Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments, filed on 02/27/2026, have been fully considered but are moot in view of new ground(s).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 17, 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) and 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Ogawa et al. (US 20110075760).
Regarding claim 1, Ogawa discloses a wireless communication method, comprising:
obtaining a first sequence, wherein a length of the first sequence is 2m, and m is a positive integer (sequence length (N) of a ZC sequence is a sequence length applicable to a DM-RS, that is, the sequence length of the number of RB's that can be represented by multiples of 2; [0144]);
padding or truncating the first sequence to determine a second sequence having a reference signal length L (RS generating section 106 is provided with ZC sequence generating section 107, cyclic extension and truncation processing section 108, mapping section 109, IFFT section 110 and cyclic shift section 111, and generates an RS based on the sequence length of the ZC sequence outputted from sequence length determining section 105 and the sequence number information of ZC sequence included in control information, and outputs the RS to multiplexing section 117; [0052]),
wherein the reference signal length is determined based on first resource information (the sequence length (N) of a ZC sequence is a sequence length applicable to a DM-RS, that is, the sequence length of the number of RB's that can be represented by multiples of 2; [0144]); and
outputting the second sequence, wherein the second sequence identifies at least one of active users or channel estimation (Multiplexing section 117 time-multiplexes the transmission data outputted from IFFT section 116 and the ZC sequence (i.e. RS) outputted from cyclic shift section 111, and outputs the multiplexed signal to RF transmitting section 118; [0057].
transmit a ZC sequence by consecutive subcarriers to a demodulation reference signal (DM-RS); [0142]),
wherein the first resource information comprises at least one of a number of resource blocks, a resource element, or reference signal pattern indication information (it is preferable to set a sequence length associated with the number of RB's of the integer closest to (transmission bandwidth (RB)/RPF) as the basic sequence length among the sequence lengths applicable to a DM-RS. the sequence length of the maximum number of RB's equal to or less than (transmission bandwidth (RB)/RPF) or the sequence length of the minimum number of RB's equal to or greater than (transmission bandwidth (RB/RPF), is set as the basic sequence length, where these numbers of RB's are applicable to a DM-RS; [0146]).
Regarding claim 17, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 1.
Regarding claim 20, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 1.
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.
Claim(s) 2, 4, 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa et al. (US 20110075760) in view of Fakoorian et al. (US 20170230156).
Regarding claim 2, Ogawa does not expressly disclose wherein the first sequence is a Reed-Muller sequence, and the Reed-Muller sequence is determined based on a binary symmetric matrix with order m and a binary vector.
In an analogous art, Fakoorian discloses wherein the first sequence is a Reed-Muller sequence (the systematic binary sequence may include a Hadamard sequence or Reed-Muller sequence; [0088]), and
the Reed-Muller sequence is determined based on a binary symmetric matrix with order m and a binary vector (for a length 8 binary DMRS sequence, an example of such code-blocks may be obtained by Reed-Muller code (RM(1,3)), as RM(1,3)=[v.sub.0;v.sub.1;v.sub.2;v.sub.3], where v.sub.0, v.sub.1, v.sub.2, and v.sub.3 are basis vectors, and v.sub.0 is an all 1 vector. The 16 codewords may be grouped into two groups of 8 codewords, which may be referred to as a 8×8 Hadamard matrix (H.sub.8). Each code word may be a linear combination of the four basis vectors, as follows: CW.sub.k=i.sub.0v.sub.0+i.sub.1v.sub.1+i.sub.2v.sub.2+i.sub.3v.sub.3, where k=(i.sub.0i.sub.1i.sub.2i.sub.3) in binary. If i.sub.0 is binary 0, then the corresponding code-words CW.sub.k may be orthogonal (e.g., having orthogonal columns) and make an 8×8 Hadamard matrix (H.sub.8); [0089]).
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 Fakoorian into the system of Ogawa in order to improve spectral efficiency and provide lower costs (Fakoorian; [0032]).
Regarding claim 4, Ogawa does not expressly disclose wherein the first sequence comprises at least one of a short first sequence or a long first sequence, wherein a length Lshort of the short first sequence is a value 2m that is not greater than and closest to the reference signal length L, and wherein a length Llong of the long first sequence is a value 2m+1 that is greater than and closest to the reference signal length L.
In an analogous art, Fakoorian discloses wherein the first sequence comprises at least one of a short first sequence or a long first sequence, wherein a length Lshort of the short first sequence is a value 2m that is not greater than and closest to the reference signal length L (for a length 8 binary DMRS sequence, an example of such code-blocks may be obtained by Reed-Muller code (RM(1,3)). RM(1,3) has 16 code-words, each of length 8. The 16 codewords may be grouped into two groups of 8 codewords, which may be referred to as a 8×8 Hadamard matrix (H.sub.8); [0089]), and
wherein a length Llong of the long first sequence is a value 2m+1 that is greater than and closest to the reference signal length L (To increase the group size to 16, for length 8 sequences, two Hadamard sequences, each of length 8, may be concatenated. Similar to length 8 sequences, Hadamard matrices for systematic design of other sequence lengths may be used. For example, a 16×16 Hadamard sequence (H.sub.16) may be used to obtain (e.g., for DMRS) 16 groups of sequences, each having a length of 16; [0090-0091]).
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 Fakoorian into the system of Ogawa in order to improve spectral efficiency and provide lower costs (Fakoorian; [0032]).
Regarding claim 18, the claim is interpreted and rejected for the reasons cited in claim 2.
Claim(s) 11, 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa et al. (US 20110075760) in view of Wang et al. (US 20210258925).
Regarding claim 11, Ogawa does not expressly disclose wherein the padding or truncating the first sequence comprises: determining to pad or truncate the first sequence based on the first sequence length, the reference signal length, and a determining threshold.
In an analogous art, Wang discloses wherein the padding or truncating the first sequence comprises: determining to pad or truncate the first sequence based on the first sequence length, the reference signal length, and a determining threshold (assuming that the length of the corresponding DMRS sequence of the terminal under the AL of the PDCCH is less than N, a simple repetition method is adopted, such as cyclically repeating the original DMRS sequence to obtain a target sequence of length N. Assuming N=5, DMRS=[x1 x2 x3], the target sequence is [x1 x2 x3 x1 x2]; if the length of the DMRS sequence corresponding to the terminal on the PDCCH is greater than N, the direct truncation method is adopted to obtain the sequence. The terminal blindly decodes the sequence on the corresponding resource, and a simple method uses the sequence corresponding to the DMRS of possible different aggregation levels of the PDCCH to perform the correlation peak detection with the received sequence of length N. When the correlation peak is the maximum and greater than a certain threshold, it is considered that the data of the terminal is coming soon, and the aggregation level corresponding to the maximum correlation peak is the aggregation level corresponding to the PDCCH; [0137]).
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 Wang into the system of Ogawa in order to improve the efficiency of detecting signals at the terminal by frequency multiplexing the signal subset for indicating the detection information and the downlink control channels (Wang; [0161]).
Regarding claim 12, the combination of Ogawa and Wang, particularly Ogawa discloses wherein the padding the first sequence comprises: inserting elements into the first sequence based on a first sequence length to be matched, so that the first sequence length is the reference signal length (Cyclic extension and truncation processing section 108 performs cyclic extension processing or truncation processing on the ZC sequence outputted from ZC sequence generating section 107, based on the number of cyclic extension and truncation symbols outputted from sequence length determining section 105, and outputs the result to mapping section 109; [0054]),
wherein the first sequence length to be matched is a difference between the reference signal length and the first sequence length (performing cyclic extension or truncation of a ZC sequence of the basic sequence length to match the transmission bandwidth, it is possible to select the basic sequence length suitable to the transmission bandwidth on a per RPF basis, and match a reference signal to a transmission bandwidth and transmit the resulting signal; [0135]).
Claim(s) 13 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa et al. (US 20110075760) in view of Wang et al. (US 20210258925), and in view of Marinier et al. (US 20210297225).
Regarding claim 13, the combination of Ogawa and Wang does not expressly disclose wherein inserting elements into the first sequence based on the first sequence length to be matched comprises: determining a uniform insertion gap based on a ratio of the first sequence length to the first sequence length to be matched; and
inserting one element every uniform insertion gap, wherein a value of the inserted element comprises a value of an element at its adjacent position multiplied by a first phase deflection value or o.
In an analogous art, Marinier discloses wherein inserting elements into the first sequence based on the first sequence length to be matched comprises: determining a uniform insertion gap based on a ratio of the first sequence length to the first sequence length to be matched (DM-RS sequence for an extended PUCCH may be generated from two concatenated base sequences of length 12. In other words, the DM-RS sequence used for the extended PUCCH, r.sub.u,v.sup.(α)ext(n), may be expressed as: r.sub.u1,u2,v.sup.(α)ext(n)=e.sup.jαnr.sub.u1,v(n) for 0≤n<12 and r.sub.u1,u2,v.sup.(α)ext(n)=Ke.sup.jαnr.sub.u2,v(n) for 12≤n<24,
where K may be a constant of unity amplitude, possibly dependent on the group-sequence numbers u1 and u2, configured such that the peak-to-average ratio of the DM-RS sequence is kept to a low value; [0150]); and
inserting one element every uniform insertion gap, wherein a value of the inserted element comprises a value of an element at its adjacent position multiplied by a first phase deflection value or o (The group-sequence numbers u1 and u2 may be set to the same value u. In this case, the extended DM-RS sequence in this solution may be equivalent to two concatenated DM-RS sequences of length 12 generated from the same base sequence with different cyclic shifts α.sub.1 and α.sub.2 and a phase offset β for the second sequence; [0150]).
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 Marinier into the system of Ogawa and Wang in order to enable using higher-order modulation, possibly on a subset of sub-carriers to implement unequal error protection, and using new DM-RS designs which allows for multiplexing with legacy formats (Marinier; [0067]).
Claim(s) 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa et al. (US 20110075760) in view of Wang et al. (US 20210258925), and in view of Cao et al. (US 20200322079).
Regarding claim 15, the combination of Ogawa and Wang does not expressly disclose wherein inserting elements into the first sequence based on the first sequence length to be matched further comprises: selecting, according to a first rule, M positions in the first sequence to insert elements, wherein the first sequence length is the reference signal length, wherein a value of the inserted element comprises a value of an element at its adjacent position multiplied by a third phase deflection value or o, and wherein M is equal to the first sequence length to be matched.
In an analogous art, Cao discloses wherein inserting elements into the first sequence based on the first sequence length to be matched further comprises: selecting, according to a first rule, M positions in the first sequence to insert elements (RACH-style sequence having a length of 144 is generated using a length-139 cyclic-padded ZC sequence. A phase rotation sequence is generated to carry a specific cyclic shift. With four ZC roots (N.sub.root=4) and cyclic shift resolution of 2π/16 (N.sub.cs=16), a legacy reference signal pool with 4×16=64 entries is obtained. A length-2 codebook (N.sub.code=2) with 4 entries is given by [1 1; 1 j; 1 −1; 1 −j] (i.e., M=4, M>N.sub.code). With this codebook, the size of the legacy reference signal pool can be extended to 4×16×4=256 entries; [0112]),
wherein the first sequence length is the reference signal length, wherein a value of the inserted element comprises a value of an element at its adjacent position multiplied by a third phase deflection value or o, and wherein M is equal to the first sequence length to be matched (a legacy reference signal has a length of L (i.e., the legacy reference signal has L symbols). A spreading code can be chosen from the spreading code set to be applied to the legacy reference signal. The spreading code length N.sub.code<=L. If N.sub.code=L, an element-by-element multiplication is performed such that each element of the spreading code is applied to each symbol of the reference signal. If N.sub.code<L, a subset of the reference signal symbols is selected, based on a predefined rule, to match the spreading code length; [0090]).
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 Cao into the system of Ogawa and Wang in order to enable a much larger reference signal pool to allow accurate UE detection and channel estimation with simultaneous UEs transmissions (Cao; [0043]).
Claim(s) 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ogawa et al. (US 20110075760) in view of Wang et al. (US 20210258925) and in view of Fakoorian et al. (US 20170230156).
Regarding claim 16, the combination of Ogawa and Wang does not expressly disclose wherein the determining to pad the first sequence based on the first sequence length, the reference signal length, and a determining threshold comprises: selecting a starting point in a reference signal to insert the first sequence; and inserting N elements at remaining positions in the reference signal, wherein a value of the inserted element comprises each of values of the N elements in the first sequence from the selected starting point multiplied by a fourth phase deflection value or o, and N is equal to a quantity of the remaining positions.
In an analogous art, Fakoorian discloses wherein the determining to pad the first sequence based on the first sequence length, the reference signal length, and a determining threshold comprises: selecting a starting point in a reference signal to insert the first sequence; and inserting N elements at remaining positions in the reference signal (DMRS sequence may be designed by applying an element-wise product of the binary code-word (for example Hadamard or cyclic code) and a pseudo noise (PN) or Gold sequence based binary random sequence (e.g., to randomize the Hadamard sequence). The element wise product may comprise the product of a Hadamard sequence (e.g., one row of a Hadamard matrix) and a PN or Gold sequence based binary random sequence. In some cases, the element-wise product may include the product of a codeword from a linear cyclic code and a PN or Gold sequence based binary random sequence; [0092]),
wherein a value of the inserted element comprises each of values of the N elements in the first sequence from the selected starting point multiplied by a fourth phase deflection value or o, and N is equal to a quantity of the remaining positions (3 cyclic shifts may be used for the 3-tone transmissions and 4 cyclic shifts may be used for 6-tone transmissions. In some cases, the cyclic shifts may be indicated to a UE by a SIB message (e.g., as opposed to DCI) which is broadcasted. For each 3-tone base DMRS sequence, three cyclic shifts may be defined where r(n) is a base sequence where 0≦n<3, and α is the cyclic shift where 0≦α<3; [0102-0103]).
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 Fakoorian into the system of Ogawa and Wang in order to improve spectral efficiency and provide lower costs (Fakoorian; [0032]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Dependent claims 5-10, 14 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.
Dependent claim 5, if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims, would comprise a combination of elements which is not taught by the prior art of record. The same reasoning applies to dependent claims 6-10, 14 mutatis mutandis.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Ding et al. (US 20200021414), “Determining, by a terminal, a base sequence configuration of a reference signal sequence corresponding to a modulation scheme of an uplink data transmission, and generating a dedicated demodulation reference signal based on the determined base sequence configuration of the reference signal sequence.”
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to OUSSAMA ROUDANI whose telephone number is (571)272-4727. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM.
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/OUSSAMA ROUDANI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2413