decoding outcomes for data CBs. Therefore, for a single cell, when N.sub.CB.sup.TB<N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.CW, N.sub.HARQ-ACK.sup.CW−N.sub.CB.sup.TB bits have a ‘NACK’ value; [0247]).
Regarding claim 21, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo, particularly Papasakellariou discloses wherein the processor is further configured to: determine a mapping of the CBs into the plurality of CBGs of the first downlink transmission in at least one of a frequency domain or a time domain (DL DCI format can include a "CBG counter" field that indicates a number of a CBG where a number of CBGs increases sequentially first within a TB and then across TBs based on an ascending order of a slot index or of a DL cell index associated with a transmission of a TB; [0248].
FIG. 25 illustrates an adaptive partitioning of a data code block to data code block groups; [0259]), and
wherein the first downlink transmission is received using the mapping (number of (data) CBs per (data) TB, N.sub.CB.sup.TB can be determined as N.sub.CB.sup.TB=┌TBS/CBS.sub.max┐ where TBS is the TB size in bits and CBS.sub.max is a predetermined maximum CB size in bits. A maximum number of CBs per group of CBs (CB-group or CBG), N.sub.CB.sup.CBG can be configured to a UE by a gNB. As a TB size can vary for PDSCH transmissions in different slots or different cells, a number of CBGs per TB can also vary and consequently a number of HARQ-ACK information bits per TB can also vary; [0245]).
Regarding claim 22, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo, particularly Papasakellariou discloses wherein the mapping is based on one or more of: a number of subcarriers or orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbols assigned to the plurality of CBGs, a maximum code block length, the number of CBGs of the first downlink transmission, a number of CBs in the first downlink transmission, and/or one or more of a number of time symbols or a number of resource blocks occupied by a potential pre-empting transmission (a number of (data) CBs per (data) TB, N.sub.CB.sup.TB can be determined as N.sub.CB.sup.TB=.left brkt-top.TBS/CBS.sub.max.right brkt-bot. where TBS is the TB size in bits and CBS.sub.max is a predetermined maximum CB size in bits. A maximum number of CBs per group of CBs (CB-group or CBG), N.sub.CB.sup.CBG can be configured to a UE by a gNB. As a TB size can vary for PDSCH transmissions in different slots or different cells, a number of CBGs per TB can also vary and consequently a number of HARQ-ACK information bits per TB can also vary; [0245-0246]).
Regarding claim 23, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo, particularly Papasakellariou discloses wherein the first downlink transmission is associated with a HARQ process (HARQ-ACK information can be dimensioned with finer granularity than per TB and can correspond to a group of data CBs in a data TB for a respective HARQ process; [0244]).
Regarding claim 25, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo, particularly Papasakellariou discloses wherein the processor and the transceiver are configured to: receive configuration information including information indicating the maximum number of CBGs per TB (number of (data) CBs per (data) TB, N.sub.CB.sup.TB can be determined as N.sub.CB.sup.TB=┌TBS/CBS.sub.max┐ where TBS is the TB size in bits and CBS.sub.max is a predetermined maximum CB size in bits. A maximum number of CBs per group of CBs (CB-group or CBG), N.sub.CB.sup.CBG can be configured to a UE by a gNB. As a TB size can vary for PDSCH transmissions in different slots or different cells, a number of CBGs per TB can also vary and consequently a number of HARQ-ACK information bits per TB can also vary; [0245]).
Regarding claim 26, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 16.
Regarding claim 27, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 17.
Regarding claim 29, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 19.
Regarding claim 30, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 20.
Regarding claim 31, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 21.
Regarding claim 32, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 22.
Regarding claim 33, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 23.
Regarding claim 35, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 25.
Claims 24 and 34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Papasakellariou (US 20180167931) in view of Yeo et al. (US 20190273582), and in view of Hwang et al. (US 20190379487) with priority of U.S provisional applications 62/441,932 and 62/486,985.
Regarding claim 24, the combination of Papasakellariou and Yeo does not expressly disclose wherein the first DCI comprises a bitmap, and wherein the bitmap indicates which CBGs included in the first downlink transmission can be combined with previously received CBGs.
In an analogous art, Hwang discloses wherein the first DCI comprises a bitmap, and wherein the bitmap indicates which CBGs included in the first downlink transmission can be combined with previously received CBGs (the second DCI may be set by combining HARQ process number (or HARQ process ID), NDI and/or the time when the second DCI is transmitted. In the above case, HARQ process number (or HARQ process ID) and/or NDI may be set for each transport block (TB), or may be set for a single code block or a plurality of code blocks. a transmission interval where the retransmission DCI, which can indicate whether to perform chase combining by NDI, is transmitted may be indicated by previous DCI corresponding to corresponding retransmission. For example, the transmission interval which is indicated may be a processing time and/or HARQ-ACK transmission timing indicated by DCI. Also, the retransmission DCI may be transmitted from next slot of a slot to which previous DCI corresponding to the retransmission DCI is transmitted, or a first downlink or uplink slot next to the slot to which previous DCI is transmitted. Meanwhile, in order to determine chase combining for each code block, NDI may be set for a single code block or a plurality of code blocks; [0092, 0095], Hwang ‘932 pages 7-8).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art, before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, to add the features taught by Hwang into the system of Papasakellariou and Yeo in order to efficiently perform retransmission and decoding even in the case that data loss occurs in some of physical channels operating in a slot level due to puncturing or interference (Hwang; [0024]).
Regarding claim 34, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 24.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Hwang et al. (US 20190007959), “METHOD FOR TRANSMITTING DOWNLINK CONTROL INFORMATION OF DYNAMICALLY VARIABLE SIZE IN WIRELESS COMMUNICATION SYSTEM AND DEVICE FOR SAME.”
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/OUSSAMA ROUDANI/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2413
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