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 Examiner thanks the Applicant for the well-prepared amendment. The Examiner appreciates the Applicant’s effort to carefully analyze the Office action, and make appropriate arguments and amendments.
Status of Claims
Claims 29-48 responded on November 14, 2025 are pending, claims 29, 32, 34-36, 39, 41-48 are amended.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments, see pg. 7, filed November 14, 2025, with respect to objections of claim 43-48 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Claim 43 recites "machine-readable storage medium". However, claims 44-48 depend on claim 43, recite "computer-readable storage medium".
Applicant’s arguments, see pg. 7, filed November 14, 2025, with respect to rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) of claims 34-35, 41-42 and 48 have been fully considered and are persuasive. The rejection of claims 34-35, 41-42 and 48 has been withdrawn.
Applicant's arguments, see pg. 8-9, filed November 14, 2025, with respect to rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 of claim 29 have been fully considered but they are not persuasive. Without incorporating claims 30 and 32, it is not clear how first information is being sent in an encoded form. Sha discloses in Col. 8 The encoded data is sent to one or more users via radio frequency link(s) and antenna(s).
Claim Objections
Claims 43-48 are objected to because of the following informalities: Claim 43. Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claim(s) 29-31, 35-38 and 42-45 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sha et al. (US 11,552,756 A1, hereinafter "Sha") in view of Katla et al. (US 2023/0353208 A1, Provisional application No. 63/082,620 filed on Sept 24 2020, hereinafter "Katla").
Regarding claim 29, Sha discloses an access network device (Sha, Fig. 27 1400), comprising:
a processor (Sha, Fig. 27 1421); and
a memory coupled to the processor to store instructions (Sha, Fig. 27 1422), which when executed by the processor, cause the access network device to perform operations, the operations comprising:
performing first encoding on a channel state information-reference signal (CSI-RS), to generate first information, wherein the CSI-RS is used to obtain channel state information (CSI) corresponding to a channel between the access network device and a terminal device (Sha, Col. 8 line 3-6 Col. 32 line 28-31 line 55-56 the base station is equipped with M antennas (Mis an integer and M≥1), and each antenna is arranged with a corresponding radio frequency link; An encoding method for the feedback information is exemplarily described as follows: First set the maximum value Lmax of L, and assume Lmax≤4 and 2-bit space (i.e. first information) can be allocated for L in the control channel resources fedback from the UE to the base station…the distribution of CSI-RS required to implement the above process);
sending, in encoded form, the first information to the terminal device (Sha, Col. 15 line 62-64 When the reference signals (for example, CSI-RS) (i.e. first information) of multiple ports are transmitted through the same communication resources; Col 8 line 10-12 The encoded data is sent to one or more users via radio frequency link(s) and antenna(s));
receiving third information from the terminal device, wherein the third information is generated by the terminal device after the terminal device performs second encoding on second information determined by the terminal device based on the first information and the CSI-RS (Sha, Col. 32 line 18-25 if the UE implements the channel estimation based on the CSI-RS (i.e. first information), the UE needs to feedback the channel information (i.e. third information) to the base station after the channel estimation (i.e. second encoding). Here, the UE can perform feedback by sending the number L of paths, the path delay parameter β l, and the path strength parameter Δ l, and the total number of parameters required for feedback is 2 L+1. After receiving the parameters, the base station can derive the channels of all subcarriers); and
performing first decoding on the third information, to generate the CSI, wherein the first decoding comprises decoding corresponding to the first encoding (Sha, Col. 31 line 59-67 several parameters involved in the channel estimation method proposed by the present disclosure, including the total number of paths, the delay of each channel path, the intensity parameter of each channel path and the like as described above are fedback, so that the complete channel state information can be represented by several parameters, and then the base station can directly calculate the complete channel state information from the parameters, determine an optimal transmission manner (including the modulation manner, time-frequency resource scheduling, and precoding matrices for multiple-input multiple-output antennas).
Sha discloses sending the first information to the terminal device but does not explicitly disclose sending the first information to the terminal device over N radio frequency links, wherein N is a positive integer.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses sending the first information to the terminal device over N radio frequency links, wherein N is a positive integer (Katla, [0114, 0130] the NAP 180 may send a CSI-RS configuration and/or a CSI reporting type, or may or may otherwise indicate the same to the WTRU 102; a DNN-based precoder 502 outputs, at the transmission side (e.g., a NAP 180), a plurality of signals (e.g., x1, x2, x3, etc.) to a plurality of antennas for transmission (i.e. N is a positive integer).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claim 30, Sha discloses the operations further comprising:
performing second decoding on the third information, wherein the second decoding corresponds to the second encoding (Sha, Col. 32 line 4-8 that several channel parameters (i.e. second encoding) related to the channel estimation involved in this disclosure are exemplary. In some applications, it can be fed back and processed as the replacement of existing channel related parameters (i.e. second decoding), such as CQI, PMI, RI, etc.); and
performing the second decoding (Sha, Col. 31 line 48-52, 65-67 the UE calculates information such as the channel quality identifier (CQI), precoding matrix index (PMI), rank identifier (RI) and the like based on channel estimation (i.e. third information) and feeds such information back to the base station; then the base station can directly calculate the complete channel state information from the parameters (i.e. first decoding), determine an optimal transmission manner), but does not explicitly disclose performing the first decoding on the third information on which the second decoding is performed.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses performing the first decoding on the third information on which the second decoding is performed (Katla, [0086] The configuration of the pilot sequences signals may be based on channel state information which is fed back from the receiver (e.g., a UE). The channel state information or indicator(s) fed back to the DNN may include any of a channel time correlation indicator and a channel statistics indicator, and the channel state information or indicator(s) may determine a number of retraining samples to be used for updating and/or recalibrating the DNN weights of the precoder (i.e. first decoding)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claim 31, Sha does not explicitly disclose wherein the first decoding further comprises decoding corresponding to the second encoding.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the first decoding further comprises decoding corresponding to the second encoding (Katla, [0086] The configuration of the pilot sequences signals may be based on channel state information which is fed back from the receiver (e.g., a UE). The channel state information or indicator(s) fed back to the DNN may include any of a channel time correlation indicator and a channel statistics indicator, and the channel state information or indicator(s) may determine a number of retraining samples to be used for updating and/or recalibrating the DNN weights of the precoder (i.e. first decoding)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claim 35, Sha discloses N and F (Sha, Col. 20 line 24-25 Col. 24 line 35-37 wherein NRF,t, NRF,r represent the number of RF links for the transmitter and the number of RF links for the receiver respectively, and Nt (i.e. N), Nr represent the number of antennas for the transmitter; The operation length of FFT shall be firstly determined. In order to ensure the accuracy of the frequency spectrum obtained by FFT, a 1024-point FFT (i.e. F) is used here ) but does not explicitly disclose wherein the first decoding is based on a third neural network, and a parameter of the third neural network is related to N, M, and F.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the first decoding is decoding based on a third neural network, and a parameter of the third neural network is related to N, M, and F (Katla, [0137] Fig. 11 resource mapping 1130 (i.e. M), precoding 1140, inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) processing 1150 (i.e. F) and other RF front-end processing 1160 (i.e. N) … the NAP 180 may switch between the first precoder 1140a and the second precoder 1140b).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claim 36, Sha discloses a terminal device (Sha, Fig. 29 1600), comprising:
a processor (Sha, Fig. 29 1601); and
a memory coupled to the processor to store instructions (Sha, Fig. 29 1602), which when executed by the processor, cause the terminal device to perform operations, the operations comprising:
receiving first information in an encoded form, that is sent by an access network device to the terminal device over N radio frequency links (Sha, Col. 15 line 62-64 When the reference signals (for example, CSI-RS) (i.e. first information) of multiple ports are transmitted through the same communication resources; Col 8 line 10-12 The encoded data is sent to one or more users via radio frequency link(s) and antenna(s)), wherein the first information is generated by the access network device after the access network device performs first encoding on a channel state information-reference signal (CSI-RS), and the CSI-RS is used to obtain channel state information (CSI) (Sha, Col. 8 line 3-6 Col. 32 line 28-31 line 55-56 the base station is equipped with M antennas (Mis an integer and M≥1), and each antenna is arranged with a corresponding radio frequency link; An encoding method for the feedback information is exemplarily described as follows: First set the maximum value Lmax of L, and assume Lmax≤4 and 2-bit space (i.e. first information) can be allocated for L in the control channel resources fedback from the UE to the base station…the distribution of CSI-RS required to implement the above process);
determining second information based on the first information and the CSI-RS (Sha, Col. 32 line 28-31 line 55-56 First set the maximum value Lmax of L, and assume Lmax≤4 and 2-bit space (i.e. first information) can be allocated for L in the control channel resources feedback (i.e. second information) from the UE to the base station…the distribution of CSI-RS required to implement the above process);
performing second encoding on the second information, to generate third information (Sha, Col. 31 line 59-67 several parameters involved in the channel estimation method proposed by the present disclosure, including the total number of paths, the delay of each channel path, the intensity parameter of each channel path and the like as described above are feedback); and
sending the third information to the access network device (Sha, Col. 32 line 21-24 the UE can perform feedback by sending the number L of paths, the path delay parameter β l, and the path strength parameter Δ l, and the total number of parameters required for feedback is 2 L+1) but does not explicitly disclose wherein the third information is used by the access network device to perform first decoding on the third information, to generate the CSI, and the first decoding comprises decoding corresponding to the first encoding.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the third information is used by the access network device to perform first decoding on the third information, to generate the CSI, and the first decoding comprises decoding corresponding to the first encoding (Katla, [0114, 0130] the NAP 180 may send a CSI-RS configuration and/or a CSI reporting type, or may or may otherwise indicate the same to the WTRU 102; a DNN-based precoder 502 outputs, at the transmission side (e.g., a NAP 180), a plurality of signals (e.g., x1, x2, x3, etc.) to a plurality of antennas for transmission).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claim 37, Sha discloses wherein the third information is used by the access network device but does not explicitly disclose perform the first decoding on the third information on which second decoding is performed, to generate the CSI, and the second decoding corresponds to the second encoding.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses perform the first decoding on the third information on which second decoding is performed, to generate the CSI, and the second decoding corresponds to the second encoding (Katla, [0086] The configuration of the pilot sequences signals may be based on channel state information which is fed back from the receiver (e.g., a UE). The channel state information or indicator(s) fed back to the DNN may include any of a channel time correlation indicator and a channel statistics indicator, and the channel state information or indicator(s) may determine a number of retraining samples to be used for updating and/or recalibrating the DNN weights of the precoder (i.e. first decoding)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claim 38, Sha does not explicitly disclose wherein the first decoding further comprises decoding corresponding to the second encoding.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the first decoding further comprises decoding corresponding to the second encoding (Katla, [0086] The configuration of the pilot sequences signals may be based on channel state information which is fed back from the receiver (e.g., a UE). The channel state information or indicator(s) fed back to the DNN may include any of a channel time correlation indicator and a channel statistics indicator, and the channel state information or indicator(s) may determine a number of retraining samples to be used for updating and/or recalibrating the DNN weights of the precoder (i.e. first decoding)).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claim 42, Sha discloses N and F (Sha, Col. 20 line 24-25 Col. 24 line 35-37 wherein NRF,t, NRF,r represent the number of RF links for the transmitter and the number of RF links for the receiver respectively, and Nt (i.e. N), Nr represent the number of antennas for the transmitter; The operation length of FFT shall be firstly determined. In order to ensure the accuracy of the frequency spectrum obtained by FFT, a 1024-point FFT (i.e. F) is used here ) but does not explicitly disclose wherein the first decoding is decoding based on a third neural network, and a parameter of the third neural network is related to N, M, and F.
Katla from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the first decoding is decoding based on a third neural network, and a parameter of the third neural network is related to N, M, and F (Katla, [0137] Fig. 11 resource mapping 1130 (i.e. M), precoding 1140, inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) processing 1150 (i.e. F) and other RF front-end processing 1160 (i.e. N) … the NAP 180 may switch between the first precoder 1140a and the second precoder 1140b).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified CSI feedback disclosed by Sha and DNN CSI recalibrating disclosed by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve the system spectral efficiency significantly (Katla, [0102]).
Regarding claims 43-45, these claims recite "a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium" that disclose similar steps as recited of claims 29-31, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 29-31 as presented above.
Claim(s) 34, 41 and 48 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sha et al. (US 11,552,756 A1, hereinafter "Sha") in view of Katla et al. (US 2023/0353208 A1, Provisional application No. 63/082,620 filed on Sept 24 2020, hereinafter "Katla") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Gao et al. (CN108990167B, hereinafter "Gao").
Regarding claim 34, Sha in view of Katla discloses M and N, but does not explicitly disclose wherein the first encoding is based on compressed sensing, the first encoding uses the first matrix, and a dimension of the first matrix is related to M and N.
Gao from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the first encoding is based on compressed sensing, the first encoding uses the first matrix, and a dimension of the first matrix is related to M and N (Gao, claim 1 assisted by machine learning (i.e. compress sensing), wherein the method comprises the following steps: S1: the base station obtains the characteristic mode energy coupling matrix in the characteristic direction through the uplink detection signal sent by the user; S2: the base station uses the characteristic mode energy coupling matrix…M is the base station antenna number, N is the user antenna number).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Gao’s system for machine learning with matrix into Sha’s channel estimation as modified by Katla with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve frequency spectrum and radiation energy efficiency (Gao, [0002]).
Regarding claims 41 and 48, these claims recite "a terminal device" and "a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium" that disclose similar steps as recited of claim 34, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claim 34 as presented above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 32-33, 39-40 and 46-47 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.
Claims 32-33, 39-40 and 46-47 are potentially allowable over the prior art of record Sha et al. (US 11,552,756 A1, hereinafter "Sha") in view of Katla et al. (US 2023/0353208 A1, Provisional application No. 63/082,620 filed on Sept 24 2020, hereinafter "Katla") and further in view of Zhang et al. (Massive MIMO CSI reconstruction using CNN-LSTM and attention mechanism, hereinafter "Zhang") as applied to the claim above.
Regarding claims 32-33, Sha discloses the resource comprises at least one of: a time domain resource, a frequency domain resource, or a code domain resource (Sha, Col. 12 line 60-63 utilizes improved reference signal distribution in the frequency domain and/or time domain, and/or improved channel path condition estimation to achieve improved channel estimation).
Katla discloses wherein the second encoding is based on a first neural network (Katla, [0086] The configuration of the pilot sequences signals may be based on channel state information which is fed back from the receiver (e.g., a UE). The channel state information or indicator(s) fed back to the DNN may include any of a channel time correlation indicator and a channel statistics indicator, and the channel state information or indicator(s) may determine a number of retraining samples to be used for updating and/or recalibrating the DNN weights of the precoder).
Zhang discloses wherein the parameter of the first neural network is a dimension of an input matrix of the first neural network (Zhang section 3.1 CNN module Matrix H is input to the encoder).
Sha in view of Katla and Zhang fails to teach alone or in combination "a parameter of the first neural network is related to a quantity F of sampling points of the channel and a quantity M of resources occupied by the first information, M and F are positive integers, M<N".
Regarding claims 39-40, Sha discloses the resource comprises at least one of: a time domain resource, a frequency domain resource, or a code domain resource (Sha, Col. 12 line 60-63 utilizes improved reference signal distribution in the frequency domain and/or time domain, and/or improved channel path condition estimation to achieve improved channel estimation).
Katla discloses wherein the second encoding is based on a first neural network (Katla, [0086] The configuration of the pilot sequences signals may be based on channel state information which is fed back from the receiver (e.g., a UE). The channel state information or indicator(s) fed back to the DNN may include any of a channel time correlation indicator and a channel statistics indicator, and the channel state information or indicator(s) may determine a number of retraining samples to be used for updating and/or recalibrating the DNN weights of the precoder).
Zhang discloses wherein the parameter of the first neural network is a dimension of an input matrix of the first neural network (Zhang section 3.1 CNN module Matrix H is input to the encoder).
Sha in view of Katla and Zhang fails to teach alone or in combination "a parameter of the first neural network is related to a quantity F of sampling points of a channel and a quantity M of resources occupied by the first information, M and F are positive integers, M<N".
Regarding claims 46-47, Sha discloses the resource comprises at least one of: a time domain resource, a frequency domain resource, or a code domain resource (Sha, Col. 12 line 60-63 utilizes improved reference signal distribution in the frequency domain and/or time domain, and/or improved channel path condition estimation to achieve improved channel estimation).
Katla discloses wherein the second encoding is based on a first neural network (Katla, [0086] The configuration of the pilot sequences signals may be based on channel state information which is fed back from the receiver (e.g., a UE). The channel state information or indicator(s) fed back to the DNN may include any of a channel time correlation indicator and a channel statistics indicator, and the channel state information or indicator(s) may determine a number of retraining samples to be used for updating and/or recalibrating the DNN weights of the precoder).
Zhang discloses wherein the parameter of the first neural network is a dimension of an input matrix of the first neural network (Zhang section 3.1 CNN module Matrix H is input to the encoder).
Sha in view of Katla and Zhang fails to teach alone or in combination "a parameter of the first neural network is related to a quantity F of sampling points of the channel and a quantity M of resources occupied by the first information, M and F are positive integers, M<N".
Conclusion
THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. 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.
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