DETAILED ACTION
This office action is in response to the application filed on 2/1/2024 in which claims 1-14 are pending.
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 .
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
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.
Claim(s) 1 and 11-14 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Ying et al. (US20190254053A1).
As to claims 1, and 12-14, Ying teaches a base station, comprising: ([0038] A base station apparatus is also described.)
control circuitry, which, in operation, changes a configuration of a field of a control signal depending on a size of a certain field used for assignment for a terminal in a first field of the control signal, the certain field being referred to as a second field; and ([0106] It should also be noted that one or more of the elements or parts thereof included in the eNB(s) 160 and UE(s) 102 may be implemented in hardware. For example, one or more of these elements or parts thereof may be implemented as a chip, circuitry or hardware components, etc. [0141] For the case of repetitions or slot aggregations, the following issues should be addressed. One issue is Redundancy version (RV). A RV sequence may be applied to the repetitions. A RV sequence may include a single value or multiple values. There may be several ways to configure the RV sequence. [0143] the UE 102 may assume the RV value(s) in the RV sequence applied to the conflicted slot(s) although there is no PDSCH transmission. The DL PDSCH may be skipped but the RV counting in the RV sequence is kept., [0073] In a case that K1 timing field is not present or the timing field is 0-bit in DCI for activation, a different DCI field (e.g., HARQ process number, modulation and coding scheme, redundancy version, downlink assignment index, and/or new data indicator, etc.) can be used to indicate K1 (e.g., RV field set as ‘11’ indicates K1=4) [0122] In a sixth approach, if K1 timing field is not present or the timing field is 0-bit in DCI for activation of DL SPS (e.g., the presence of the timing field K1 may be configured by RRC …re-interpretation of DCI field (e.g., a different DCI field can be used to indicate K1))
transmission circuitry, which, in operation, transmits the control signal based on the configuration. ([0038] the base station includes transmitting circuitry [0073] The value of K1 for DL SPS may be a fixed value (e.g., a default value, e.g., specified by the specification), configured by RRC and/or indicated by PDCCH (DCI) for activation. [0071] A gNB 160 may send the UE 102 a PDCCH scrambled by SPS C-RNTI at slot n−K0 to activate the DL SPS transmission.)
As to claim 11, Ying teaches the base station according to claim 1, wherein a size of the first field is based on a number of a plurality of transport blocks in one data channel schedulable by a single control signal which is the control signal, and the size of the second field is based on a number of transport blocks assigned for the terminal among the plurality of transport blocks. ([0081] For example, the RV sequence is configured as {RV0, RV1, RV2, RV3} and the gNB 160 repeats PDSCH transmissions for the same TB in slot n, n+1, n+2 and n+3 with RV0, RV1, RV2 and RV3, respectively,)
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) 2, 7, and 9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Ying in view of Lin et al. (US20210160879A1).
As to claim 2, Ying teaches the base station according to claim 1,
But does not specifically teach:
wherein a size of the first field is based on a first number of a plurality of data channels schedulable by a single control signal which is the control signal, and the size of the second field is based on a second number of data channels assigned for the terminal among the plurality of data channels.
However Lin teaches wherein a size of the first field is based on a first number of a plurality of data channels schedulable by a single control signal which is the control signal, and the size of the second field is based on a second number of data channels assigned for the terminal among the plurality of data channels. ([0284] A UE can be provided by higher layers a configuration of the GC-DCI format. The configuration includes at least one of the following: a location, such as a bit in a bitmap or a starting bit of one block from the N>=1 blocks; the UE determines the scheduling information for an associated PDSCH reception or PUSCH transmission based on the scheduling information included in the one block; a size of M bits for the one block; a payload size of the GC-DCI format; a grant index or block index, k (0, . . . , N−1), indicating a kth PDSCH reception or a kth PUSCH transmission from the N>=1 PDSCH reception or PUSCH transmissions scheduled by the kth block in a GC-DCI format; a size of the bitmap or the number of blocks, N, for scheduling the N PDSCH receptions or N PUSCH transmissions; a scheduling information included in the one block; and a size of the corresponding field to indicate the scheduling information.)
The combination of Ying in view of Lin means a first field would have the size of the number of scheduled PDSCH transmissions less than the total possible PDSCH transmission configured by higher layer signaling.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the DCI transmission of Ying with the DCI of Lin in order to provide the UE timing information for the scheduled PDSCH transmissions.
As to claim 7, Ying in view of Lin teaches the base station according to claim 2, wherein the control circuitry changes the number of bits of a redundancy version (RV) corresponding to each of the second number of the data channels, depending on the second number. (Ying [0141] For the case of repetitions or slot aggregations, the following issues should be addressed. One issue is Redundancy version (RV). A RV sequence may be applied to the repetitions. A RV sequence may include a single value or multiple values. There may be several ways to configure the RV sequence. [0143] the UE 102 may assume the RV value(s) in the RV sequence applied to the conflicted slot(s) although there is no PDSCH transmission. The DL PDSCH may be skipped but the RV counting in the RV sequence is kept., [0073] In a case that K1 timing field is not present or the timing field is 0-bit in DCI for activation, a different DCI field (e.g., HARQ process number, modulation and coding scheme, redundancy version, downlink assignment index, and/or new data indicator, etc.) can be used to indicate K1 (e.g., RV field set as ‘11’ indicates K1=4))
As to claim 9, Ying in view of Lin teaches the base station according to claim 7, wherein the control circuitry configures the number of bits of some of a plurality of the RVs respectively corresponding to the second number of the data channels as a first number of bits, and configures the number of bits of the remaining RVs as a second number of bits that is smaller than the first number of bits. (Ying [0143] the UE 102 may assume the RV value(s) in the RV sequence applied to the conflicted slot(s) although there is no PDSCH transmission. The DL PDSCH may be skipped but the RV counting in the RV sequence is kept., Lin [0282] For example, a bit value of “0” can indicate no scheduling and a bit value of “1” can indicate scheduling of a PDSCH reception or of a PUSCH transmission.)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the DCI transmission of Ying with the DCI of Lin in order to provide the UE timing information for the scheduled PDSCH transmissions.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-6, 8, 10 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Ying et al. (US20190053211A1) [0275] For example, if parameter RepetitionEnabler is configured as true, the field of RV (or other field, e.g., MCS, NDI, RB assignment, TPC command for PUCCH, antenna port(s), scrambling identity, the number of layers, SRS request, PDSCH RE mapping, PDSCH start position, quasi-co-location, HARQ-ACK resource offset, interference presence, HARQ process number, PDSCH timing offset, HARQ timing offset, etc.) in the DCI is used to indicate the number of repetitions.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ELTON S WILLIAMS whose telephone number is (571)272-9933. The examiner can normally be reached 8-4 Mon-Fri.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Gary Mui can be reached at (571) 270-1420. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Elton Williams/Examiner, Art Unit 2465
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