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 .
Claim Objections
Claim 8 is objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 8 recites limitation “the meaning of the link failure includes a Beam Link Failure”. It recites a definition rather than a limitation. Appropriate correction is required.
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 1-20 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.
Claim 1 recites the limitation “only a latter one of the first recovery procedure and the second recovery procedure is related to a random access procedure” and “the first message is related to the link failure of the first connection”. “Related to” has no discernible boundary (comprises? Triggers? Part of?).
Claim 1 further recites “the first recovery procedure comprise triggering a first link failure”. The limitation is counterintuitive. It that meant to be “the first recovery procedure comprising triggering a BFR for the first connection”? In addition, “a first link failure” is a new term, not clearly tied to “a link failure of the first connection”.
“Determining a link failure” of Claim 1 are attributed to the receiver; “triggering a secondary recovery”, “determining whether to stop” of Claim 1 are attributed to the transmitter. It seems there is structurally mismatch. The processing function typically performed by a processor/controller.
Claim 19 and 20 are rejected for the same reasons stated for claim 1.
Claim 2 recites limitation “triggering a random access procedure” in line 5 of the claim. It’s not clear whether it refer to the same random access procedure in the parent claim 1 or not.
Claim 5 recites “recovery of the beam failures”, but parent claim 1 only recited “link failure”. Thus, the term lacks antecedent basis.
Claim 18 further recites limitation “cancelling the first link failure”. The limitation is counterintuitive. It that meant to be “cancelling triggering a BFR?.
Claims 2-18, are dependent claims of Claims 1, thus are rejected for the same deficiency.
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.
Claims 1-7, 10-13, 16, 18-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by 3GPP TS 38.321 V16.1.0, hereinafter as TS 38.321.
Regarding claim 1, 20, TS 38.321 teaches a first node for wireless communications, comprising:
a first receiver, receiving a first signal pool, the first signal pool comprising a first signal set and a second signal set (Section 5.17, page 75, 1st para: “The MAC entity may be configured by RRC per Serving Cell with a beam failure recovery procedure which is used for indicating to the serving gNB of a new SSB or CSI-RS when beam failure is detected on the serving SSB(s)/CSI-RS(s)”, it’s noted that two configured serving cells -> two configured BFD-RS sets -> the signaling pool. The RS types are CSI-RS/SSB); and
determining a link failure of a first connection (Section 5.17, “Beam failure is detected by counting beam failure instance indication from the lower layers to the MAC entity”, “2> if BFI_COUNTER >= beamFailureInstanceMaxCount: 3> if the Serving Cell is SCell: 4> trigger a BFR for this Serving Cell”;
it’s noted that BFI_counter for the Scell reaching beamFailure InstanceMaxCount triggers a BFR for that Scell); and monitoring a second message (Section 5.17, it’s noted that for SpCell recovery the UE monitors the network response (RA response/PDCCH) within the configured response window); and determining a link failure of a second connection (Section 5.17, BFI Counter for the SpCell reaching the max count initiates a Random Access procedure on the SpCell); and
a first transmitter, as a response to the action of determining the link failure of the first connection, starting a first recovery procedure (Section 5.17, On the SCell BFR trigger the UE starts the SCell recovery, such as trigger a BFR for the serving Cell); and
as a response to the action of starting the first recovery procedure, transmitting a first message (Section 5.17, page 76, line 13, “ instruct the Multiplexing and Assembly procedure to generate the BFR MAC CE”); and
as a response to the action of determining the link failure of the second connection, triggering a second recovery procedure (Section 5.17, page 75, “4> initiate a Random Access procedure (see clause 5.1) on the SpCell”); and determining whether the second recovery procedure is to be stopped according to a first condition set; the first condition set comprising receiving the second message (Section 5.17, page 76, “if the Serving Cell is SpCell and the Random Access procedure initiated for SpCell beam failure recovery is successfully completed (see clause 5.1)”, The SPcell BFR is considered successfully completed once the RA completes (i.e. on receiving the network response);
wherein each of the first signal set and the second signal set respectively comprises at least one reference signal resource, and there exists at least one reference signal resource that only belongs to one of the first signal set or the second signal set (Section 5.17, SpCell and Scell are distinct cell. So their per-cell BFD-RS resources are necessarily distinct);
a measurement of the first signal set is used to determine the link failure of the first connection;
a measurement of the second signal set is used to determine the link failure of the second connection (Section 5.17, Per-Cell beam failure instance counting is driven by lower-layer measurement of that cell’s own BFD-RS set);
only a latter one of the first recovery procedure and the second recovery procedure is related to a random access procedure (Section 5.17, SpCell BFR perform random Access procedure; SCell failure only triggers a BFR);
the first recovery procedure comprises triggering a first link failure (Section 5.17, “2>if BFI_COUNTER >= beamFailureInstanceMaxCount: 3>if the Serving Cell is SCell: 4>trigger a BFR for this Serving Cell”);
the first message is related to the link failure of the first connection (Section 5.17, page 76, “else if the Serving Cell is SCell, and a PDCCH addressed to C-RNTI indicating uplink grant for a new transmission is received for the HARQ process used for the transmission of the BFR MAC CE or Truncated BFR MAC CE which contains beam failure recovery information of this Serving Cell”).
Regarding claim 2, TS 38.321 further teaches: the first receiver, when determining the link failure of the first connection and the link failure of the second connection, triggering the random access procedure; wherein the random access procedure comprises: a Contention-Based Random Access (CBRA) procedure; the action of triggering a second recovery procedure comprises: triggering a random access procedure (Section 5. 17, “initiate a Random Access procedure (see clause 5.1) on the SpCell”).
Regarding claim 3, TS 38.321 further teaches that:
the first receiver, when the first condition set is satisfied, stopping the random access procedure in the second recovery procedure (Section 5. 17, page 75, “if the Serving Cell is SpCell and the Random Access procedure initiated for SpCell beam failure recovery is successfully completed (see clause 5.1):
2>set BFI_COUNTER to 0; 2>stop the beamFailureRecoveryTimer, if configured”).
Regarding claim 4, TS 38.321 further teaches that the first message
comprises a MAC CE or a Truncated MAC CE (Section 6.1.3.23, page 122, “The MAC CEs for BFR consists of either: - BFR MAC CE; or -Truncated BFR MAC CE”); the first message comprises a SP field, the SP field being set to 1 (Section 6.1.3.23, page 123, “SP: This field indicates beam failure detection (as specified in clause 5.17) for the SpCell of this MAC entity. The SP field is set to 1 to indicate that beam failure is detected for SpCell only when BFR MAC CE or Truncated BFR MAC CE is to be included into a MAC PDU as part of Random Access Procedure”); the first message comprises a field, the field being used to determine a connection in which a beam failure occurs (page 123, “Ci (BFR MAC CE): This field indicates beam failure detection”); the first message comprises an AC field (Section 6.1.3.23, page 123, “AC: This field indicates the presence of the Candidate RS ID field in this octet”).
Regarding claim 5, TS 38.321 further teaches that the first message comprises a field, the field indicating a reference signal resource corresponding to a candidate beam used for recovery of the beam failure (page 123, “Candidate RS ID: This field is set to the index of an SSB with SS-RSRP above rsrp-ThresholdBFR amongst the SSBs in candidateBeamRSSCellList or to the index of a CSI-RS with CSI-RSRP above rsrp-ThresholdBFR amongst the CSI-RSs in candidateBeamRSSCellList”).
Regarding claim 6, TS 38.321 further teaches that the second message comprises a PDCCH; and the second message is addressed to a C-RNTI of the first node (Section 5.17, page 76, “else if the Serving Cell is SCell, and a PDCCH addressed to C-RNTI indicating uplink grant for a new transmission is received for the HARQ process used for the transmission of the BFR MAC CE or Truncated BFR MAC CE which contains beam failure recovery information of this Serving Cell”).
Regarding claim 7, TS 38.321 further teaches that the second message is received in a given search space, the given search space being associated with the first connection (Section 5.17).
Regarding claim 10, TS 38.321 further teaches that the first connection and the second connection have different CORESETs; the first connection and the second connection are both associated with a first cell; or, the first connection is associated with the first cell, while the second connection is associated with a second cell (TS 38.321, Section 6.1.3.14, page 116).
Regarding claim 11, TS 38.321 further teaches that the phrase that a measurement of the first signal set is used to determine the link failure of the first connection comprises that: as a response to a received quality of each reference signal resource in the first signal set being lower than a first threshold, reporting to higher layers a first-type indication used for updating a first counter; the phrase that a measurement of the second signal set is used to determine the link failure of the second connection comprises that: as a response to a received quality of each reference signal resource in the second signal set being lower than a second threshold, reporting to higher layers a second-type indication used for updating a second counter (TS 38.321, Section 5.17, increment BFI_Counter per Serving Cell).
Regarding claim 12, TS 38.321 further teaches that when the first condition set is satisfied, the first counter is set to 0 (Section 5.17, “if the Serving Cell is SpCell and the Random Access procedure initiated for SpCell beam failure recovery is successfully completed (see clause 5.1):
2>set BFI_COUNTER to 0”).
Regarding claim 13, TS 38.321 further teaches that the first receiver, monitoring a fourth message; wherein the random access procedure comprised in the second recovery procedure comprises transmitting a third message, the third message being used to trigger the fourth message (Section 5.17, page 76, the SpCell initiates a Random Access Procedure for SpCell beam failure recovery, RA procedure inherently transmits a request and monitor for the response (RAR /Contention resolution. The “third triggers fourth” relationship is just the request->response structure of RACH).
Regarding claim 16, TS 38.321 further teaches that:
the first receiver, as a response to the second recovery procedure being successfully completed, stopping the first recovery procedure; the second recovery procedure comprising receiving the fourth message (Section 5.17, “All BFRs triggered prior to MAC PDU assembly for beam failure recovery for an SCell shall be cancelled when a MAC PDU is transmitted and this PDU includes a BFR MAC CE or Truncated BFR MAC CE which contains beam failure information of that SCell”).
Regarding claim 18, TS 38.321 further teaches that: the first receiver, as a response to the first condition set being satisfied, canceling the first link failure (Section 5. 17, page 76, “consider the Beam Failure Recovery procedure successfully completed and cancel all the triggered BFRs for this Serving Cell”, it’s noted that first link failure correspond to triggering BFR according to the specification).
Regarding claim 19, TS 38.321 teaches a second node for wireless communications, comprising:
a second transmitter, transmitting a first signal pool, the first signal pool comprising a first signal set and a second signal set (Section 5.17, page 75, 1st para: “The MAC entity may be configured by RRC per Serving Cell with a beam failure recovery procedure which is used for indicating to the serving gNB of a new SSB or CSI-RS when beam failure is detected on the serving SSB(s)/CSI-RS(s)”, it’s noted that two configured serving cells -> two configured BFD-RS sets -> the signaling pool. The RS types are CSI-RS/SSB); and as a response to receiving a first message, transmitting a second message (Section 5.17, it’s noted that for SpCell recovery the UE monitors the network response (RA response/PDCCH) within the configured response window); and a second receiver, receiving the first message; wherein a link failure of a first connection is determined; as a response to the link failure of the first connection being determined, a first recovery procedure is started (Section 5.17, “Beam failure is detected by counting beam failure instance indication from the lower layers to the MAC entity”, “2> if BFI_COUNTER >= beamFailureInstanceMaxCount: 3> if the Serving Cell is SCell: 4> trigger a BFR for this Serving Cell”; it’s noted that BFI_counter for the Scell reaching beamFailure InstanceMaxCount triggers a BFR for that Scell);
a link failure of a second connection is determined; as a response to the link failure of the second connection being determined, a second recovery procedure is triggered (Section 5.17, page 75, “4> initiate a Random Access procedure (see clause 5.1) on the SpCell”);
whether the second recovery procedure is to be stopped is determined according to a first condition set; the first condition set comprising the second message being received (Section 5.17, page 76, “if the Serving Cell is SpCell and the Random Access procedure initiated for SpCell beam failure recovery is successfully completed (see clause 5.1)”, The SPcell BFR is considered successfully completed once the RA completes (i.e. on receiving the network response); each of the first signal set and the second signal set respectively comprises at least one reference signal resource, and there exists at least one reference signal resource that only belongs to one of the first signal set or the second signal set (Section 5.17, SpCell and Scell are distinct cell. So their per-cell BFD-RS resources are necessarily distinct); a measurement of the first signal set is used to determine the link failure of the first connection; a measurement of the second signal set is used to determine the link failure of the second connection (Section 5.17, Per-Cell beam failure instance counting is driven by lower-layer measurement of that cell’s own BFD-RS set); only a latter one of the first recovery procedure and the second recovery procedure is related to a random access procedure (Section 5.17, SpCell BFR perform random Access procedure; SCell failure only triggers a BFR); the first recovery procedure comprises triggering a first link failure ; the first message is related to the link failure of the first connection (Section 5.17, page 76, “else if the Serving Cell is SCell, and a PDCCH addressed to C-RNTI indicating uplink grant for a new transmission is received for the HARQ process used for the transmission of the BFR MAC CE or Truncated BFR MAC CE which contains beam failure recovery information of this Serving Cell”).
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 8-9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over 3GPP TS 38.321 V16.1.0, hereinafter as TS 38.321, in view of 3GPP TS 38.331 V 16.3.0, hereinafter as TS 38.331.
Regarding claim 8, TS 38.321 teaches all of the limitations as recited claim 1, further teaches that the first signal pool is configured by
TS 38.321 doesn’t explicitly teach the IE in an RRC message is RadioLinkMonitoring config for configuring the first signal pool; a reference signal resource comprises a Channel State information-Reference Signal (CSI-RS) resource or a Synchronization Signal/Physical Broadcast CHannel (SS/PBCH) Block; the first signal set corresponds to a first index, while the second signal set corresponds to a second index, the first index and the second index being two non-negative integers different from each other; the meaning of the link failure includes: a Beam Link Failure.
TS 38.331 teaches that the IE in an RRC message is RadioLinkMonitoring config for configuring the first signal pool; a reference signal resource comprises a Channel State information-Reference Signal (CSI-RS) resource or a Synchronization Signal/Physical Broadcast CHannel (SS/PBCH) Block; the first signal set corresponds to a first index, while the second signal set corresponds to a second index, the first index and the second index being two non-negative integers different from each other; the meaning of the link failure includes: a Beam Link Failure (page 565, 565: “The IE RadioLinkMonitoringConfig is used to configure radio link monitoring for detection of beam- and/or cell radio link failure”, RadioLinkMonitoringRS-Id comprises ssb-Index and csi-RS-Index; it’s noted that each serving cell has a unique ServCellIndex (a non-negative integer); the two cells therefore carry two difference indices).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the teaching of TS 38.331 in the system disclosed by TS 38.321. Each element – the BRF procedure, the RRC configuration of a detection-RS set, CSI-RS/SSB as detection resources was known and performed its same function; combining them yields the predictable per-cell BFD configuration. No change in their respective functions.
Regarding claim 9, the aforementioned references further teach that the first signal set comprises reference signal(s) indicated by a TCI state corresponding to a first COntrol REsource SET (CORESET) set, while the second signal set comprises reference signal(s) indicated by a TCI state corresponding to a second CORESET set (TS 38.213, page 565, under failureDetectionResourcesToAddModList: “The network configures at most two detectionResources per BWP for the purpose beamFailure or both. If no RSs are provided for the purpose of beam failure detection, the UE performs beam monitoring based on the activated TCI-State for PDCCH as described in TS 38.213 [13], clause 6. If no RSs are provided in this list for the purpose of RLF detection, the UE performs Cell-RLM based on the activated TCI-State of PDCCH as described in TS 38.213”).
Claims 14-15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over 3GPP TS 38.321 V16.1.0, hereinafter as TS 38.321, in view of Wang et al (US 2020/0373992 A1).
Regarding claim 14, TS 38.321 teaches all of the limitations except that the third message comprises a first sub-message and a second sub- message, the first sub-message comprising a random access preamble, while the second sub-message comprising a C- RNTI MAC CE; the third message comprises a first data unit, the first data unit being used to indicate the second link failure; the fourth message comprises a Downlink Control Information (DCI), and a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) of the fourth message is scrambled by a C-RNTI.
Wang teaches that third message comprises a first sub-message and a second sub- message, the first sub-message comprising a random access preamble (Fig. 3, Step 304A), while the second sub-message comprising a C-RNTI MAC CE ([0015], “the message comprises C-RNTI MAC CE); the third message comprises a first data unit, the first data unit being used to indicate the second link failure ([0013], “The message provides an implicit indication that the reason for the contention-based random access procedure is beam failure recovery”); the fourth message comprises a Downlink Control Information (DCI), and a Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) of the fourth message is scrambled by a C-RNTI (Fig. 3, step 304D).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to incorporate the contention-based random access exchange of Wang into the SpCell beam-failure-recovery procedure of TS 38.321, because TS 38.321 expressly invokes “a Random Access procedure” for SpCell recovery and Wang supplies the corresponding contention-based access details, which Wang identifies as lacking in the existing specification. The combination amounts to the use of a known technique (contention-based RA with C-RNTI identification) to complete a known method (SpCell beam-failure recovery via random access) to yield the predictable result of enabling the network to recognize and response to the beam-failure recovery request, with a reasonable expectation of success.
Regarding claim 15, the aforementioned references further teach that the second sub-message comprises the first identifier, and the second sub-message comprises a Candidate RS ID (Wang, [0013], “transmitting, to the network node, a message comprising the identity of the wireless device and information that indicates the new serving beam for the wireless device”, “the information that indicates the new serving beam for the wireless device comprises an index that indicates the new serving beam, a Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) or SSB group index associated with the new serving beam, a Channel State Information Reference Symbol (CSI-RS) set index associated with the new serving beam”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim 17 would be allowable if rewritten 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 and to include all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
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/SIMING LIU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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