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 previous non-final Office Action has been vacated and is replaced by this instant non-final Office Action to properly address all pending claims. Hence, the prosecution time has been reset.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1-8 and 11-32 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 1-2, 8-9, and 11-18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Rudolf (US 2023/0276438) in view of Park (US 2022/0167404) and Grant (WO 2024035330).
Regarding claim 1, Rudolf describes a user equipment (UE) for wireless communication, comprising: one or more memories; and one or more processors, coupled to the memory (fig. 3, UE 116 comprising processor 340 coupled to memory 360), configured to:
receive information scheduling a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) transmission at least partially in a sub-band full duplex (SBFD) resource in connection with a random access channel procedure (para. 59, UE receiving an UL DCI format from eNB scheduling its uplink PUSCH transmission in full duplex operation using an UL subband (SBFD), para. 142, perform as part of random access using a random access channel, para. 71 & 74).
Rudolf describes:
transmit the PUSCH transmission on time and frequency (time-frequency) resources, and are associated with a sub-band configuration of the SBFD resource (title & para. 142, SBFD operation is done on the PUSCH transmission, where PUSCH’s UL signaling done in time unit and a frequency unit (bandwidth) (para. 58), but fail to further
explicitly describe:
PUSCH transmission using resources that are derived from a sub-band configuration of the SBFD resource.
Park also describes transceiving (duplex) data in subands (para. 6), ie. SBFD, further describing:
PUSCH transmission using resources that are derived from a sub-band configuration of the SBFD resource (para. 251, frequency resource allocation for PUSCH [transmission] according to the subband configuration for transceiving (duplex) data in subands (para. 6), ie. SBFD).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the claimed invention to specify that the PUSCH transmission on time and frequency resources in Rudolf be derived form sub-band configuration of the SBFD resource as in Park.
The motivation for combining the teachings is that this efficiently multiplexing of radio resource unit with different assorted requirements for data rates, latency, reliability, coverage, etc. (Park, para. 4).
Rudolf and Park combined fails to further explicitly describe:
wherein a frequency offset for the PUSCH transmission is based at lest in part on an uplink sub-band size of the SBFD resource.
Grant also describes wireless communication between UE & network node (fig. 3), further describing:
wherein a frequency offset for the PUSCH transmission is based at least in part on an uplink (UL) sub-band size of the SBFD resource (p. 13 lines 3-5, SBFD frequency offset is based on an UL subband size of the SBFD symbols (resource)).
It would have been obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective date of the claimed invention to specify that the PUSCH transmission in SBFD resource in Rudolf and Park combine have a PUSCH transmission frequency offset based in part on UL suband size of SBFD resource as in Grant.
The motivation for combining the teachings is that this provides a technique for low latency data transmission (Grant p. 1 lines 22-23).
Regarding claim 2, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the sub-band configuration indicates one or more uplink sub-bands and one or more downlink sub-bands of the SBFD resource (Rudolf, para. 142, SBFD = full duplex (bidirectional) using UL subband + DL subband).
Regarding claim 9, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the starting resource block is referenced to a lowest resource block, in frequency, of the uplink sub-band (Rudolf, para. 127-130, for either intra- or inter-slot frequency hopping, the starting RB defines a starting [lowest] frequency unit for the UL (para. 58) as part of the subband full duplex (SBFD), fig. 7 & para. 141-142).
Regarding claim 11, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the starting resource block is a first starting resource block for a first hop of the PUSCH transmission, and wherein the one or more processors, to transmit the PUSCH transmission on the time-frequency resources, are configured to transmit a second hop of the PUSCH transmission, wherein a second starting resource block for the second hop is based at least in part on the starting resource block, a frequency offset, and an uplink sub-band size of the SBFD resource (Rudolf para. 127-128, equation RB.sub.start when i=0 is for first hop, and when i=1 is for second hop, and equation is based on RB.sub.start (starting resource block, RB.sub.offset (frequency offset). The PUSCH’s UL transmission is done in time unit and a frequency unit (bandwidth) (para. 58)).
Regarding claim 12, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
the second starting resource block is based at least in part on a modulo operation on a sum of the starting resource block and the frequency offset, wherein a modulus of the modulo operation is the uplink sub-band size (Rudolf para. 127, I=1 is the second hop, equating to (based on) (RB.sub.start + RB.sub.offset (frequency offset) ) mod N.sup.size+sub.BWP).
Regarding claim 13, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the one or more processors are further configured to receive, prior to the information, configuration information indicating a plurality of time-domain resource allocation (TDRA) parameters, wherein the one or more processors, to transmit the PUSCH transmission on the time-frequency resources, are configured to transmit the PUSCH transmission in accordance with a start and length indicator value indicated by a particular TDRA parameter, of the plurality of TDRA parameters, based at least in part on the PUSCH transmission occurring on the SBFD resource (Rudolf para. 180-181, 184, 194-195, 198, etc. & also abstract, TDRA parameter(s) as part of configuration comprising start and size/length, are provided to the UE before its PUSCH transmission in SBFD [resource(s)], para. 143 & fig. 7).
Regarding claim 14, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the one or more processors are further configured to receive, prior to the information, configuration information indicating a time-domain resource allocation (TDRA) parameter, wherein the one or more processors, to transmit the PUSCH transmission on the time-frequency resources, are configured to transmit the PUSCH transmission in accordance with a start and length indicator value indicated by the TDRA parameter, wherein the start and length indicator value is for a set of SBFD resources (Rudolf para. 180-181, 184, 194-195, 198, etc. & also abstract, TDRA parameter(s) as part of configuration comprising start and size/length, are provided to the UE before its PUSCH transmission in SBFD [set of resource(s)], para. 143 & fig. 7).
Regarding claim 15, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the one or more processors, to transmit the PUSCH transmission on time-frequency resources, are configured to transmit the PUSCH transmission in accordance with a default time-domain resource allocation (TDRA) parameter that is specific to SBFD resources (Rudolf para. 175, TDRA parameter(s) may be part of the default TDRA table provided to the UE for its PUSCH transmission in SBFD [set of resource(s)], para. 143 & fig. 7).
Regarding claim 16, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the one or more processors, to transmit the PUSCH transmission on the time-frequency resources, are configured to transmit the PUSCH transmission on the time-frequency resources based at least in part on the time-frequency resources being available resources for the PUSCH transmission, wherein the time-frequency resources are available resources based at least in part on the sub-band configuration of the SBFD resource (Rudolf para. 180-181, etc. & also abstract, TDRA parameter as configuration are provided to the UE before its PUSCH transmission in SBFD [resources], para. 143 & fig. 7. The PUSCH’s UL transmission is done in the designated time unit and a frequency unit (available resources)) (para. 58).
Regarding claim 17, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the time-frequency resources are available resources based at least in part on the time-frequency resources not overlapping with a downlink symbol that does not include a configured uplink sub-band according to the sub-band configuration (Rudolf para. 121, for PUSCH (UL) transmission, a slot is not counted in the number of NK slots [for use] if at least one of the symbols indicated by the indexed row of the used resource allocation table in the slot overlaps with a DL symbol), and based at least in part on the time-frequency resources not including a synchronization signal block (SSB) resource (Rudolf para. 194, resource carrying SSBs is unavailable for other time-frequency resource use).
Regarding claim 18, Rudolf, Park and Grant combined describe:
wherein the PUSCH transmission comprises at least one of a random access channel message 3 transmission (Rudolf para. 87, using [RACH] MSG3 as transmission for PUSCH).
Claims 19-26 are apparatus (network node) claims reciting exact mirroring features of apparatus (UE) claims 1, 3, 8, 11, 13-16 respectively. Hence, they are rejected/objected to using the same rationale.
Claims 27-28 are method claims reciting same features as apparatus claims 1 and 3 respectively. Hence, they are rejected/objected to under the same rationale.
Claims 29-30 are method claims reciting same features as apparatus claims 19 and 20. Hence, they are rejected under the same rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-8, 21, 28 and 31-32 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.
Regarding claims 8 and 21, the prior art fails to further explicitly describe:
wherein the sub-band configuration indicates an uplink sub-band, and wherein the one or more processors, to transmit the PUSCH transmission on time-frequency resources, are configured to transmit the PUSCH transmission using a starting resource block that is referenced to a lowest resource block, in frequency, of at least a portion of the uplink sub-band that overlaps with an uplink bandwidth part of the UE.
Regarding claim 32, the prior art fails to further explicitly describe:
wherein a starting resource block for the PUSCH transmission is referenced to a lowest resource block, in frequency, of at least a portion of the uplink sub-band that overlaps with an uplink bandwidth part.
For claims 8, 21 and 32, the closest prior art, Rudolf describing PUSCH transmission using a RB.sub.start equation that is based on UL BWP (UL subband) and [frequency] resource assignment for MsgA PUSCH (para. 128-130) and UL frequency sub-band and DL frequency subbands in same time resources (time-frequency resources), wherein subband is full-duplex, para. 141-142) the starting RB defines a starting [lowest] frequency unit for the UL (para. 58), in combination with Park and Grant, fail to further describe the additional claim limitations as a whole obvious.
Regarding claim 31, the prior art fails to further explicitly describe:
wherein the frequency offset for the PUSCH transmission is based on a number of resource blocks in the UL subband within the initial UL BWP.
The closest prior art, Shim (US 2026/0163707) describing SBFD resource [block] configuration PUSCH transmission configuration for data channel transmission (title & fig. 20), in combination with Rudolf, Park & Grant, fail to render the above additional features as a whole obvious.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to WARNER WONG whose telephone number is (571)272-8197. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 7am - 3:30pm.
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WARNER WONG
Primary Examiner
Art Unit 2469
/WARNER WONG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2469
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