DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
1. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
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.
Claim Objections
2. Claims 62, 63, 65, 68, 69, 72, 73, 75, 78 and 79 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claims 62, 63, 68, 69, 72, 73, 78 and 79 recite this underlined acronym ‘RB’, this acronym needs to be written in full. Appropriate correction is required.
Claims 60, 65, 70 and 75 recite this underlined sub-cannel, it seems there is a typo as regards the underlined ‘cannel’. Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
3. 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.
4. Claims 60-65, 67, 68, 70-75, 77 and 78 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Patent No.: US 12,382,437 B2 to Bang et al. (Bang), in view of US 2023/0028000 A1 to Si et al. (Si).
As to Claims 60 and 70, Bang discloses a first user equipment (UE) communicating with a second UE via a sidelink channel, the first UE comprising:
one or more memories storing instructions (Fig. 13, ‘although not illustrated in Fig. 13, the terminal may further include a memory. According to an embodiment of the disclosure, the memory may store programs and data required for operations of the terminal. Also, the memory may store control information or data included in signals transmitted and received by the terminal’, Col. 40, ll 21-26); and
one or more processors (Fig. 13, ‘referring to Fig. 13, the terminal according to the embodiment of the disclosure may include a terminal receiver 1300, a terminal transmitter 1310, and a terminal processor 1320’, Col. 39, ll 35-38) configured to process the instructions to control the first UE to:
receive, from a network, a radio resource control (RRC) message (‘in Type 2, the base station may configure some pieces of information (e.g., period information) among pieces of information about a specific time/frequency resource allowing grant-free PUSCH (e.g., CG-PUSCH) transmission to the terminal through higher layer signaling (e.g., RRC signaling)’, Col. 28, ll 22-29) comprising first information indicating a number of at least one frequency interlace per a sub-channel within a first frequency resource unit (‘for example, in the case in which the terminal is configured with the interlace-based frequency domain assignment (or FDRA Type 2) from the base station through L1 or higher layer signaling and 15 kHz (μ=1) is set (or RIV-based RB allocation indication method) as the subcarrier spacing, when the frequency assignment information field of the received DCI is used for scheduling release for Type 2 CG-PUSCH, the terminal may determine that scheduling for Type 2 CG-PUSCH is released when receiving a field set as an unused or reserved bit among the RIV fields’, Col. 32, ll 66 - Col. 33, ll 9).
Bang does not expressly disclose transmit a first data and control information associated with the first data on the at least one sub-channel within the first frequency resource unit, each of the at least one sub-cannel comprising the number of the at least one frequency interlace indicated in the first information.
However, Si discloses transmit a first data and control information associated with the first data on the at least one sub-channel within the first frequency resource unit (‘for yet another sub-example of the starting sub-channel index, the sub-channel indices can be indicated by information in the SCI (Sidelink Control Information) format (e.g., SCI format 1-A). For one instance, the starting sub-channel index and the number of contiguous sub-channel(s) are jointly coded by a RIV. For another instance, the starting sub-channel index can be provided by the information in the SCI format directly. For yet another instance, the starting sub-channel index can be provided using a table, and the corresponding index of the table is provided by the information in the SCI format’, ¶ 0118), each of the at least one sub-cannel comprising the number of the at least one frequency interlace indicated in the first information (‘a sidelink sub-channel can be defined based on the interlace, wherein one sub-channel can include a number L of interlaces, and the set of resource blocks with respect to the number of interlaces are all confined in the SL BWP’, ¶ 0118).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘transmit a first data and control information associated with the first data on the at least one sub-channel within the first frequency resource unit, each of the at least one sub-cannel comprising the number of the at least one frequency interlace indicated in the first information’ as disclosed by Si into Bang so as to effectively provide an efficient interlace based resource pool Side Link (SL) in wireless communication system, Si ¶ 0004.
As to Claims 61 and 71, Bang does not expressly disclose wherein the first frequency resource unit comprises a resource pool.
However, Si discloses wherein the first frequency resource unit comprises a resource pool (‘in one embodiment, a resource pool can be (pre-)configured as a number of interlace based sub-channel(s) in the frequency domain. Each sub-channel in the resource pool can have a relative sub-channel index, e.g., starting from 0’, ¶ 0099).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘wherein the first frequency resource unit comprises a resource pool’ as disclosed by Si into Bang so as to effectively provide an efficient interlace based resource pool Side Link (SL) in wireless communication system, Si ¶ 0004.
As to Claims 62 and 72, Bang further discloses wherein the first frequency resource unit comprises a radio resource (RB) set (‘for example, in the case in which the terminal is configured with the interlace-based frequency domain assignment (or FDRA Type 2) from the base station through L1 or higher layer signaling and 15 kHz (μ=1) is set (or RIV-based RB allocation indication method) as the subcarrier spacing, when the frequency assignment information field of the received DCI is used for scheduling release for Type 2 CG-PUSCH, the terminal may determine that scheduling for Type 2 CG-PUSCH is released when receiving a field set as an unused or reserved bit among the RIV fields’, Col. 32, ll 66 - Col. 33, ll 9).
As to Claims 63 and 73, Bang further discloses each of the at least one frequency interlace comprises at least one physical resource block (PRB) (‘referring to Fig. 5, the basic unit of time and frequency resources constituting the control channel may be referred to as a resource element group (REG) 503. The REG 503 may be defined as one OFDM symbol 501 in the time axis, and one physical resource block (PRB) 502, that is, 12 subcarriers, in the frequency axis’, Col. 21, ll 47-52).
Bang does not expressly disclose wherein the resource pool comprises at least one radio resource (RB) set, each of the at least one RB set comprises the at least one sub-channel, each of the at least one sub-channel comprises the at least one frequency interlace.
However, Si discloses wherein the resource pool comprises at least one radio resource (RB) set, each of the at least one RB set comprises the at least one sub-channel, each of the at least one sub-channel comprises the at least one frequency interlace (‘an interlace of resource blocks is defined as a set of uniformly distributed RBs with a fixed interval in the frequency domain, wherein the interval M can be determined based on a subcarrier spacing, for example M=10 for μ=0 and M=5 for μ=1, and there can be multiple interlaces of resource blocks (e.g., M interlaces) supported’, ¶ 00079).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘wherein the resource pool comprises at least one radio resource (RB) set, each of the at least one RB set comprises the at least one sub-channel, each of the at least one sub-channel comprises the at least one frequency interlace’ as disclosed by Si into Bang so as to effectively provide an efficient interlace based resource pool Side Link (SL) in wireless communication system, Si ¶ 0004.
As to Claims 64 and 74, Bang does not expressly disclose wherein the first data is transmitted in physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH), and the control information associated with the first data is transmitted in physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH).
However, Si discloses wherein the first data is transmitted in physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH) (‘a UE may transmit the PSSCH in consecutive symbols within a slot of the resource pool, and PSSCH resource allocation starts from the second symbol configured for sidelink, e.g., startSLsymbol+1, and the first symbol configured for sidelink is duplicated from the second configured for sidelink, for AGC purpose’, ¶ 0074), and the control information associated with the first data is transmitted in physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH) (‘for transmitting a PSCCH, the UE can be provided a number of symbols (either 2 symbols or 3 symbols) in a resource pool (e.g., sl-TimResourcePSCCH) starting from the second symbol configured for sidelink, e.g., startSLsymbol+1; and further provided a number of RBs in the resource pool (e.g., sl-FreqResourcePSCCH) starting from the lowest RB of the lowest sub-channel of the associated PSSCH’, ¶ 0075).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘wherein the first data is transmitted in physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH), and the control information associated with the first data is transmitted in physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH)’ as disclosed by Si into Bang so as to effectively provide an efficient interlace based resource pool Side Link (SL) in wireless communication system, Si ¶ 0004.
As to Claims 65 and 75, Bang does not expressly disclose wherein each of the at least one sub-cannel comprises at least one consecutive frequency interlace.
However, Si discloses wherein each of the at least one sub-cannel comprises at least one consecutive frequency interlace (‘in one example, the interlace based sub-channels in the resource pool correspond to a set of consecutive interlace indices or consecutive sub-channel indices (e.g., with or without a wraparound operation with respect to M). For this example, the frequency domain information of the resource pool can be determined based on a starting sub-channel index (e.g., defined based on an interlace index) and a number of contiguous sub-channel(s), wherein, for one instance, the starting sub-channel index and a number of contiguous sub-channel(s) are pre-configured and/or provided by higher layer parameters, or for another instance, the startling sub-channel index and a number of contiguous sub-channel(s) are jointly coded by a RIV and pre-configured and/or provided by higher layer parameter, possibly associated with the (pre-)configuration of the resource pool’, ¶ 0100).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘wherein each of the at least one sub-cannel comprises at least one consecutive frequency interlace’ as disclosed by Si into Bang so as to effectively provide an efficient interlace based resource pool Side Link (SL) in wireless communication system, Si ¶ 0004.
As to Claims 67 and 77, Bang does not expressly disclose wherein a first index of each of the at least one sub-channel is periodically indexed across multiple Resource block (RB) sets within the resource pool, and each of the at least sub-channel with the same first index is mapped to the number of the at least one frequency interlace, indicated in the first information, with the same first index in different RB sets.
However, Si discloses wherein a first index of each of the at least one sub-channel is periodically indexed across multiple Resource block (RB) sets within the resource pool, and each of the at least sub-channel with the same first index is mapped to the number of the at least one frequency interlace, indicated in the first information, with the same first index in different RB sets (‘for another example, if a UE is indicated a set of interlaces of resource blocks for SL transmission and/or reception, and not indicated with a set of RB sets for SL transmission and/or reception, the UE can determine the resource allocation in frequency domain as an intersection of the interlaces of resource blocks in the indicated set of sub-channels and a single RB set of the active SL BWP. For one instance, the single RB set can be the lowest indexed one amongst all the RB sets that intersects the lowest RB of PSCCH. For another instance, the single RB set can be the RB set with index 0 in the active BWP, e.g., when there is no intersection between the RB sets and the lowest RB of PSCCH’, ¶ 0135).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘wherein a first index of each of the at least one sub-channel is periodically indexed across multiple Resource block (RB) sets within the resource pool, and each of the at least sub-channel with the same first index is mapped to the number of the at least one frequency interlace, indicated in the first information, with the same first index in different RB sets’ as disclosed by Si into Bang so as to effectively provide an efficient interlace based resource pool Side Link (SL) in wireless communication system, Si ¶ 0004.
As to Claims 68 and 78, Bang does not expressly disclose wherein the first index of each of the at least one sub-channel is indexed per RB set.
However, Si discloses wherein the first index of each of the at least one sub-channel is indexed per RB set (‘in another example, the set of resources allocated for the second stage SCI format includes a set of RBs, and the set of RBs are selected from the resource pool in an order of (i) first a lowest RB to a highest RB within a sub-channel, then in an order of a lowest sub-channel to a highest sub-channel within the resource pool, and then in an order of a lowest symbol to a highest symbol within a slot’, ¶ 0177).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘wherein the first index of each of the at least one sub-channel is indexed per RB set’ as disclosed by Si into Bang so as to effectively provide an efficient interlace based resource pool Side Link (SL) in wireless communication system, Si ¶ 0004.
5. Claims 66 and 76 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bang, in view of Si and further in view of Publication No.: US 2014/0036803 A1 to Park, Kyu Jin (Park).
As to Claims 66 and 76, Bang in view of Si do not expressly disclose transmit the control information in at least one lowest physical resource block (PRB) of the sub-channel with a lowest index of a lowest Resource block (RB) set of the associated first data.
However, Park discloses transmit the control information in at least one lowest physical resource block (PRB) of the sub-channel with a lowest index of a lowest Resource block (RB) set of the associated first data (‘the transmission/reception point may include a control unit configured to assign at least one enhanced physical downlink control channel (EPDCCH) set, wherein each EPDCCH set includes an X number of PRB pairs in the subframe, and the X is a natural number which is greater than or equal to "1" and is less than or equal to the number of resource blocks (RBs) per downlink bandwidth; and a transmitting unit configured to transmit the control information to the specific user equipment through at least one of at least two enhanced control channel elements (ECCEs) indexed per EPDCCH set’, ¶ 0008).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘transmit the control information in at least one lowest physical resource block (PRB) of the sub-channel with a lowest index of a lowest Resource block (RB) set of the associated first data’ as disclosed by Park into Bang in view of Si so as to effectively provide uplink control channel resource mapping in wireless communication system, Park ¶ 0005.
6. Claims 69 and 79 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Bang, in view of Si and further in view of Publication No.: US 2021/0337518 A1 to Liu et al. (Liu).
As to Claims 69 and 79, Bang in view of Si do not expressly disclose wherein the control information comprises second information and third information, the second information indicating a first number of at least one radio resource (RB) set within the resource pool, the third information indicating a second number of the at least one sub-channel in each of the first number of the at least one RB set within the resource pool.
However, Liu discloses wherein the control information comprises second information and third information (‘in one embodiment, the second information includes part or all fields in one Downlink Control Information (DCI) signaling. In one embodiment, the third information includes part or all fields in one Downlink Control Information (DCI) signaling’, ¶s 0134 and 0399),
the second information indicating a first number of at least one radio resource (RB) set within the resource pool (‘the first information and the second information being used for determining a first time-frequency resource pool and a second time-frequency resource pool respectively, and transmitting a first signal, the first signal occupying a target time-frequency resource block; wherein the first time-frequency resource pool includes a positive integer number of first-type time-frequency resource block(s), and the second time-frequency resource pool includes a positive integer number of second-type time-frequency resource block(s)’, ¶ 0243), the
third information indicating a second number of the at least one sub-channel in each of the first number of the at least one RB set within the resource pool (‘the third information is used for determining X candidate sequences, and X is a positive integer greater than 1; the target sequence is one of the X candidate sequences, and the first communication node selects the target sequence among the X candidate sequences randomly; a time-frequency resource pool to which the target time-frequency resource block belongs is used for determining the first time window out of the Y candidate time windows; the second signal carries fourth information, and the fourth information is used for indicating a positioning capability of the first communication node’, ¶ 0121).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to provide ‘wherein the control information comprises second information and third information, the second information indicating a first number of at least one radio resource (RB) set within the resource pool, the third information indicating a second number of the at least one sub-channel in each of the first number of the at least one RB set within the resource pool.’ as disclosed by Liu into Bang in view of Si so as to effectively optimize random access according to different capabilities to improve overall performance in wireless communication system, Liu ¶ 0011.
Conclusion
7. Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to GBEMILEKE J ONAMUTI whose telephone number is (571)270-5619. The examiner can normally be reached 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM.
Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, ASAD NAWAZ can be reached at (571)272-3988. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
Information regarding the status of published or unpublished applications may be obtained from Patent Center. Unpublished application information in Patent Center is available to registered users. To file and manage patent submissions in Patent Center, visit: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov. Visit https://www.uspto.gov/patents/apply/patent-center for more information about Patent Center and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/docx for information about filing in DOCX format. For additional questions, contact the Electronic Business Center (EBC) at 866-217-9197 (toll-free). If you would like assistance from a USPTO Customer Service Representative, call 800-786-9199 (IN USA OR CANADA) or 571-272-1000.
/GBEMILEKE J ONAMUTI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2463