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 .
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement submitted on 05/23/2025 has been considered by the Examiner and made of record in the application file.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
(a) 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 1-4, 8-11, 13-14 and 18-19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Grilli et al. (US 2005/0169205 A1, hereinafter Grilli), in view of Applicant provided document, XU et al. (WO 2021/238665 A1, hereinafter Xu).
Regarding Claim 1, Grilli discloses, a user equipment (UE) for wireless communication (see e.g., Fig. 1, User Equipment 10 and/or Fig. 11, UE 430), comprising:
a processing system that includes one or more processors and one or more memories coupled with the one or more processors (see e.g., Fig. 1, User Equipment 10 and/or Fig. 11, UE 430 with inherent processor and memory), the processing system configured to cause the UE to:
receive, from a network node (see e.g., “The outer coding layer 400 includes a transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410 that communicates over the radio interface (Uu) 404…with a receiving Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 430.”, Fig. 11, [0209]), encoded packets associated with a protocol data unit (PDU) set that corresponds to a quantity of source symbols associated with an outer coding (OC) (see e.g., “The transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410 includes…an outer encoder 416 that performs Reed-Solomon (RS) encoding…”, Fig. 11, [0158] and/or “The k PDU blocks can then be run through the outer encoder 416…The outer encoder 416 encodes the data in the Encoder Packet (EP) matrix by generating and appending redundancy or parity information to create an outer code block…the outer-code can be assumed to be an (n, k) erasure-decoding block code and the outer encoder generates n-k parity blocks…encoding on k rows of information of equal length and delivers to the lower sub-layer n Protocol Data Units (PDUs) of that same size”, Fig. 11, [0163] and/or “The transmit buffer 420 stores the PDUs until a frame of data accumulates…the transmit buffer 420 transmits the frames one by one over the radio interface (Uu) via a logical channel to MAC layer. The MAC layer then communicates the PDUs via transport channels to the physical layer where the PDUs can be eventually communicated to the UE 10”, Fig. 11, [0171] and/or “the UE 10 could inform the RNC of the number of last outer block correctly received before the transition. This should apply to any transition to PTP (from PTM or from PTP)”, [0232] and/or “The parity rows generated by the outer encoder can be added to the Encoder Packet (EP), and placed in a transmission buffer as a group of inner blocks. Each inner block has information added to it to produce a Protocol Data Unit (PDU). The group of PDUs can then be transmitted”, [0135]);
Grilli fails to explicitly disclose transmit, to the network node in association with the encoded packets received from the network node including a quantity of received symbols that equals or exceeds the quantity of source symbols in the PDU set, feedback indicating to the network node to terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set.
In the same field of endeavor, Xu discloses transmit, to the network node in association with the encoded packets received from the network node including a quantity of received symbols that equals or exceeds the quantity of source symbols in the PDU set (see e.g., “rateless code may be used to generate a potentially limitless number of code packets…certain codes, e.g., fountain codes, are rateless codes in a sense that the number of code packets is potentially limitless. The transmitted packets encoded using rateless codes may be recovered by the receiver as long as the number of received packets is slightly larger than the number of the source packets encoded no matter which transmitted packets are received. The rateless code may be referred to as network code when applied in a network layer”, [0060]), feedback indicating to the network node to terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set (see e.g., “the source packets may be continuously encoded into the rateless code packets until an ACK response is received from the receiver indicating a successful rateless decoding, based on the receiver and the transmitter being in an RLC AM That is, the transmitter 402 may be in the RLC AM, and the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077]; Examiner’s notes: rateless coding corresponds to outer coding and ACK response corresponds to stopping signal).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 2, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, wherein the feedback further indicates to the network node to terminate medium access control (MAC) retransmissions associated with the PDU set (see Xu e.g., “the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077] and/or “the transmitter 402 may map each of the rateless code packets by a CRC encoding into a corresponding code block. That is, the transmitter 402 may map each of the rateless code packets by CRC encoding into a corresponding code block in a medium access control (MAC)/ physical (PHY) layer”, [0079]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 3, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, wherein the feedback includes an OC sublayer status report (see Xu e.g., “acknowledgment (ACK) (HARQ-ACK) feedback (i.e., one or more HARQACK bits indicating one or more ACK and/or negative ACK (NACK)). The PUSCH carries data, and may additionally be used to carry a buffer status report (BSR)…”, [0050]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 4, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, wherein the OC sublayer status report is carried in uplink control information (UCI) (see Xu e.g., “The PUCCH carries uplink control information (UCI), such as scheduling requests…hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) acknowledgment (ACK) (HARQ-ACK) feedback (i.e., one or more HARQACK bits indicating one or more ACK and/or negative ACK (NACK)). The PUSCH carries data, and may additionally be used to carry a buffer status report (BSR), a power headroom report (PHR), and/or UCI”, [0050]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 8, Grilli discloses, a network node for wireless communication (see e.g., Fig. 1, NodeB 22 and/or Fig. 11, “transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410”, [0209), comprising:
a processing system that includes one or more processors and one or more memories coupled with the one or more processors (see e.g., Fig. 1, NodeB 22 and/or Fig. 11, transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410 with inherent processor and memory), the processing system configured to cause the network node to:
transmit, to a user equipment (UE) (see e.g., “The outer coding layer 400 includes a transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410 that communicates over the radio interface (Uu) 404…with a receiving Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 430.”, Fig. 11, [0209]), encoded packets associated with a protocol data unit (PDU) set that corresponds to a quantity of source symbols associated with an outer coding (OC) (see e.g., “The transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410 includes…an outer encoder 416 that performs Reed-Solomon (RS) encoding…”, Fig. 11, [0158] and/or “The k PDU blocks can then be run through the outer encoder 416…The outer encoder 416 encodes the data in the Encoder Packet (EP) matrix by generating and appending redundancy or parity information to create an outer code block…the outer-code can be assumed to be an (n, k) erasure-decoding block code and the outer encoder generates n-k parity blocks…encoding on k rows of information of equal length and delivers to the lower sub-layer n Protocol Data Units (PDUs) of that same size”, Fig. 11, [0163] and/or “The transmit buffer 420 stores the PDUs until a frame of data accumulates…the transmit buffer 420 transmits the frames one by one over the radio interface (Uu) via a logical channel to MAC layer. The MAC layer then communicates the PDUs via transport channels to the physical layer where the PDUs can be eventually communicated to the UE 10”, Fig. 11, [0171] and/or “the UE 10 could inform the RNC of the number of last outer block correctly received before the transition. This should apply to any transition to PTP (from PTM or from PTP)”, [0232] and/or “The parity rows generated by the outer encoder can be added to the Encoder Packet (EP), and placed in a transmission buffer as a group of inner blocks. Each inner block has information added to it to produce a Protocol Data Unit (PDU). The group of PDUs can then be transmitted”, [0135]);
Grilli fails to explicitly disclose receive, from the UE, feedback indicating to the network node to terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set in association with the encoded packets received at the UE including a quantity of received symbols that equals or exceeds the quantity of source symbols in the PDU set; and terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set in accordance with the feedback received from the UE.
In the same field of endeavor, Xu discloses receive, from the UE, feedback indicating to the network node to terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set in association with the encoded packets received at the UE including a quantity of received symbols that equals or exceeds the quantity of source symbols in the PDU set (see e.g., “rateless code may be used to generate a potentially limitless number of code packets…certain codes, e.g., fountain codes, are rateless codes in a sense that the number of code packets is potentially limitless. The transmitted packets encoded using rateless codes may be recovered by the receiver as long as the number of received packets is slightly larger than the number of the source packets encoded no matter which transmitted packets are received. The rateless code may be referred to as network code when applied in a network layer”, [0060] and/or “the source packets may be continuously encoded into the rateless code packets until an ACK response is received from the receiver indicating a successful rateless decoding, based on the receiver and the transmitter being in an RLC AM That is, the transmitter 402 may be in the RLC AM, and the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077]; Examiner’s notes: rateless coding corresponds to outer coding and ACK response corresponds to stopping signal); and
terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set in accordance with the feedback received from the UE (see e.g., “the source packets may be continuously encoded into the rateless code packets until an ACK response is received from the receiver indicating a successful rateless decoding, based on the receiver and the transmitter being in an RLC AM That is, the transmitter 402 may be in the RLC AM, and the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 9, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, discard packets that include parity symbols associated with the PDU set at an OC sublayer (see Grilli e.g., “Erroneous protocol data units (PDUs) can be discarded or marked erroneous.”, [0110] and/or “If the Forward Error Correction (FEC) Protocol Data Unit (PDU) does not belong to the Encoder Packet (EPb) that is being buffered, then at block 1440 the Protocol Data Unit (PDU) can be discarded.”, [0215]).
Regarding Claim 10, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, wherein the feedback further indicates to the network node to terminate medium access control (MAC) retransmissions associated with the PDU set (see Xu e.g., “the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077] and/or “the transmitter 402 may map each of the rateless code packets by a CRC encoding into a corresponding code block. That is, the transmitter 402 may map each of the rateless code packets by CRC encoding into a corresponding code block in a medium access control (MAC)/ physical (PHY) layer”, [0079]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 11, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, terminate MAC retransmissions associated with the PDU set in accordance with the feedback received from the UE (see Xu e.g., “the transmitter 402 may be in the RLC AM, and the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077] and/or “transmitter may stop the retransmission of the code block 522 after meeting the maximum number of retransmissions, and the transmission 526 of the source data may have a lower latency”, [0089]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 13, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, wherein the feedback includes an OC sublayer status report (see Xu e.g., “acknowledgment (ACK) (HARQ-ACK) feedback (i.e., one or more HARQACK bits indicating one or more ACK and/or negative ACK (NACK)). The PUSCH carries data, and may additionally be used to carry a buffer status report (BSR)…”, [0050]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 14, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, wherein the OC sublayer status report is carried in uplink control information (UCI) (see Xu e.g., “The PUCCH carries uplink control information (UCI), such as scheduling requests…hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) acknowledgment (ACK) (HARQ-ACK) feedback (i.e., one or more HARQACK bits indicating one or more ACK and/or negative ACK (NACK)). The PUSCH carries data, and may additionally be used to carry a buffer status report (BSR), a power headroom report (PHR), and/or UCI”, [0050]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 18, Grilli discloses, a method for wireless communication by a user equipment (UE) (see e.g., Fig. 1, User Equipment 10 and/or Fig. 11, UE 430), comprising:
receiving, from a network node (see e.g., “The outer coding layer 400 includes a transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410 that communicates over the radio interface (Uu) 404…with a receiving Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 430.”, Fig. 11, [0209]), encoded packets associated with a protocol data unit (PDU) set that corresponds to a quantity of source symbols associated with an outer coding (OC (see e.g., “The transmitting Forward Error Correction (FEC) entity 410 includes…an outer encoder 416 that performs Reed-Solomon (RS) encoding…”, Fig. 11, [0158] and/or “The k PDU blocks can then be run through the outer encoder 416…The outer encoder 416 encodes the data in the Encoder Packet (EP) matrix by generating and appending redundancy or parity information to create an outer code block…the outer-code can be assumed to be an (n, k) erasure-decoding block code and the outer encoder generates n-k parity blocks…encoding on k rows of information of equal length and delivers to the lower sub-layer n Protocol Data Units (PDUs) of that same size”, Fig. 11, [0163] and/or “The transmit buffer 420 stores the PDUs until a frame of data accumulates…the transmit buffer 420 transmits the frames one by one over the radio interface (Uu) via a logical channel to MAC layer. The MAC layer then communicates the PDUs via transport channels to the physical layer where the PDUs can be eventually communicated to the UE 10”, Fig. 11, [0171] and/or “the UE 10 could inform the RNC of the number of last outer block correctly received before the transition. This should apply to any transition to PTP (from PTM or from PTP)”, [0232] and/or “The parity rows generated by the outer encoder can be added to the Encoder Packet (EP), and placed in a transmission buffer as a group of inner blocks. Each inner block has information added to it to produce a Protocol Data Unit (PDU). The group of PDUs can then be transmitted”, [0135]);
Grilli fails to explicitly disclose transmitting, to the network node in association with the encoded packets received from the network node including a quantity of received symbols that equals or exceeds the quantity of source symbols in the PDU set, feedback indicating to the network node to terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set.
In the same field of endeavor, Xu discloses transmitting, to the network node in association with the encoded packets received from the network node including a quantity of received symbols that equals or exceeds the quantity of source symbols in the PDU set (see e.g., “rateless code may be used to generate a potentially limitless number of code packets…certain codes, e.g., fountain codes, are rateless codes in a sense that the number of code packets is potentially limitless. The transmitted packets encoded using rateless codes may be recovered by the receiver as long as the number of received packets is slightly larger than the number of the source packets encoded no matter which transmitted packets are received. The rateless code may be referred to as network code when applied in a network layer”, [0060]), feedback indicating to the network node to terminate transmission of parity symbols associated with the PDU set (see e.g., “the source packets may be continuously encoded into the rateless code packets until an ACK response is received from the receiver indicating a successful rateless decoding, based on the receiver and the transmitter being in an RLC AM That is, the transmitter 402 may be in the RLC AM, and the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077]; Examiner’s notes: rateless coding corresponds to outer coding and ACK response corresponds to stopping signal).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Regarding Claim 19, Grilli and Xu combine discloses, wherein the feedback further indicates to the network node to terminate medium access control (MAC) retransmissions associated with the PDU set (see Xu e.g., “the transmitter 402 may continue generating rateless code packets and map the rateless code packets to the HARQ entity in the MAC/PHY layer based on the transmitter 402 being in the RLC AM, until an ACK response for the ARQ is received from the receiver 404”, [0077] and/or “the transmitter 402 may map each of the rateless code packets by a CRC encoding into a corresponding code block. That is, the transmitter 402 may map each of the rateless code packets by CRC encoding into a corresponding code block in a medium access control (MAC)/ physical (PHY) layer”, [0079]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli with Xu, in order to transmit an acknowledgement (ACK) response by the receiver to terminate continuously encoding of the source packets into rateless code packets (see Xu, para. [0006]).
Claims 5 and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Grilli , in view of Applicant provided document, XU, and further in view of Dutta et al. (US 2023/0148234 A1, hereinafter Dutta).
Regarding Claim 5, Grilli and Xu combined fails to explicitly disclose, wherein the OC sublayer status report is carried in a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE).
In the same field of endeavor, Dutta discloses wherein the OC sublayer status report is carried in a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE) (see e.g., “the first UE 120-1 may transmit, and the base station 110 may receive, a buffer status report (BSR). The buffer status report may be a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE) (e.g., the buffer status report may be transmitted via MAC signaling).”, [0072]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli and Xu with Dutta, in order to indicate a destination identifier, a logical channel group identifier, and/or a size of a MAC buffer of the UE, periodically and/or based at least in part on new data arriving at the MAC layer (see Dutta, para. [0072]).
Regarding Claim 15, Grilli and Xu combined fails to explicitly disclose, wherein the OC sublayer status report is carried in a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE).
In the same field of endeavor, Dutta discloses wherein the OC sublayer status report is carried in a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE) (see e.g., “the first UE 120-1 may transmit, and the base station 110 may receive, a buffer status report (BSR). The buffer status report may be a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE) (e.g., the buffer status report may be transmitted via MAC signaling).”, [0072]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli and Xu with Dutta, in order to indicate a destination identifier, a logical channel group identifier, and/or a size of a MAC buffer of the UE, periodically and/or based at least in part on new data arriving at the MAC layer (see Dutta, para. [0072]).
Claims 6, 16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Grilli , in view of Applicant provided document, XU, and further in view of YEO et al. (US 2021/0226732 A1, hereinafter Yeo).
Regarding Claim 6, Grilli and Xu combined fails to explicitly disclose, wherein the feedback includes a one-bit indication that the PDU set has been successfully decoded at an OC sublayer.
In the same field of endeavor, Yeo discloses wherein the feedback includes a one-bit indication that the PDU set has been successfully decoded at an OC sublayer (see e.g., “The terminal may provide feedback in association with whether decoding of a predetermined CBG is successfully performed to the base station via one bit.”, [0142] and/or “if an outer code is configured, the length of a bit field is 4, and the number of data CBs included in a TB transmitted according to scheduling information is N, a bit value of “0000” of the HARQ-ACK feedback may indicate that N data CBs are successfully decoded, and a bit value of “1111” of the HARQ-ACK feedback may indicate that decoding of 15 or more data CBs fails. Bit values of the HARQ-ACK feedback, other than “0000” and “1111”, may indicate the number of data CBs of which decoding fails”, [0196] and/or “a transmission device may retransmit a code block (CB) that a reception device fails to decode”, [0006]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli and Xu with Yeo, in order to perform retransmission using an outer code in a wireless communication system by providing feedback information when decoding fails (see Yeo, para. [0008-0009]).
Regarding Claim 16, Grilli and Xu combined fails to explicitly disclose, wherein the feedback includes a one-bit indication that the UE successfully decoded PDU set at an OC sublayer.
In the same field of endeavor, Yeo discloses wherein the feedback includes a one-bit indication that the UE successfully decoded PDU set at an OC sublayer (see e.g., “The terminal may provide feedback in association with whether decoding of a predetermined CBG is successfully performed to the base station via one bit.”, [0142] and/or “if an outer code is configured, the length of a bit field is 4, and the number of data CBs included in a TB transmitted according to scheduling information is N, a bit value of “0000” of the HARQ-ACK feedback may indicate that N data CBs are successfully decoded, and a bit value of “1111” of the HARQ-ACK feedback may indicate that decoding of 15 or more data CBs fails. Bit values of the HARQ-ACK feedback, other than “0000” and “1111”, may indicate the number of data CBs of which decoding fails”, [0196] and/or “a transmission device may retransmit a code block (CB) that a reception device fails to decode”, [0006]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli and Xu with Yeo, in order to perform retransmission using an outer code in a wireless communication system by providing feedback information when decoding fails (see Yeo, para. [0008-0009]).
Regarding Claim 20, Grilli and Xu combined fails to explicitly disclose, wherein the feedback includes an indication that the PDU set has been successfully decoded at an OC sublayer
In the same field of endeavor, Yeo discloses wherein the feedback includes an indication that the PDU set has been successfully decoded at an OC sublayer (see e.g., “The terminal may provide feedback in association with whether decoding of a predetermined CBG is successfully performed to the base station via one bit.”, [0142] and/or “if an outer code is configured, the length of a bit field is 4, and the number of data CBs included in a TB transmitted according to scheduling information is N, a bit value of “0000” of the HARQ-ACK feedback may indicate that N data CBs are successfully decoded, and a bit value of “1111” of the HARQ-ACK feedback may indicate that decoding of 15 or more data CBs fails. Bit values of the HARQ-ACK feedback, other than “0000” and “1111”, may indicate the number of data CBs of which decoding fails”, [0196]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli and Xu with Yeo, in order to perform retransmission using an outer code in a wireless communication system by providing feedback information when decoding fails (see Yeo, para. [0008-0009]).
Claims 7 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Grilli , in view of Applicant provided document, XU, in view of YEO, and further in view of HUANG et al. (WO 2021/023070 A1, hereinafter Huang).
Regarding Claim 7, Grilli, Xu and Yeo combined fails to explicitly disclose, wherein the feedback indicates an OC block index associated with the PDU set that has been successfully decoded at the OC sublayer.
In the same field of endeavor, Huang discloses wherein the feedback indicates an OC block index associated with the PDU set that has been successfully decoded at the OC sublayer (see e.g., “the feedback information is sent by the receiving node, and the feedback information includes at least one of the following: block codebook index, codebook value corresponding to block codebook, number of block codebooks, index of BCB, and number of BCBs.”, [0040], and/or “The receiving UE decodes the received output BCB. For BCBs that are not successfully decoded and recovered, the receiving UE sends corresponding feedback information, including at least one of the following: the block codebook index corresponding to the output BCB that failed to be decoded, the block codebook value corresponding to the output BCB that failed to be decoded, the index of the output BCB that failed to be decoded, the number of output BCBs that failed to be decoded, the index of the BCB that failed to be decoded and was not recovered, and the number of BCBs that failed to be decoded and were not recovered.”, [0073]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli, Xu and Yeo with Huang, in order to ensure the reliability of data transmission and improve spectrum efficiency, using a hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgment (HARQ-ACK) mechanism that supports code block group (CBG) feedback (see Huang, para. [0005]).
Regarding Claim 17, Grilli, Xu and Yeo combined fails to explicitly disclose, wherein the feedback indicates an OC block index associated with the PDU set that the UE successfully decoded at the OC sublayer.
In the same field of endeavor, Huang discloses wherein the feedback indicates an OC block index associated with the PDU set that the UE successfully decoded at the OC sublayer (see e.g., “the feedback information is sent by the receiving node, and the feedback information includes at least one of the following: block codebook index, codebook value corresponding to block codebook, number of block codebooks, index of BCB, and number of BCBs.”, [0040], and/or “The receiving UE decodes the received output BCB. For BCBs that are not successfully decoded and recovered, the receiving UE sends corresponding feedback information, including at least one of the following: the block codebook index corresponding to the output BCB that failed to be decoded, the block codebook value corresponding to the output BCB that failed to be decoded, the index of the output BCB that failed to be decoded, the number of output BCBs that failed to be decoded, the index of the BCB that failed to be decoded and was not recovered, and the number of BCBs that failed to be decoded and were not recovered.”, [0073]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli, Xu and Yeo with Huang, in order to ensure the reliability of data transmission and improve spectrum efficiency, using a hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgment (HARQ-ACK) mechanism that supports code block group (CBG) feedback (see Huang, para. [0005]).
Claim 12 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Grilli , in view of Applicant provided document, XU, and further in view of CHIN et al. (US 2022/0116987 A1, hereinafter Chin).
Regarding Claim 12, Grilli and Xu combined fails to explicitly disclose, discard packets that include hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) retransmissions associated with the PDU set at a MAC layer.
In the same field of endeavor, Chin discloses discard packets that include hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) retransmissions associated with the PDU set at a MAC layer (see e.g., “flush the HARQ buffer associated to the HARQ process ID(s) for retransmission and/or stop the configuredGrantTimer associated to the HARQ process ID(s) for retransmission and/or considers the pending MAC PDU associated to the HARQ process ID(s)…discard the MAC PDU stored in the HARQ buffer associated to the retransmission.”, [0184]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine teachings of Grilli and Xu with Chin, in order to handling uplink (re)transmission in an unlicensed and controlled environment, by selecting a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol data unit (PDU) associated with the HARQ process ID for transmission on the CG PUSCH (see Chin, paras. [0002] and [0020]).
Conclusion
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/FARID SEYEDVOSOGHI/Examiner, Art Unit 2645