DETAILED ACTION
This office action is responsive to the Applicant’s request for continued examination filed on 07/14/2026.
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 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kotecha et al. (US 2008/0225960 A1) in view of Kamiya et al. (US 2022/0190894 A1).
Consider claims 1 and 10:
Kotecha discloses a computer-implemented transceiver method between at least one receiver (RX) and at least one transmitter (TX) in an overloaded communication channel that is characterized by a channel matrix (see Fig. 2 and paragraph 0021, where Kotecha describes a wireless communication between a transmitter and a receiver through a transmission channel), the method comprising:
first, a transmitter sends one or more reference signals to a receiver, and the receiver estimates a channel matrix (see Fig. 2 and paragraph 0021, where Kotecha describes that the transmitter sends pre-coded reference signals to the receiver, the receiver generates a channel matrix H),
the reference signals specifying one or more non-zero integer beams (see paragraph 0019, where Kotecha describes that the pre-coded reference signals are generated by applying beamforming weights to reference signals; see paragraph 0006, where Kotecha describes that by applying beamforming weights to signals, a beam or multiple beams are formed);
second, the receiver optimizes an RX beamforming matrix WBB and a TX beamforming matrix FBB jointly (see paragraph 0021, where Kotecha describes that the receiver uses the received pre-coded reference signals to extract transmit beamforming vector matrix W; see paragraph 0022, where Kotecha describes that the receiver uses channel matrix H to generate an optimal receive beamforming vector); and
third, the TX beamforming matrix FBB is sent to the transmitter out-of-band by using a control channel (see paragraphs 0038-0039, where Kotecha describes that the receiver sends a codeword index as a feedback signal to the transmitter, the codeword index is used to identify a transmit beamforming matrix; see paragraph 0055, where Kotecha describes that the feedback signal is sent on a feedback control channel).
Kotecha does not specifically disclose: a minimum mean square error is based on a mean square error of the channel matrix that incorporates an impact of hardware imperfection of hardware elements of RF chains with the hardware imperfection being modeled as phase noise at the transmitter and the receiver.
Kamiya teaches: a minimum mean square error is based on a mean square error of a channel matrix that incorporates an impact of hardware imperfection of hardware elements of RF chains with the hardware imperfection being modeled as phase noise at a transmitter and a receiver (see Fig. 17 and paragraphs 0153-0154, where Kamiya describes a wireless receiver that includes a phase-noise estimation unit 71 which estimates a phase variation caused by phase noise from a channel response, that is, the channel response includes phase noise which is hardware imperfection, and the phase-noise estimation unit 71 performs Minimum Mean Square Error to generate an average of the channel response; see paragraph 0007, where Kamiya describes that the channel response is expressed as a channel matrix H).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include: a minimum mean square error is based on a mean square error of the channel matrix that incorporates an impact of hardware imperfection of hardware elements of RF chains with the hardware imperfection being modeled as phase noise at the transmitter and the receiver, as taught by Kamiya to modify the method of Kotecha in order to reduce noise components, as discussed by Kamiya (see paragraph 0154).
Claims 2 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kotecha et al. (US 2008/0225960 A1) in view of Kamiya et al. (US 2022/0190894 A1), as applied to claims 1 and 10 above, and further in view of Razaviyayn et al. (US 2013/0078927 A1).
Consider claims 2 and 11:
Kotecha in view of Kamiya discloses the invention of claims 1 and 10 above. Kotecha and Kamiya do not specifically disclose: the RX beamforming matrix and the TX beamforming matrix are calculated in such a manner that an alternating optimization is executed over the TX beamforming matrix and the RX beamforming matrix until a stable point is reached by optimizing a minimum mean square error and after convergence, the TX beamforming matrix is scaled to satisfy a maximum transmit power constraint.
Razaviyayn discloses: the RX beamforming matrix and the TX beamforming matrix are calculated in such a manner that an alternating optimization is executed over the TX beamforming matrix and the RX beamforming matrix until a stable point is reached by optimizing a minimum mean square error and after convergence (see paragraph 0038, where Razaviyayn describes that by iteratively updating the receive beamformer matrix {Uk } and the transmit beamformer matrix {Vk } until convergence, one can obtain the optimized beamformers at both the transmitter side and the receiver side; see paragraph 0045, where Razaviyayn describes that the optimization process minimizes the weighted sum of the mean square error (MSE)), and the TX beamforming matrix is scaled to satisfy a maximum transmit power constraint (see paragraph 0040, where Razaviyayn describes that the transmit beamformer is initialized with scalars to meet a power budget requirement).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include: the RX beamforming matrix and the TX beamforming matrix are calculated in such a manner that an alternating optimization is executed over the TX beamforming matrix and the RX beamforming matrix until a stable point is reached by optimizing a minimum mean square error and after convergence, the TX beamforming matrix is scaled to satisfy a maximum transmit power constraint, as taught by Razaviyayn to modify the method of Kotecha and Kamiya in order to maximize throughput, as discussed by Razaviyayn (see paragraph 0007).
Claims 4-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kotecha et al. (US 2008/0225960 A1) in view of Kamiya et al. (US 2022/0190894 A1), as applied to claim 1 above, and further in view of Koskela et al. (US 11,963,151 B2).
Consider claim 4:
Kotecha in view of Kamiya discloses the method of claim 1 above. Kotecha discloses: the RX beamforming matrix and the TX beamforming matrix are integrated in beamforming circuitry (see Fig. 2 and paragraphs 0021-0022, where Kotecha describes that the receiver generates transmit beamforming matrix and receive beamforming vector).
Kotecha does not specifically disclose: the beamforming circuitry configured to receive at the user equipment, from the wireless telecommunications network, data requesting a selection of a non-zero integer number of beams by the UE.
Koskela teaches: a beamforming circuitry configured to receive at the user equipment, from a wireless telecommunications network, data requesting a selection of a non-zero integer number of beams by the UE (see col. 25, lines 3-15, where Koskela describes a terminal device which receives a request for a candidate beam report from a network device, the terminal device then generates an uplink report including the information of the selected candidate beam).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include: the beamforming circuitry configured to receive at the user equipment, from the wireless telecommunications network, data requesting a selection of a non-zero integer number of beams by the UE, as taught by Koskela to modify the method of Kotecha in order to have a better beam failure recovery, as discussed by Koskela (see col. 1, lines 32-45).
Consider claim 5:
Kotecha in view of Kamiya and Koskela discloses the method of claim 4 above. Kotecha discloses: a user equipment comprising: a beamforming circuitry according to claim 4 (see paragraph 0019, where Kotecha describes that the receiver may be a user equipment).
Kotecha does not specifically disclose: a user equipment comprises a display screen.
Koskela teaches: a user equipment comprises a display screen (see col. 4, lines 10-19, where Koskela describes that the user equipment is a smart phone).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include: a user equipment comprises a display screen, as taught by Koskela to modify the method of Kotecha in order to have a better beam failure recovery, as discussed by Koskela (see col. 1, lines 32-45).
Consider claim 6:
Kotecha in view of Kamiya discloses the method of claim 1 above. Kotecha discloses: machine-readable instructions provided on at least one machine-readable medium, the machine-readable instructions, when executed by a User Equipment of a wireless telecommunications network having at least one base station to cause processing hardware of the UE to obtain, from the wireless telecommunications network, reference signals (see paragraph 0020, where Kotecha describes an implementation in which algorithms and operations on data are stored in a computer memory).
Kotecha does not specifically disclose: specifying a non-zero integer beam to be calculated according to the computer-implemented transceiver method between the at least one receiver and the at least one transmitter in the overloaded communication channel that is characterized by a channel matrix as claimed in claim 1.
Koskela teaches: specifying a non-zero integer beam to be calculated according to a computer-implemented transceiver method between at least one receiver and at least one transmitter in a overloaded communication channel that is characterized by a channel matrix (see col. 25, lines 3-15, where Koskela describes a terminal device which receives a request for a candidate beam report from a network device, the terminal device then generates an uplink report including the information of the selected candidate beam).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include: specifying a non-zero integer beam to be calculated according to the computer-implemented transceiver method between the at least one receiver and the at least one transmitter in the overloaded communication channel that is characterized by a channel matrix as claimed in claim 1, as taught by Koskela to modify the method of Kotecha in order to have a better beam failure recovery, as discussed by Koskela (see col. 1, lines 32-45).
Claim 7 is are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Kotecha et al. (US 2008/0225960 A1) in view of Kamiya et al. (US 2022/0190894 A1) and Koskela et al. (US 11,963,151 B2), as applied to claim 6 above, and further in view of Razaviyayn et al. (US 2013/0078927 A1).
Consider claim 7:
Kotecha in view of Kamiya and Koskela discloses the method of claim 6 above. Kotecha does not specifically disclose: the RX beamforming matrix and the TX beamforming matrix are calculated in such a manner that an alternating optimization is executed over the TX beamforming matrix and the RX beamforming matrix until a stable point is reached by optimizing a minimum mean square error and after convergence, the TX beamforming matrix is scaled to satisfy a maximum transmit power constraint.
Razaviyayn teaches: the RX beamforming matrix and the TX beamforming matrix are calculated in such a manner that an alternating optimization is executed over the TX beamforming matrix and the RX beamforming matrix until a stable point is reached by optimizing a minimum mean square error and after convergence (see paragraph 0038, where Razaviyayn describes that by iteratively updating the receive beamformer matrix {Uk } and the transmit beamformer matrix {Vk } until convergence, one can obtain the optimized beamformers at both the transmitter side and the receiver side; see paragraph 0045, where Razaviyayn describes that the optimization process minimizes the weighted sum of the mean square error (MSE)), the TX beamforming matrix is scaled to satisfy a maximum transmit power constraint (see paragraph 0040, where Razaviyayn describes that the transmit beamformer is initialized with scalars to meet a power budget requirement).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include: the RX beamforming matrix and the TX beamforming matrix are calculated in such a manner that an alternating optimization is executed over the TX beamforming matrix and the RX beamforming matrix until a stable point is reached by optimizing a minimum mean square error and after convergence, the TX beamforming matrix is scaled to satisfy a maximum transmit power constraint, as taught by Razaviyayn to modify the method of Kotecha and Kamiya in order to maximize throughput, as discussed by Razaviyayn (see paragraph 0007).
Claims 8 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Razaviyayn et al. (US 2013/0078927 A1) in view of Kamiya et al. (US 2022/0190894 A1).
Consider claim 8:
Razaviyayn discloses a circuitry for use in a base station of a wireless telecommunications network (see Fig. 4 and paragraph 0046, where Razaviyayn describes a network node 400; see paragraph 0024, where Razaviyayn describes that the node can refer to a base station), the circuitry comprising:
processing circuitry (see Fig. 4 and paragraph 0046, where Razaviyayn describes that the network node 400 includes a processor 404) to calculate a RX beamforming matrix and a TX beamforming matrix (see Fig. 3 and paragraph 0045, where Razaviyayn describes that the network node includes a transmit-beamformers-update mechanism 310 and a receive-beamformers-update mechanism 314 to generate transmit beamformers and receive beamformers; see paragraph 0038, where Razaviyayn describes that the transmit beamformer is a matrix {Vk} and that the receive beamformer is a matrix{Uk }) in such a manner, that an alternating optimization is executed over the TX beamforming matrix and the RX beamforming matrix until a stable point is reached by optimizing a minimum mean square error and after convergence (see paragraph 0038, where Razaviyayn describes that by iteratively updating the receive beamformer matrix {Uk } and the transmit beamformer matrix {Vk } until convergence, one can obtain the optimized beamformers at both the transmitter side and the receiver side; see paragraph 0045, where Razaviyayn describes that the optimization process minimizes the weighted sum of the mean square error (MSE)), the TX beamforming matrix is scaled to satisfy a maximum transmit power constraint (see paragraph 0040, where Razaviyayn describes that the transmit beamformer is initialized with scalars to meet a power budget requirement).
Razaviyayn does not specifically disclose: a minimum mean square error is based on a mean square error of a channel matrix that incorporates an impact of hardware imperfection of hardware elements of RF chains of the circuitry with the hardware imperfection being modeled as phase noise.
Kamiya teaches: a minimum mean square error is based on a mean square error of a channel matrix that incorporates an impact of hardware imperfection of hardware elements of RF chains of a circuitry with the hardware imperfection being modeled as phase noise (see Fig. 17 and paragraphs 0153-0154, where Kamiya describes a wireless receiver that includes a phase-noise estimation unit 71 which estimates a phase variation caused by phase noise from a channel response, that is, the channel response includes phase noise which is hardware imperfection, and the phase-noise estimation unit 71 performs Minimum Mean Square Error to generate an average of the channel response; see paragraph 0007, where Kamiya describes that the channel response is expressed as a channel matrix H).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to include: a minimum mean square error is based on a mean square error of a channel matrix that incorporates an impact of hardware imperfection of hardware elements of RF chains of the circuitry with the hardware imperfection being modeled as phase noise, as taught by Kamiya to modify the method of Razaviyayn in order to reduce noise components, as discussed by Kamiya (see paragraph 0154).
Consider claim 9:
Razaviyayn in view of Kamiya discloses the circuitry of claim 8 above. Razaviyayn discloses: a base station of a wireless telecommunications network (see Fig. 4 and paragraph 0046, where Razaviyayn describes a network node 400; see paragraph 0024, where Razaviyayn describes that the node can refer to a base station) comprising: a transceiver and the processing circuitry as claimed in claim 8 (see Fig. 4 and paragraph 0046, where Razaviyayn describes that the network node 400 includes a processor 404 and a transceiver 408).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LIHONG YU whose telephone number is (571)270-5147. The examiner can normally be reached 10:00 am-6:00 pm EST Monday-Friday.
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/LIHONG YU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2631
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