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 1-20 responded on November 13, 2025 are pending, claims 1-20 are amended.
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and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 CFR 1.114.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 December 18 2025 has been entered.
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 1-3, 10-12 and 19-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bala et al. (US 2024/0334201 A1, hereinafter "Bala") in view of Chavva et al. (US 2021/0351885 A1, hereinafter "Chavva") and Farag et al. (US 2023/0247454 A1, hereinafter "Farag").
Regarding claim 1, Bala discloses a wireless node (Bala, Fig.1), comprising: at least one transceiver; at least one memory comprising instructions; and one or more processors configured, individually or collectively, to execute the instructions to cause the wireless node to:
transmit, via the at least one transceiver, a first channel prediction report based on measurements by a user equipment (UE) of first reference signals (RS) associated with a first beam (Bala, [0051] after receiving a set of resources from a base station (e.g., reference signals) the UE may generate a plurality of outputs. An output (i.e. first channel prediction report) may be a measurement of, for example, the RSRP of a beam, the CSI, channel impulse response (CIR));
transmit, via the at least one transceiver, a beam prediction report indicating a second beam (Bala, [0046] an AI/ML model may be used at the UE side to predict a set of beams in time and/or spatial domains. For example, the UE … may predict a second set of beams (i.e. beam prediction report) using the measurements as an input to the AI/ML model);
transmit, via the at least one transceiver, a second channel prediction report based on measurements of second RS associated with the second beam (Bala, [0069, 73, 75] first mode transmission (i.e. transmission)… An output report configuration may include a specific output type (e.g., a legacy output (i.e. channel prediction report), an output from a specific AI/ML model), reference signals from which the outputs are derived, a time window in which the outputs are derived…the AI/ML model may provide another estimated CSI obtained from the input of the compressed version of the CSI-RS resources as the second output… UE performs first mode and second mode transmissions at a timing before the KPI reporting is scheduled), but does not explicitly disclose second channel prediction report indicating a precoder; and receive, via the at least one transceiver, a beamformed transmission based on the second beam and the precoder.
Chavva from the same field of endeavor discloses second channel prediction report indicating a precoder (Chavva, [0046-49] the neural network (602c), an optimal CSI-RS resource allocation and an optimal periodicity for sending CSI reports to the gNB…one of the CSI feedback parameters is a Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI), wherein the neural network (602c) determines a most probable PMI value amongst a predefined number of probable PMI values); and receive, via the at least one transceiver, a beamformed transmission based on the second beam and the precoder (Guan, [0057] a delay in scheduling a Physical Downlink Scheduling Channel (PDSCH) by the gNB (607) after receiving the CSI report from the UE).
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 ML/AI based CSI disclosed by Bala and channel state information disclosed by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and increase the optimality of the CSI report (Chavva, [0086]).
Bala in view of Chavva does not explicitly disclose a predicted application time for using the second beam.
Farag from the same field of endeavor discloses transmit, via the at least one transceiver, before a predicted application time for using the second beam, a second channel prediction report based on measurements of second RS associated with the second beam (Farag, [0102, 0109] the network (e.g., gNB) receives the nth beam measurement report (or SRS transmission) and the (n+1)th beam measurement (or SRS transmission) (i.e. second channel prediction report), the time between the nth beam measurement report (or SRS transmission) and the (n+1)th beam measurement report (or SRS transmission) can be long such that the beam can change in between; the beam management algorithm can predict beams to use at intermediate time instances between the two beam measurement reports (or SRS transmissions). The network signals the predicated beams to the UE).
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 Farag’s system for configurable measurement resources and reporting into Liu’s ML/AI based CSI process as modified by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of beam prediction (Farag, [0103]).
Regarding claim 2, Bala discloses PDSCH but does not explicitly disclose wherein the beamformed transmission comprises a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH).
Chavva from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the beamformed transmission comprises a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) (Guan, [0057] a delay in scheduling a Physical Downlink Scheduling Channel (PDSCH) by the gNB (607) after receiving the CSI report from the UE).
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 ML/AI based CSI disclosed by Bala and channel state information disclosed by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and increase the optimality of the CSI report (Chavva, [0086]).
Regarding claim 3, Bala does not explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the instructions to cause the wireless node to receive control information that at least one of:
indicates a switch to the second beam; or schedules the beamformed transmission with the precoder.
Chavva from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the instructions to cause the wireless node to receive control information that at least one of:
indicates a switch to the second beam (Chavva, [0092] btaining data measured by sensors of the UE, i.e., sensor measurements, such as beam orientation, beam selection based on the UE position, beam switching based on RSRP of the beams of the UE); or schedules the beamformed transmission with the precoder (Chavva, [0095, 0103] The gNB can schedule the PDSCH based on the feedback parameters in the received CSI report…including PMI).
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 ML/AI based CSI disclosed by Bala and channel state information disclosed by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and increase the optimality of the CSI report (Chavva, [0086]).
Regarding claim 10, Bala discloses a wireless node (Bala, Fig.1), comprising: at least one transceiver; at least one memory comprising instructions; and one or more processors configured, individually or collectively, to execute the instructions to cause the wireless node to:
receive, via the at least one transceiver, a first channel prediction report based on measurements of first reference signals (RS) associated with a first beam (Bala, [0051] after receiving a set of resources from a base station (e.g., reference signals) the UE may generate a plurality of outputs. An output (i.e. first channel prediction report) may be a measurement of, for example, the RSRP of a beam, the CSI, channel impulse response (CIR));
receive, via the at least one transceiver, a beam prediction report indicating a second beam (Bala, [0046] an AI/ML model may be used at the UE side to predict a set of beams in time and/or spatial domains. For example, the UE … may predict a second set of beams (i.e. beam prediction report) using the measurements as an input to the AI/ML model);
receive, via the at least one transceiver, a second channel prediction report based on measurements of second channel prediction reference signals (RS) associated with the second beam (Bala, [0069,73, 75] first mode transmission (i.e. transmission)…An output report configuration may include a specific output type (e.g., a legacy output (i.e. channel prediction report), an output from a specific AI/ML model), reference signals from which the outputs are derived, a time window in which the outputs are derived…the AI/ML model may provide another estimated CSI obtained from the input of the compressed version of the CSI-RS resources as the second output… UE performs first mode and second mode transmissions at a timing before the KPI reporting is scheduled), but does not explicitly disclose second channel prediction report indicating a precoder; and transmit, via the at least one transceiver, a beamformed transmission based on the second beam and the precoder.
Chavva from the same field of endeavor discloses second channel prediction report indicating a precoder (Chavva, [0046-49] the neural network (602c), an optimal CSI-RS resource allocation and an optimal periodicity for sending CSI reports to the gNB…one of the CSI feedback parameters is a Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI), wherein the neural network (602c) determines a most probable PMI value amongst a predefined number of probable PMI values); and transmit, via the at least one transceiver, a beamformed transmission based on the second beam and the precoder (Guan, [0057] a delay in scheduling a Physical Downlink Scheduling Channel (PDSCH) by the gNB (607) after receiving the CSI report from the UE).
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 ML/AI based CSI disclosed by Bala and channel state information disclosed by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and increase the optimality of the CSI report (Chavva, [0086]).
Bala in view of Chavva does not explicitly disclose a predicted application time for using the second beam.
Farag from the same field of endeavor discloses receive, via the at least one transceiver, before a predicted application time for using the second beam, a second channel prediction report based on measurements of second RS associated with the second beam (Farag, [0102, 0109] the network (e.g., gNB) receives the nth beam measurement report (or SRS transmission) and the (n+1)th beam measurement (or SRS transmission) (i.e. second channel prediction report), the time between the nth beam measurement report (or SRS transmission) and the (n+1)th beam measurement report (or SRS transmission) can be long such that the beam can change in between; the beam management algorithm can predict beams to use at intermediate time instances between the two beam measurement reports (or SRS transmissions). The network signals the predicated beams to the UE).
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 Farag’s system for configurable measurement resources and reporting into Liu’s ML/AI based CSI process as modified by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of beam prediction (Farag, [0103]).
Regarding claim 11, Bala discloses PDSCH but does not explicitly disclose wherein the beamformed transmission comprises a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH).
Chavva from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the beamformed transmission comprises a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH) (Guan, [0057] a delay in scheduling a Physical Downlink Scheduling Channel (PDSCH) by the gNB (607) after receiving the CSI report from the UE).
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 ML/AI based CSI disclosed by Bala and channel state information disclosed by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and increase the optimality of the CSI report (Chavva, [0086]).
Regarding claim 12, Bala does not explicitly disclose wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the instructions to cause the wireless node to transmit, via the at least one transceiver, control information that at least one of:
indicates a switch to the second beam; or schedules the beamformed transmission with the precoder.
Chavva from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the one or more processors are further configured to execute the instructions to cause the wireless node to transmit, via the at least one transceiver, control information that at least one of:
indicates a switch to the second beam (Chavva, [0092] btaining data measured by sensors of the UE, i.e., sensor measurements, such as beam orientation, beam selection based on the UE position, beam switching based on RSRP of the beams of the UE); or schedules the beamformed transmission with the precoder (Chavva, [0095, 0103] The gNB can schedule the PDSCH based on the feedback parameters in the received CSI report…including PMI).
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 ML/AI based CSI disclosed by Bala and channel state information disclosed by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and increase the optimality of the CSI report (Chavva, [0086]).
Regarding claim 19, Bala discloses wherein: the wireless node is configured as a network entity (Bala, [0039] The device 100 (FIG. 1) may be incorporated in the base station 220).
Regarding claim 20, Bala discloses wherein: the wireless node is a UE (Bala, [0039] The device 100 (FIG. 1) may be incorporated in the UE 210).
Claims 4-7 and 13-16 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bala et al. (US 2024/0334201 A1, hereinafter "Bala") in view of Chavva et al. (US 2021/0351885 A1, hereinafter "Chavva") and Farag et al. (US 2023/0247454 A1, hereinafter "Farag") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Manolakos et al. (WO 2021/168144 A1, hereinafter "Manolakos").
Regarding claim 4, Bala discloses the first RS are received via an RS resource set and the second RS are received on the same RS resource set (Bala, claim 1 receiving a set of resources from a base station; performing a first measuring of the set of resources based… performing a second measuring of the set of resources) but does not explicitly disclose a first transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state corresponding to the first beam and a second TCI state corresponding to the second beam.
Manolakos from the same field of endeavor discloses a first transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state corresponding to the first beam and a second TCI state corresponding to the second beam (Manolakos, [0165] a TCI state containing the first reference signal 812 and a TCI state containing the second reference signal 822… The first beam may be based on the first reference signal 812, and the second beam may be based on the second reference signal 822).
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 Manolakos’s system for rebinding process into Bala’s AI/ML based CSI process as modified by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to support respectively wirelessly receive and/or transmit data and/or control information from and/or a set of TRPs (Manolakos, [00172]).
Regarding claim 5, Bala discloses receive, after transmitting, the second channel prediction report, at least one beamformed transmission based on the first beam (Bala, [0051, 53] output may be determined using an AI/ML model to generate an inference… Using the example above, the first mode may use the modulation coding scheme (MCS) determined from the legacy CSI output) and a precoder indicated in the first channel prediction report (Bala, [0142] the one or more
CSI-RS resources using a first modulation coding scheme (MCS) determined based on the first output).
Regarding claim 6, Bala discloses first and second RS, first and second RS resource and TCI but does not explicitly disclose the first RS are received on a first RS resource set with a first transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state corresponding to the first beam; and
the second RS are received on a second RS resource set, with a second TCI state corresponding to the second beam.
Manolakos from the same field of endeavor discloses the first RS are received on a first RS resource set with a first transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state corresponding to the first beam (Manolakos, [00113] the first reference signal 512 may be associated with the first TRP 504 through a PCI or other similar identifier (ID) indicating that the first TRP 504 transmitted the first reference signal… the UE 502 may be able to determine that the first TRP 504 transmitted the first reference signal 512, and therefore is associated with the first TRP 504, according to QCL or a TCI state for receiving the first TRP 504); and
the second RS are received on a second RS resource set, with a second TCI state corresponding to the second beam (Manolakos, [00114] The TCI state for the second PDSCH 524 may indicate that the second PDSCH 524 is associated with the second reference signal 522).
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 Manolakos’s system for rebinding process into Bala’s AI/ML based CSI process as modified by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to support respectively wirelessly receive and/or transmit data and/or control information from and/or a set of TRPs (Manolakos, [00172]).
Regarding claim 7, Bala discloses the first and second RS resource sets are both activated for some time prior to the predicted application time for using the second beam (Bala, [0052] the UE may use CSI-RS resources. The legacy output may be the CSI estimate and the AI/ML model output may be the AI/ML model encoder output that may represent a compressed version of the estimated CSI. In this example, the same reference signal may be used for generating both outputs); but does not explicitly disclose the first RS resource set is canceled after the predicted application time for using the second beam.
Chavva from the same field of endeavor discloses the first RS resource set is canceled after the predicted application time for using the second beam (Chavva, [0180] The UE 601 may ignore the CSI-RS from the gNB 607 for the time interval M Δ. The UE 601 can compute and predicted feedback parameters, as per the feedback configuration, for generating M′ CSI reports, during a reporting slot after the time instance ‘t+(M−1)*Δ).
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 ML/AI based CSI disclosed by Bala and channel state information disclosed by Chavva with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the accuracy of prediction and increase the optimality of the CSI report (Chavva, [0086]).
Regarding claims 13-16, these claims recite "a wireless node" that disclose similar steps as recited by the method of claims 4-7, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 4-7 as presented above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8-9 and 17-18 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claims 8-9 and 17-18 are potentially allowable over the prior art of record Bala et al. (US 2024/0334201 A1, hereinafter "Bala") in view of Chavva et al. (US 2021/0351885 A1, hereinafter "Chavva"), Farag et al. (US 2023/0247454 A1, hereinafter "Farag") and Manolakos et al. (WO 2021/168144 A1, hereinafter "Manolakos") as applied to the claim above.
Regarding claims 8-9 and 17-18, Bala discloses receive, after transmitting, the second channel prediction report, at least one beamformed transmission based on the first beam (Bala, [0075-76, 49] the second output are reported to the base station; where the UE receives resources from the base station in a first transmission mode; a first transmission mode, the MCS may be determined using legacy methods without the AI/ML model; and a precoder indicated in the first channel prediction report).
Bala in view of Chavva and Manolakos fails to teach alone or in combination " transmit, via the at least one transceiver, before the predicted application time for the second beam, a third channel prediction report based on measurements of third channel prediction RS received on the first RS resource set with the first TCI state; and receive, after transmitting the second channel prediction report, at least one beamformed transmission based on the first beam and a precoder indicated in the third channel prediction report".
Conclusion
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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415