DETAILED ACTION
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 .
Status of Claims
Claims 1-30 filed on January 10, 2024 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on May 09, 2025 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner and an initialed and dated copy of the Applicant’s IDS form 1449 is attached to the instant Office Action.
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, 3-4, 7-12, 14-15, 18-23, 25-27 and 29-30 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (US 2023/0156798 A1, hereinafter "Wang") in view of 3GPP (R1-2306086, Incheon, Korea, May 22nd – 26th, 2023, hereinafter "3GPP").
Regarding claim 1, Wang discloses an apparatus for wireless communication at a user equipment (UE) (Wang Fig. 3A), comprising:
one or more processors; and
instructions stored in one or more memories and executable by the one or more processors, individually or collectively, to cause the apparatus to:
receive a control message indicating a plurality of resources allocated for one or more uplink shared channel messages, the plurality of resources corresponding to a plurality of uplink transmission occasions within a time period of a configured grant configuration (Wang, [0093] the UE receives resource configuration information from the base station. In operation S420, the UE determines valid transmission occasions from among transmission occasions based on the resource configuration information), wherein the plurality of resources include one or more full-duplex resources (Wang, [0089] the base station can also allocate uplink and downlink transmissions at the same time to realize full duplex multiplexing); and
transmit, using at least one of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions in accordance with the configured grant configuration (Wang, [0161-0162] the UE determines that a slot where the PUSCHs carrying UCIs are located only contains uplink transmission resources or contains both uplink transmission resources and downlink transmission resources through the second-type cell-common UL/DL information; the base station configures multiple sets of configured grant PUSCH (CG PUSCH) parameters…of the valid transmission occasions ROs/POs), but does not explicitly disclose an uplink control information message comprising an indication of a quantity of unused uplink transmission occasions of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions and wherein the indication excludes one or more invalid uplink transmission occasions that are based at least in part on a collision between one or more downlink messages and the one or more uplink shared channel messages associated with the one or more full-duplex resources.
3GPP from the same field of endeavor discloses an uplink control information message comprising an indication of a quantity of unused uplink transmission occasions of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions (3GPP, section 4 Dynamic indication of unused CG PUSCH occasion(s) based on UCI by the UE; For dynamic indication of unused CG PUSCH transmission occasion(s) based on a UCI, the indicated “unused” CG PUSCH TO(s), if any, by the UCI in a CG PUSCH for a CG configuration) and wherein the indication excludes one or more invalid uplink transmission occasions that are based at least in part on a collision between one or more downlink messages and the one or more uplink shared channel messages associated with the one or more full-duplex resources (3GPP, section 4 Dynamic indication of unused CG PUSCH occasion(s) based on UCI by the UE; The UTO-UCI provides a bitmap where a bit corresponds to a TO within a time duration/range. The bit indicates whether the TO is “unused”; where the configured CG PUSCH occasion(s) may overlap with DL symbol(s) (i.e. full-duplex); A configured CG PUSCH is invalid if the CG PUSCH is dropped due to collision with DL symbol(s) indicated by tdd-UL-DL-ConfigurationCommon or tdd-UL-DL-ConfigurationDedicated or SSB).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified full duplex transmission disclosed by Wang and dynamic PUSCH occasion in full duplex disclosed by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to avoid the collision (3GPP, pg. 34).
Regarding claim 3, Wang discloses transmit one or more second uplink shared channel messages during one or more valid uplink transmission occasions of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions in accordance with the configured grant configuration; and receive the one or more downlink messages during the one or more
invalid uplink transmission occasions (Wang, [0099] RO1 overlaps with downlink symbols, so it is invalid, and RO2 is located in flexible symbols, but a distance between a starting point of the RO2 and an ending position of the last downlink symbol in the slot is smaller than Ngap, so RO2 is invalid. RO3 and RO4 are located in the uplink symbols, so they are valid. For another example, in FIG. 5b, RO1 overlaps with downlink symbols, so it is invalid, and RO2 is located in flexible symbols, but RO2 overlaps with SSBs, so it is invalid. RO3 is located in the flexible symbols, and there is no downlink symbol in the slot where RO3 is, so RO3 is valid. RO4 is located in uplink symbols, so RO4 is valid).
Regarding claim 4, Wang discloses wherein the uplink control information
message is multiplexed with each of the one or more second uplink shared channel
messages that are transmitted during the one or more valid uplink transmission
occasions (Wang, [0006] the second UTO-UCI using a second CG PUSCH transmission in the second CG configuration to indicate to the access node which of the transmission occasions are unused by the UE for the second CG configuration).
Regarding claim 7, Wang discloses wherein the one or more invalid uplink
transmission occasions are excluded based at least in part on a collision between an
uplink shared channel message of the one or more uplink shared channel messages and one or more downlink control channel monitoring occasions associated with the one or more full-duplex resources (Wang, [0099] RO1 overlaps with downlink symbols, so it is invalid, and RO2 is located in flexible symbols, but a distance between a starting point of the RO2 and an ending position of the last downlink symbol in the slot is smaller than Ngap, so RO2 is invalid. RO3 and RO4 are located in the uplink symbols, so they are valid. For another example, in FIG. 5b, RO1 overlaps with downlink symbols, so it is invalid, and RO2 is located in flexible symbols, but RO2 overlaps with SSBs, so it is invalid. RO3 is located in the flexible symbols, and there is no downlink symbol in the slot where RO3 is, so RO3 is valid. RO4 is located in uplink symbols, so RO4 is valid).
Regarding claim 8, Wang discloses wherein the one or more invalid uplink
transmission occasions are excluded based at least in part on a collision between an
uplink shared channel message of the one or more uplink shared channel messages and one or more SSSs associated with the one or more full-duplex resources (Wang, [0166] determination of transmission resources valid ROs/POs in a beam group
determines, according to the first-type cell-common UL/DL information or the second-type cell-common UL/DL information of the beam group, that in a same beam group, a case where valid ROs/POs overlap with downlink transmission
resources or downlink signals (such as SSs/PBCHs) of this beam group in time resources and frequency-domain resources does not occur).
Regarding claim 9, Wang discloses wherein the one or more invalid uplink transmission occasions are excluded based at least in part on a collision between an uplink shared channel message of the one or more uplink shared channel messages and one or more tracking reference signals associated with the one or more full-duplex resources (Wang, [0162] the base station configures multiple sets of configured grant PUSCH (CG PUSCH) parameters. Similarly, the base station configures multiple sets of reference signal parameters, for example, SRSs, or CSI-RSs, or phase tracking reference signals (PTRSs), or tracking reference signals (TRSs)).
Regarding claim 10, Wang discloses wherein the one or more invalid uplink
transmission occasions are excluded based at least in part on a first periodicity
associated with the one or more uplink shared channel messages and a second
periodicity associated with the one or more downlink messages (Wang, [0088] The base station may indicate periodically, for example, indicate the periodic slot configuration (Slot Configuration) through higher-layer signaling or indicate a slot format within a time period through dynamic signaling. The uplink and downlink
attribute of each frequency-domain resource in each slot/symbol is determined through the slot configuration/format: being used for uplink transmission, being used for downlink transmission, or being used for flexible transmission…can only be used for transmission of one direction among them at a certain time).
Regarding claim 11, Wang does not explicitly disclose wherein the uplink control information message comprises a bitmap comprising one or more first bits indicating a first subset of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions comprising the quantity of unused uplink transmission occasions and one or more second bits indicating a second subset of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions comprising a quantity of used uplink transmission occasions.
3GPP from the same field of endeavor discloses wherein the uplink control information message comprises a bitmap comprising one or more first bits indicating a first subset of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions comprising the quantity of unused uplink transmission occasions and one or more second bits indicating a second subset of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions comprising a quantity of used uplink transmission occasions (3GPP, pg. 6 Enh. 3) Configure bitmap for PUSCHs to support non-consecutive PUSCHs; pg.42 The UTO-UCI provides a bitmap where a bit corresponds to a TO within a time duration/range. The bit
indicates whether the TO is “unused”).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified full duplex transmission disclosed by Wang and dynamic PUSCH occasion in full duplex disclosed by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to avoid the collision (3GPP, pg. 34).
Regarding claims 12, 14-15, 18-23, 25-27 and 29-30, these claims recite "an apparatus for wireless communication at a network entity" and "a method" that disclose similar steps as recited by the claims 1, 3-4 and 7-11, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claims 1, 3-4 and 7-11 as presented above.
Claims 2 ,13, 24 and 28 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (US 2023/0156798 A1, hereinafter "Wang") in view of 3GPP (R1-2306086, Incheon, Korea, May 22nd – 26th, 2023, hereinafter "3GPP") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Yang et al. (US 2025/0055642 A1, hereinafter "Yang").
Regarding claim 2, Wang discloses HARQ-ID associates with PDCCH but does not explicitly disclose wherein the instructions are further executable by the one or more processors, individually or collectively, to cause the apparatus to:
transmit one or more acknowledgment or negative acknowledgment messages in accordance with an identifier, the identifier based at least in part on a first uplink shared channel occasion corresponding to a first uplink transmission occasion of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions, wherein the identifier is further based at least in part on the quantity of unused uplink transmission occasions excluded from the indication.
Yang from the same field of endeavor disclose transmit one or more acknowledgment or negative acknowledgment messages in accordance with an identifier, the identifier based at least in part on a first uplink shared channel occasion corresponding to a first uplink transmission occasion of the plurality of uplink transmission occasions, wherein the identifier is further based at least in part on the quantity of unused uplink transmission occasions excluded from the indication (Yang, [0072, 0118] HARQ redundancy version and/or NDI for the current PUSCH can be multiplexed with UTO-UCI and HARQ-ACK… HARQ process IDs associated to PUSCHs in multi-PUSCHs CG assuming one TB per PUSCH).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Yang’s system for HARQ-ACK into Wang’s uplink transmission process as modified by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve its scheduling behavior based on the UTO-UCI signaling (Yang, [0053]).
Regarding claims 13, 24 and 28, these claims recite "an apparatus for wireless communication at a network entity" and "a method" that disclose similar steps as recited by the claim 2, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claim 2 as presented above.
Claims 6 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wang et al. (US 2023/0156798 A1, hereinafter "Wang") in view of 3GPP (R1-2306086, Incheon, Korea, May 22nd – 26th, 2023, hereinafter "3GPP") as applied to claim above, and further in view of Ly et al. (US 2022/0311472 A1, hereinafter "Ly").
Regarding claim 6, Wang in view 3GPP discloses CG prioritization but does bot explicitly disclose receive a dynamic indication of a priority for each of the one or more downlink messages and for each of the one or more uplink shared channel messages, wherein the one or more invalid uplink transmission occasions are excluded based at least in part on a duration satisfying a threshold duration, the duration being between an end of receiving the dynamic indication and a start time for transmitting the uplink control information message.
Ly from the same field of endeavor discloses receive a dynamic indication of a priority for each of the one or more downlink messages and for each of the one or more uplink shared channel messages, wherein the one or more invalid uplink transmission occasions are excluded based at least in part on a duration satisfying a threshold duration, the duration being between an end of receiving the dynamic indication and a start time for transmitting the uplink control information message (Ly, [0111] the UE may receive an indication (e.g., a dynamic indication in DCI) prior to slot 8, that indicates that a higher priority transmission is scheduled in slot 8 that at least partially overlaps with the repetition in slot 8. As such, at least the portion (e.g., symbols) of the repetition that overlaps with the higher priority transmission may be canceled. In some implementations, the UE may determine the amount of the repetition that is canceled (e.g., a number of symbols, a duration of time) and/or the amount of the repetition remaining (e.g., the non-canceled portion of the repetition). In some implementations, the UE may compare the remaining amount to a first threshold, where the UE may be preconfigured with the first threshold, or receive signaling (e.g., RRC, DCI, MAC-CE) indicating the first threshold. In some cases, if the remaining amount is below the first threshold, then the UE may determine to transmit the remaining portion).
It would have been obvious for one with ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have to include the teachings of Ly’s system for dynamic indication into Wang’s uplink transmission process as modified by 3GPP with a motivation to make this modification in order to improve uplink transmission performance (Ly, [0004]).
Regarding claim 17, these claims recite "an apparatus for wireless communication at a network entity" that disclose similar steps as recited by the claim 6, thus are rejected with the same rationale applied against claim 6 as presented above.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5 and 16 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.
Claims 5 are potentially allowable over the prior art of record Wang et al. (US 2023/0156798 A1, hereinafter "Wang") in view of 3GPP (R1-2306086, Incheon, Korea, May 22nd – 26th, 2023, hereinafter "3GPP").
Wang in view of 3GPP fails to teach alone or in combination "receive a semi-static indication of a priority for each of the one or more downlink messages and for each of the one or more uplink shared channel messages, wherein the one or more invalid uplink transmission occasions are excluded based at least in part on an uplink shared channel message of the one or more uplink shared channel messages having a first priority and a downlink message of the one or more downlink messages having a second priority higher than the first priority".
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LUNA WEISSBERGER whose telephone number is (571)272-3315. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 8:00am-5:30pm.
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/LUNA WEISSBERGER/Examiner, Art Unit 2415