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 .
DETAILED ACTION
a. Claims 1 and 3 in the present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, are being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
b. This is a first action on the merits based on Applicant’s claims submitted on 11/06/2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/06/2023 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 of this title, 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.
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 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.
Claims 1 and 3 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Jeong et al. US Pub 2022/0132596, claiming provisional application 63104218 priority 2020-10-22 (hereinafter “Jeong”), in view of Chauvin et al. US Pub 2021/0195629 (hereinafter “Chauvin”), and further in view of Pi et al. US Pub 2023/0276436, claiming foreign application priority 2020-08-10 (hereinafter “Pi”).
Regarding claim 1
Jeong discloses a terminal apparatus (“wireless device 1502” in Fig. 15; [0203]) comprising:
a medium access control (MAC) layer processing circuitry and a physical layer processing circuitry (“A MAC layer of the wireless device may generate a MAC PDU comprising the MAC SDU that comprises the uplink data. The MAC layer may send a TB comprising the MAC PDU that comprises the uplink data to a physical layer of the wireless device. The physical layer may add (or attach) a CRC to the TB. The physical layer may transmit the TB via PUSCH. A processing for downlink transmission may be a reverse order of the one for the uplink transmission. For example, the physical layer may receive the TB via PDSCH. The physical layer may send the received TB to the MAC layer.” [0323]), wherein the MAC layer processing circuitry configured to determine one Physical Random Access CHannel (PRACH) resource type (“the MAC entity of a wireless device may transmit a RA preamble. msgA-SSB-SharedRO-MaskIndex indicating a subset of four-step RA type PRACH occasions shared with two-step RA type PRACH occasions for each SSB. If two-step RA type PRACH occasions are shared with four-step RA type PRACH occasions and msgA-SSB-SharedRO-MaskIndex may not be configured. In this case, all four-step RA type PRACH occasions may be available for two-step RA type. ra-OccasionList indicating PRACH occasion(s) associated with a CSI-RS in which the MAC entity may transmit a RA preamble.” [0292-0294]) from a first PRACH resource type (e.g. “two-step RA type PRACH occasions”) and a second PRACH resource type (e.g. “four-step RA type PRACH occasions”); and
the MAC layer processing circuitry configured to select the second PRACH resource type in a case that the first PRACH resource type is not provided for an uplink BWP used for a random access (“msgA-RSRP-Threshold indicating an RSRP threshold for selection between two-step RA type and four-step RA type, e.g., if both two-step and four-step RA type Random Access Resources are configured in a UL BWP of a cell.” [0283]).
Jeong dos not specifically teach the physical layer processing circuitry configured to interpret a value of a Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) field included in a random access response grant using a first rule in a case that the first PRACH resource type is selected and to interpret the value of the MCS field included in the random access response grant using a second rule in a case that the second PRACH resource type is selected, the second rule being different from the first rule; the physical layer processing circuitry configured to interpret that the MCS field indicates a number of repetitions of a Physical Uplink Shared CHannel (PUSCH) scheduled based on the random access response grant in a case that the second PRACH resource type is selected.
In an analogous art, Chauvin discloses the physical layer processing circuitry (“the physical layer (PHY) transmission structure” [0076]) configured to interpret a value of a Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) field (“a UE may dynamically decide whether to use a lower MCS than was allocated by a grant and/or use fewer resources than were allocated by the grant. FIG. 8 illustrates an example where a grant 802 scheduled a certain number of resources and a particular MCS.” [0132]) included in a random access response grant (“a base station may send an uplink grant to a UE, where the uplink grant specifies which resource blocks and/or which modulation and coding scheme (MCS) the base station has allocated to the UE for an uplink transmission” [0005]) using a first rule in a case that the first PRACH resource type (“the uplink beam refinement request resources may include resources scheduled for transmission of a PUCCH, PUSCH, PRACH occasion or RRC message.” [0190]) is selected and to interpret the value of the MCS field included in the random access response grant using a second rule in a case that the second PRACH resource type (i.e. PRACH occasions) is selected, the second rule being different from the first rule (“A UE might not be able to or might not want to transmit via all of the granted resources that a gNB has allocated for the UE and/or a UE might only have enough power to reliably transmit at a lower MCS (to maintain a reliable block error rate, BLER) (examples of different applied rules). As a specific example, a UE may classify PUSCH traffic as low importance, medium importance, or high importance. In some cases, none, one, or two of these types of traffic are allowed at a given point in time. In this case, there may be a risk that data becomes obsolete (e.g., discard timers may be triggered). As another specific example, taking into consideration available UL transmit power (MPE limits) and UE battery power, it would be preferable if the UE is able to choose: 1) when it transmits, 2) the MCS the UE uses (considering the maximum transmit power (Pmax)), 3) how much of an UL grant the UE uses, 4) or any combination thereof. (examples of different applied rules)” [0094]);
Before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Jeong’s method for selecting random access type for small data transmission to include Chauvin’s method for modifying an allocation that was indicated by a wireless communication grant, in order to maximize resource utilization efficiency (Chauvin [Abstract]).
Jeong and Chauvin do not specifically teach the physical layer processing circuitry configured to interpret that the MCS field indicates a number of repetitions of a Physical Uplink Shared CHannel (PUSCH) scheduled based on the random access response grant in a case that the second PRACH resource type is selected.
In an analogous art, Pi discloses the physical layer processing circuitry (i.e. “physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH)”) configured to interpret that the MCS field indicates a number of repetitions of a Physical Uplink Shared CHannel (PUSCH) scheduled (“Scheme A.1: the first number of repetitions for the first transmission of the Msg3 PUSCH is determined based on the MCS indication field or TA indication field in the RAR, and the mapping relationship between the MCS or TA and the number of repetitions is defined in advance or notified to the UE by the base station via broadcast” [0088]) based on the random access response grant in a case that the second PRACH resource type is selected (“when the predetermined indication field includes the MCS indication field, the first indication information is index information of the MCS; wherein the determining, based on the first indication information in the predetermined indication field in the RAR (i.e. a value of MCS field included in the random access response grant), the first number of repetitions for the first transmission of the PUSCH includes: determining, based on the index information of the MCS and a mapping relationship between the index information of the MCS and the number of repetitions, the first number of repetitions for the first transmission of the PUSCH; wherein the mapping relationship between the index information of the MCS and the number of repetitions is a mapping relationship which is defined in advance or received and indicated by the network device via broadcast.” [0054]).
Before the effective filling date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Jeong’s method for selecting random access type for small data transmission, as modified by Chauvin, to include Pi’s method for determining a number of repetitions of a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) based on MCS information, in order to efficiently perform repetitions transmission (Pi [0030]). Thus, a person of ordinary skill would have appreciated the ability to incorporate Pi’s method for determining a number of repetitions of a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) based on MCS information into Jeong’s method for selecting random access type for small data transmission since the claimed invention is merely a combination of old elements, and in the combination each element merely would have performed the same function as it did separately, and one of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the results of the combination were predictable.
Regarding claim 3
A communication method used in a terminal apparatus, the communication method comprising the steps of:
determining one Physical Random Access CHannel (PRACH) resource type from a first PRACH resource type and a second PRACH resource type;
interpreting a value of a Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) field included in a random access response grant using a first rule in a case that the first PRACH resource type is selected and interpreting the value of the MCS field included in the random access response grant using a second rule in a case that the second PRACH resource type is selected, the second rule being different from the first rule: interpreting that the MCS field indicates a number of repetitions of a Physical Uplink Shared CHannel (PUSCH) scheduled based on the random access response grant in a case that the second PRACH resource type is selected; and
selecting the second PRACH resource type in a case that the first PRACH resource type is not provided for an uplink BWP used for a random access.
The scope and subject matter of method claim 3 is drawn to the method of using the corresponding apparatus claimed in claim 1. Therefore method claim 3 corresponds to apparatus claim 1 and is rejected for the same reasons of obviousness as used in claim 1 rejection above.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to CHUONG M NGUYEN whose telephone number is (571)272-8184. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 10:00am - 6:30pm.
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/CHUONG M NGUYEN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411