DETAILED ACTION
This Final Office Action is in response to application number 18/388,892 filed on November 13th 2023. The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Information Disclosure Statements
The information disclosure statements (IDS), submitted on July 9th , 2024, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are 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 may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-6, and 9-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over OPPO (R1-2210293) in view of Talarico et al. (US 20250151086 A1).
Regarding claims 1,17 and 20, OPPO discloses a method of wireless communication of a user equipment (UE), comprising: obtaining, through a channel access procedure, a channel occupancy time (COT) for a set of resources on a sidelink (SL) in an unlicensed spectrum (R1-2210293 Page 5 Sections 3 and 3.11 disclose respectively “Between the existing DL and UL Type 1 channel access procedures, it is observed the main procedure and steps are in principle the same but with some differences on the types of transmission, limitation +on the channel occupancy time and selection of priority class covered in each procedure. Since the SL operation in many cases is similar to DL, it is proposed to take the DL channel access procedure as the baseline.” And Proposal 1.); determining whether a frequency division multiplexing (FDM) transmission scheme is utilized for a SL transmission on the sidelink in the COT (R1-2210293 Page 62 Section 3.4.1 and Page 63, Qualcomm discloses “Argument 1: choosing between single CPE start position or multiple CPE starting positions should not be about the number of allocated subchannels (e.g. < full RB set) but about a determination that FDM with some other UE is actually accomplished.”; selecting a cyclic prefix extension (CPE) starting position prior to an initial symbol containing the SL transmission, wherein the CPE starting position is a default CPE starting position when the FDM transmission scheme is utilized, (R1-2210293 Page 62 Section 3.4.1 and Page 63, Qualcomm discloses “…then whether to align (same CPE) or using another of the multiple CPE start positions should be determined by achieving FDM (i.e., non-overlapping subchannels) or not (i.e., partially overlapping subchannels), respectively.”); and transmitting a CPE at the selected CPE starting position and performing the SL transmission after the CPE transmission (R1-2210293 Page 62 Section 3.4.1 discloses “Proposal 4 (I): -A CPE is transmitted from a CPE starting position until the start of the AGC symbol of the next slot.--FFS the CPE starting position is always confined within the last symbol of a slot (the GP symbol). -A CPE starting position is (pre-)configured for a SL transmission using fewer than all resource blocks of an RB set.-FFS details, applicable scenarios (e.g., inside and outside a COT) and type(s) of SL transmission (e.g., PSSCH/PSCCH, PSFCH, S-SSB)”).
OPPO fails to explicitly disclose wherein the CPE starting position is randomly selected from a subset
However, in an analogous art, Talarico et al. teaches wherein the CPE starting position is randomly selected from a subset (Paragraphs 0132-0135 discloses “In one embodiment, a UE may apply one or more of the following criteria to select a cyclic prefix extension to be appended before its transmission: [0133] A UE randomly selects the cyclic prefix extension to apply before its transmission by randomly picking among the fixed/pre-defined set of values or across a subset of values which is (pre-) configured and whose values are selected from a pre-defined set of values. [0134] A UE may select the cyclic prefix extension to apply based on the priority of the transmission. For instance, a pre-defined set of cyclic prefix extension values are defined and each or a group of them are associated with a specific priority level. [0135] Different set of values could be defined based on whether a transmission occurs within or outside a COT.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filling date of the claimed invention to have modified OPPO to incorporate the teachings of Talarico et al., wherein the CPE starting position is randomly selected from a subset
Regarding claims 2 and 18, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the FDM transmission scheme is determined to be utilized when a resource reservation for the set of resources of an intended SL transmission in the COT is transmitted or detected (R1-2210293 Page 63, Qualcomm discloses “Argument 1: choosing between single CPE start position or multiple CPE starting positions should not be about the number of allocated subchannels (e.g. < full RB set) but about a determination that FDM with some other UE is actually accomplished.” Additionally “Proposal 4(I) -CPE is transmitted from a CPE starting position until the start of the AGC symbol of the next slot. -Multiple CPE starting positions based on transmission priority level (e.g., CAPC) is supported. -FFS details (single and multiple CPE starting positions configurations, mapping to priorities, signaling, etc.), applicable scenarios (e.g., inside and outside a COT, allocation of full or partial RB set), and type(s) of SL transmission (e.g., PSSCH/PSCCH, PSFCH, S-SSB).”).
Regarding claims 3 and 19, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the FDM transmission scheme is determined not to be utilized when a resource reservation for the set of resources of an intended SL transmission in the COT is not transmitted and detected (R1-2210293 Page 62 Section 3.4 discloses “At the same time, for the case when there is no prior reservation of any SL resource in a slot and two or more UEs decide to perform their initial transmissions in that slot with at least one UE has a full bandwidth/RB set transmission, then it may be beneficial to allow one UE (e.g., partial or full RB set transmission) to access the channel and block the other(s) to avoid collision.”.
Regarding claim 4, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, the set of resources comprises a set of slots and a set of RB sets. (R1-2210293 Page 62 Section 3.4 discloses “In SL Mode 2 resource allocation, a sensing and reservation mechanism is employed to avoid Tx collision among UEs in the same resource pool….Therefore, from reviewing the contributions submitted to this meeting, many want to retain this SL FDM transmission feature and allow multiple SL UEs to transmit in the same slot without blocking each other when they do not occupy the entire channel bandwidth / RB set.”).
Regarding claim 5, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the default CPE starting position is preconfigured to be one of the set of all candidate CPE starting positions (R1-2210293 Page 63 Qualcomm discloses “Even when UE1 decides to align the CPE due to FDM with UE2, we can consider different schemes like a) using a default CPE,…” Argument 2 discloses “Single CPE starting position is a sub-case of multiple CPE starting positions”).
Regarding claim 6, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the default CPE starting position is preconfigured to be independent from the set of all candidate CPE starting positions (R1-2210293 Page 64 Apple discloses “We do not support multiple CPE starting positions within the GP is related to CAPC. Random selected value from configured set will be good enough, same as eLAA AUL and NR-U CG-PUSCH, as specified in 38.214.”).
Regarding claim 9, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the CPE can be transmitted outside a COT and inside a COT (R1-2210293 Page 73 Qualcomm discloses “it seems that the COT sharing case is already tackled in the respective FFS of single CPE and multi CPE starting positions “inside and outside of COT”.”).
Regarding claim 10, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the SL transmission comprises at least one of a physical sidelink control channel (PSCCH) transmission and a physical sidelink shared channel (PSSCH) transmission (R1-2210293 Page 5 Proposal 1(I) discloses “Type 1 SL channel access procedure is applicable to the following transmissions by a UE: -PSSCH/PSCCH transmission(s) scheduled or configured by a gNB in SL Mode 1 resource allocation. -PSSCH/PSCCH transmission(s) initiated by a UE in SL Mode 2 resource allocation. -Any other transmission(s) initiated by a UE.”).
Regarding claim 11, OPPO discloses the method of claim 10, wherein the default CPE starting position before the PSCCH or PSSCH transmission inside the COT is an initial one of the set of all candidate CPE starting positions (R1-2210293 Page 83 Intel discloses “it may be possible to aim for an LBT free transmission if PSFCH is transmitted within an already acquired COT and a UE may be able to apply a cyclic prefix extension (CPE) before PSFCH so that the gap between PSSCH/PSCCH transmission and the PSFCH would be less than 16 us.” Qualcomm discloses “We would also like to clarify whether this pre-configuration of single CPE starting position applies only to PSCCH/PSSCH or also to S-SSB (if included in RP) and/or PSFCH”).
Regarding claim 12, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the initial symbol containing the SL transmission is an initial symbol of the COT (R1-2210293 Page 67 CATT/GH discloses “From our understanding, the starting position of the CPE is related to the LBT success time and the interval between the selected transmission and the LBT success time may be larger than a symbol. Restricting the CPE starting position to be always confined within the GP symbol is unreasonable. Only a maximum duration of CPE is required, to avoid unfairness to other RAT access and insufficient resource usage.”).
Regarding claim 13, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the initial symbol containing the SL transmission is not an initial symbol of the COT (R1-2210293 Page 143 32/DCM discloses “For an initiating UE to a responding UE COT sharing, study the following options on how each responding UE knows when COT began. -Option 1: an initiating UE indicates to each responding UE which TX is the initial TX within the COT. -Option 2: an initiating UE indicates to each responding UE whether the TX is the initial TX within the COT. -Option 3: UE-B determines which TX is the initial TX within the COT, w/o explicit indication from the initiating UE.)
Regarding claim 14, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, further comprising: performing a channel access procedure prior to the selected CPE starting position, wherein the CPE is transmitted at the selected CPE starting position when the channel access procedure is successful; (R1-2210293 Page 67 CATT/GH discloses “From our understanding, the starting position of the CPE is related to the LBT success time and the interval between the selected transmission and the LBT success time may be larger than a symbol. Restricting the CPE starting position to be always confined within the GP symbol is unreasonable. Only a maximum duration of CPE is required, to avoid unfairness to other RAT access and insufficient resource usage.”). and refraining from transmitting the CPE at the selected CPE starting position when the channel access procedure is not successful (R1-2210293 Page 153 36/E/// discloses “In case the channel is not found to be available by LBT procedure before the initially selected resource, the UE waits to transmit on the initially selected resource.”).
Regarding claim 15, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the SL transmission comprises a sidelink synchronization signal block (S-SSB) transmission, wherein a single CPE starting position is preconfigured from the set of all candidate CPE starting positions to be used before the S-SSB transmission (R1-2210293 Page 65 Spreadtrum discloses “For PSFCH and S-SSB transmissions, we prefer a single (pre)configured CPE starting position.”).
Regarding claim 16, OPPO discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the SL transmission comprises a physical sidelink feedback channel (PSFCH) transmission, wherein a single CPE starting position is preconfigured from the set of all candidate CPE starting positions to be used before the PSFCH transmission (R1-2210293 Page 83 Intel discloses “In this case, an example could be PFSCH transmission: Considering that based on RAN4 requirements the actual duration needed for TX/RX and RX/TX switching should be at most 13 us in FR1, it may be possible to aim for an LBT free transmission if PSFCH is transmitted within an already acquired COT and a UE may be able to apply a cyclic prefix extension (CPE) before PSFCH so that the gap between PSSCH/PSCCH transmission and the PSFCH would be less than 16 us.”).
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1,17 and 20 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Samuel Dilan Rutnam whose telephone number is 703-756-1374. The examiner can normally be reached between 8:30am-5:00pm Mon-Fri.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy Kundu can be reached on 571-272-8586.
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/Samuel Dilan Rutnam/
Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
/SUJOY K KUNDU/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2471
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