DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present U.S. non-provisional application is being examined under the first-inventor-to-file provisions of the AIA . The present U.S. non-provisional application, filed on January 19, 2024, is the U.S. national stage of an international PCT application, filed on July 18, 2022, and claims priority to a foreign application, filed on July 20, 2021.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on January 19, 2024 and August 12, 2025 were filed before the mailing date of a first Office action in the present U.S. non-provisional application, in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements have been considered by the examiner.
Response to Amendment
This Office action is responsive to the preliminary amendment under 37 CFR 1.115 on January 19, 2024. The specification was amended. Claims 12, 14 and 15 were canceled. Claims 1-11 and 13 are pending for consideration in the present U.S. non-provisional application.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4, 5 and 10 would be considered as allowable if rewritten into independent form to include all of the limitations of the respective base claim and any intervening claims. The claimed invention is neither anticipated by the prior art of record, nor considered as obvious in view thereof to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
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 1-3, 6-9, 11 and 13 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Venugopal et al. (US 2021/0126687 A1) in view of Hao et al. (US 2023/0056106 A1).
1. A method for transmitting channel state information (CSI) by a user equipment (UE) (Venugopal, FIG. 2) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising:
receiving configuration information related to CSI reporting (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], “…As shown by reference number 310, the base station 110 may transmit, to the UE 120, a request for a CSI report (e.g., a CSI request). In some aspects, the request is a request for a periodic CSI report. In this case, the base station 110 may indicate a periodicity and/or a set of uplink resources for transmission of the CSI report, a periodicity and/or a set of downlink resources for reference signals (e.g., channel state information reference signals (CSI-RSs), synchronization signal blocks (SSBs), and/or the like) to be measured by the UE 120 for the CSI report, and/or the like. In some aspects, the request is a request for aperiodic CSI. In this case, the base station 110 may indicate a set of uplink resources for transmission of the CSI report, a set of downlink resources for reference signals (e.g., CSI-RSs, SSBs, and/or the like) to be measured by the UE 120 for the CSI report, and/or the like. In some aspects, the request may be included in an RRC message, such as the same RRC message that includes the CSI reporting configuration. Additionally, or alternatively, the request may be included in downlink control information (DCI), a medium access control (MAC) control element (CE), and/or the like.”);
receiving a CSI-RS on at least one CSI-reference signal (RS) resource corresponding to the configuration information (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], “…In this case, the base station 110 may indicate a periodicity and/or a set of uplink resources for transmission of the CSI report, a periodicity and/or a set of downlink resources for reference signals (e.g., channel state information reference signals (CSI-RSs), synchronization signal blocks (SSBs), and/or the like) to be measured by the UE 120 for the CSI report, and/or the like…” Id.); and
transmitting CSI based on the at least one CSI-RS and the configuration information (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], “…In this case, the base station 110 may indicate a periodicity and/or a set of uplink resources for transmission of the CSI report, a periodicity and/or a set of downlink resources for reference signals (e.g., channel state information reference signals (CSI-RSs), synchronization signal blocks (SSBs), and/or the like) to be measured by the UE 120 for the CSI report, and/or the like…” Id.),
wherein, based a specific CSI-RS resource among the at least one CSI-RS resource being configured as one channel measurement resource (CMR), CSI for the one CMR is calculated based on a first port group and a second port group of the specific CSI-RS resource (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], “…In the example in FIGS. 8 and 9A-C (and with the TRP 0 having 4 ports and the TRP 1 having 8 ports in the illustrative example used herein), for a single CMR with 2 TCI states (port group 0 and port group 1), the number of occupied active CPUs is 4, the number of occupied active CSI-RS resources is 4, and the number occupied active CSI-RS ports is 24…”), and
wherein the first port group and the second port group are associated with a first spatial parameter and a second spatial parameter, respectively (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], “…In the example in FIGS. 8 and 9A-C (and with the TRP 0 having 4 ports and the TRP 1 having 8 ports in the illustrative example used herein), for a single CMR with 2 TCI states (port group 0 and port group 1), the number of occupied active CPUs is 4, the number of occupied active CSI-RS resources is 4, and the number occupied active CSI-RS ports is 24…” Id.)
Venugopal et al. may not seem to describe the identical claimed invention, however in the same field of endeavor, Hao et al. provides prior art disclosure for the claimed invention, such as wherein, based a specific CSI-RS resource among the at least one CSI-RS resource being configured as one channel measurement resource (CMR), CSI for the one CMR is calculated based on a first port group and a second port group of the specific CSI-RS resource, and wherein the first port group and the second port group are associated with a first spatial parameter and a second spatial parameter, respectively (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id.) The prior art disclosure and suggestions of Hao et al. are for reasons of enabling CSI processing in mTRP scenarios (Hao, para. [0001], “Aspects of the present disclosure relate to wireless communications, and more particularly, to techniques for determining occupied channel state information (CSI) processing even in multiple transmission reception point (mTRP) scenarios.”) In view of the prior art of record, the claimed invention 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, for reasons of enabling CSI processing in mTRP scenarios.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein CSI calculation for the one CMR occupies a number of CSI processing units (CPUs) exceeding 1 (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id.)
3. The method of claim 1, further comprising, transmitting UE capability information including information on a number of active CSI-RS resources (Hao, paras. [0082], [0083], “In any slot, the UE is not expected to have more active CSI-RS ports or active CSI-RS resources than reported as capability…”), wherein, based on the UE capability information being related to the specific CSI-RS resource, a number of active CSI-RS resources corresponding to the specific CSI-RS is counted in excess of 1 (Hao, paras. [0082], [0083], Id.)
6. The method of claim 1, wherein, based on that a number of CPUs for CSI based on the at least one CSI-RS resource is greater than a remaining number of CPUs of the UE, CSI reporting associated with the CSI based on the at least one CSI-RS resource is dropped (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], “When performing CSI processing, the UE may drop one or more low priority CSI reports if the UE does not have enough available CPUs to process all CSI reports in a given OFDM symbol. Each CSI report n configured for the UE may be associated with a CPU occupancy O.sub.CPU.sup.(n). Furthermore, each CSI report may be associated with a priority. In some cases, different CSI reports may be associated with different CPU occupancies and/or different priorities…” Id.)
7. The method of claim 6, wherein, based on a number of CPUs for CSI based on the specific CSI-RS resource being less than or equal to a remaining CPU number of the UE, CSI for the one CMR is only calculated and reported (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], Id.)
8. The method of claim 1, wherein the first spatial parameter and the second spatial parameter correspond to TCI state or spatial relation info (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id.)
9. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the first spatial parameter and the second spatial parameter includes at least one of a quasi co-located (QCL) RS corresponding to QCL type A or a QCL RS corresponding to QCL type D (Hao, paras. [0078], [0098], “In some examples, the TCI state may generally indicate to the UE an association between a downlink reference signal to a corresponding QCL type which may allow the UE to determine the receive beam to use for receiving a transmission. The QCL-type may be associated with a combination (e.g., set) of QCL parameters. In some examples, a QCL-TypeA indicates the ports are QCL'd with respect to…”)
11. A user equipment (UE) for performing downlink reception or uplink transmission in a wireless communication system, the UE comprising: at least one transceiver; and at least one processor coupled with the at least one transceiver, wherein the at least one processor is configured (Venugopal, FIG. 2, Id.) to:
receive configuration information related to CSI reporting (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], Id.);
receive a CSI-RS on at least one CSI-reference signal (RS) resource corresponding to the configuration information (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], Id.); and
transmit CSI based on the at least one CSI-RS and the configuration information (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], Id.),
wherein, based a specific CSI-RS resource among the at least one CSI-RS resource being configured as one channel measurement resource (CMR), CSI for the one CMR is calculated based on a first port group and a second port group of the specific CSI-RS resource (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id.), and
wherein the first port group and the second port group are associated with a first spatial parameter and a second spatial parameter, respectively (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id. cf. Claim 1).
Venugopal et al. may not seem to describe the identical claimed invention, however in the same field of endeavor, Hao et al. provides prior art disclosure for the claimed invention, such as wherein, based a specific CSI-RS resource among the at least one CSI-RS resource being configured as one channel measurement resource (CMR), CSI for the one CMR is calculated based on a first port group and a second port group of the specific CSI-RS resource, and wherein the first port group and the second port group are associated with a first spatial parameter and a second spatial parameter, respectively (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id.) The prior art disclosure and suggestions of Hao et al. are for reasons of enabling CSI processing in mTRP scenarios (Hao, para. [0001], Id.) In view of the prior art of record, the claimed invention 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, for reasons of enabling CSI processing in mTRP scenarios.
13. A base station for receiving channel state information (CSI) in a wireless communication system, the BS comprising: at least one transceiver; and at least one processor coupled with the at least one transceiver, wherein the at least one processor is configured (Venugopal, FIG. 2, Id.) to:
transmit configuration information related to CSI reporting (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], Id.);
transmit a CSI-RS on at least one CSI-reference signal (RS) resource corresponding to the configuration information (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], Id.); and
receive CSI based on the at least one CSI-RS and the configuration information (Venugopal, paras. [0066], [0072], Id.),
wherein, based a specific CSI-RS resource among the at least one CSI-RS resource being configured as one channel measurement resource (CMR), CSI for the one CMR is calculated based on a first port group and a second port group of the specific CSI-RS resource (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id.), and
wherein the first port group and the second port group are associated with a first spatial parameter and a second spatial parameter, respectively (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id. cf. Claim 1).
Venugopal et al. may not seem to describe the identical claimed invention, however in the same field of endeavor, Hao et al. provides prior art disclosure for the claimed invention, such as wherein, based a specific CSI-RS resource among the at least one CSI-RS resource being configured as one channel measurement resource (CMR), CSI for the one CMR is calculated based on a first port group and a second port group of the specific CSI-RS resource, and wherein the first port group and the second port group are associated with a first spatial parameter and a second spatial parameter, respectively (Hao, paras. [0098], [0099], Id.) The prior art disclosure and suggestions of Hao et al. are for reasons of enabling CSI processing in mTRP scenarios (Hao, para. [0001], Id.) In view of the prior art of record, the claimed invention 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, for reasons of enabling CSI processing in mTRP scenarios.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record (PTO-1449, PTO-892) and not relied upon is considered pertinent to the subject matter of the present U.S. non-provisional application.
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/TIMOTHY J WEIDNER/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2476