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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement(s) was/were submitted on 05/16/2023 and 04/03/2024. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement(s) is/are being considered by the examiner.
Preliminary Amendment
The present Office Action is based upon the original patent application filed as modified by the preliminary amendment filed on 05/16/2023. Claims 1-6, 8-19, and 24-25 are now pending in the present application.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim(s) 1-6, 8-17, and 24-25 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Regarding claim 1, the claim recites the limitation “activated UEs” in line 3. It is unclear what is the technical meaning of the limitation “activated UEs”. For purposes of examination, Examiner interpreted the term “activated UEs” as an active user equipment (UE) or a UE having a state in which communication with the base station, as supported by the specification e.g. ¶[0038]. Claim 24 recites similar limitations of claim 1 and is thus rejected under similar rationale. Claim(s) 2-6, 8-17, and 25 fails to resolve the deficiency of their respective independent claim and are thus rejected under similar rationale.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
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.
Claim(s) 18 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Kim et al., “Dynamic Feedback Selection Scheme for User Scheduling in Multi-user MIMO Systems”, The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences ' 15-04 Vol.40 No.04, “hereinafter NPL1”.
Regarding claim 18, NPL 1 teaches: A method of a User Equipment (UE) communicating with a base station, the method comprising (see section II. System Model, we propose a method to simultaneously transmit data from the base station to the same resource using the information feedback by each terminal) :
receiving information about a feedback scheme from the base station (see section 3.1, Feedback information and User Selection Method; The method of feeding back K PMIs and one CQI value to select K users (i.e., N=K and M=1) is called the K-PMI feedback method, and this method performs scheduling to select users so that the base station can maximize the overall throughput performance of the downlink with the given channel information);
generating at least one Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI) belonging to a precoding matrix set corresponding to a codebook size based on the feedback scheme, and corresponding to a number of activated UEs based on the feedback scheme (see section 3.1, Feedback information and User Selection Method; The method of feeding back K PMIs and one CQI value to select K users (i.e., N=K and M=1) is called the K-PMI feedback method, and this method performs scheduling to select users so that the base station can maximize the overall throughput performance of the downlink with the given channel information; see section 3.1.2, The base station selects K users with the best SINR values from the K PMIs fed back by each user. To do this, there must be K user groups whose fed-back PMI sets match at the same time, and the Best Companion Group (BCG) must be determined based on these. That is, the base station scheduler determines the BCG using the K PMI information fed back by each user. However, since each user reports PMI information independently, a BCG may not be formed, in which case no user can be selected. Therefore, the performance is determined by the presence or absence of a BCG, and this varies depending on the number of users in the cell, the number of fed-back PMIs (K), and the size of the codebook (F))
generating a Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) corresponding to the at least one PMI (see section 3.1, Feedback information and User Selection Method; The method of feeding back K PMIs and one CQI value to select K users (i.e., N=K and M=1) is called the K-PMI feedback method, and this method performs scheduling to select users so that the base station can maximize the overall throughput performance of the downlink with the given channel information: see section IV Multi-user selection and performance analysis; see section V, Conclusion, In this paper, we analyzed the performance of a method of selecting users to transmit simultaneously using PMI, which reflects interference with users as channel state information fed back by each user and its own CQI in a closed-loop multi-user MIMO system. and examined the system parameters that affect it. We confirmed that the probability of forming a group of users who are scheduled simultaneously varies depending on the number of users in the cell and the size of the codebook, and showed that the average throughput performance of the system can be optimized by adaptively selecting the number of PMIs to feedback and the size of the codebook used when the feedback overhead is given.); and
transmitting feedback including the at least one PMI and the CQI to the base station (see section 3.1, Feedback information and User Selection Method; The method of feeding back K PMIs and one CQI value to select K users (i.e., Ns=K and M=1) is called the K-PMI feedback method, and this method performs scheduling to select users so that the base station can maximize the overall throughput performance of the downlink with the given channel information; see section IV, Multi-user selection and performance analysis; see section V, Conclusion, In this paper, we analyzed the performance of a method of selecting users to transmit simultaneously using PMI, which reflects interference with users as channel state information fed back by each user and its own CQI in a closed-loop multi-user MIMO system. and examined the system parameters that affect it. We confirmed that the probability of forming a group of users who are scheduled simultaneously varies depending on the number of users in the cell and the size of the codebook, and showed that the average throughput performance of the system can be optimized by adaptively selecting the number of PMls to feedback and the size of the codebook used when the feedback overhead is given).
Regarding claim 19, NPL 1 teaches: The method of claim 18, wherein the larger the number corresponding to the feedback scheme, the smaller the codebook size corresponding to the feedback scheme (see section 3.2, performance analysis, Figures 1, 2, and 3 show the average throughput according to K as L increases when the codebook sizes are F = 16, 8, and 4, respectively. According to equation (7), as L increases, the possibility of CG existence increases, which increases the throughput. On the other hand, as shown in Figure 1, when F = 16, the throughput decreases sharply as K increases. This is because as K increases, the probability of CG formation decreases significantly according to (8). On the other hand, when the number of users is sufficiently large, the p1obability of CG existence increases for K=2, which improves the performance compared to K = 1 due to the multi-user gain. On the other hand, when the codebook size is small, if the number of users in a cell is sufficiently large, the possibility of selecting users indifferent beams increases, which increases the probability of CG formation. Therefore, when the number of users in a terminal is sufficiently large, As F gets smaller, the gain according to the value of K starts to show. As shown in Figure 3, when F = 4, the performance is always better than when K = 4 and F = 16. It can be seen that the performance is improved by reducing the codebook size to increase the probability of CG formation rather than increasing the codebook size to increase the SINR of the terminal in a situation where the PMI feedback overhead is limited. That is, there may be optimal K and F values depending on the numbers of users in the cell).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 1-6, 8-17, and 24-25 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), 2nd paragraph, set forth in this Office action.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Alcatel-Lucent, “Best Companion” reporting for improved single-cell MU-MIMO pairing, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #56 Meeting, R1-090926
Alcatel-Lucent, UE PMI feedback signalling for user pairing/coordination, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #54bis, R1-083759
Kim et al., “Performance of Limited Feedback for Best Companion Grouping in Multi-user MIMO System”, 2022 IEEE 95th Vehicular Technology Conference: (VTC2022-Spring)
Clerckx et al., ( US 2018/0076943 A1), Method and apparatus for feedback in multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (mu-mimo) communication system
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/MANG BOI THAWNG/Examiner, Art Unit 2476 /AYAZ R SHEIKH/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2476