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 .
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.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on February 13, 2024 and August 15, 2024 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97 and have been considered by the Examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC§ 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
1. Claims 1-14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) as being anticipated by Vivo, “Discussion on potential solutions for sidelink positioning”, R1-2211012, 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #111, Toulouse, France, November 14-18, 2022 (Noted, the reference is cited in the applicants’ IDS filed on 8/15/2024).
In regard to claim 1, note Vivo discloses a first user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system (See Section 5 and figures 8-9, UEs can transmitting and receiving signals), the first UE comprising: a transceiver; and a controller coupled with the transceiver, and configured to: transmit, to a second UE, a first sidelink positioning reference signal (SL PRS), receive, from the second UE, a second SL PRS, and identify a SL PRS time difference based on the first SL PRS and the second SL PRS, wherein the SL PRS time difference is a difference between a received timing of a sidelink subframe #i associated with the first SL PRS and a transmit timing of a sidelink subframe #j associated with the second SL PRS, according to an indication via a higher layer signaling (See section 5.1 and section 3.4: in a SL signaling for positioning, using a higher layer signaling for the purpose of indication a part of SL-PRS configuration).
In regard to claim 2, note Vivo discloses The first UE of claim 1, wherein the SL PRS time difference is a difference between the received timing of the sidelink subframe #i associated with the first SL PRS and a transmit timing of the sidelink subframe #j associated with the second SL PRS that is closest in time to the sidelink subframe #i, according to the indication via the higher layer signaling (See section 5.1: the UE rx-Tx time difference is defined as TUE-RX – TUE-TX for multi-RTT, The TUE-RX is a UE received timing of downlink subframe #i from a transmission point (TP), defined by a first detected path in time, and the TUE-RX is a UE transmit timing of uplink subframe #j that is closest in time to the subframe #i received from the TP).
In regard to claim 3, note Vivo discloses The first UE of claim 1, wherein the first SL PRS or the second SL PRS is generated according to a SL PRS sequence based on a pseudo-random sequence, and wherein, in case that a sequence identifier (ID) for the SL PRS sequence is not provided by the higher layer signaling, the sequence ID is determined by a bit of a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) attached to sidelink control information (SCI) associated with the first SL PRS and the second SL PRS (See section 3.1: for the sequence of the new reference signal for SL positioning/ranging, a pseudo random sequence C(i) is used, and the current SL parameter NID in SL. RS sequence generation is 10bits or 16 bits for CRC of
corresponding 1st SCI, which is different from the Rel-16 positioning signal. For
example, is the current SL parameter NID is used to SL. PRS for positioning, and UE can get NID based on the CRC of the 1st SCI, and UEs could measure the positioning signal, which may expose some information about the UE transmitting the SL PRS).
In regard to claim 4, note Vivo discloses wherein the SL PRS sequence (rm) is defined according to (See section 3.1: the r(m) of DL-PRS for sequence mapping is defined by):
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91
559
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In regard to claim 5, note Vivo discloses wherein the pseudo-random sequence is initialized with according to:
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138
840
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Greyscale
wherein the
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38
43
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denotes a slot number within a radio frame, l denotes an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol number within a slot to which the SL PRS sequence is mapped, and
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33
70
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Greyscale
denotes the sequence ID (see section 3.1: the pseudo random sequence c(i) shall be initialized with: the above equation. e.g., to identify the PRS from different TRPs).
In regard to claim 6, note Vivo discloses wherein the controller is further configured to: receive, via the higher layer signaling, information configuring the sequence ID, and transmit, to the second UE via the higher layer signaling, the information configuring the sequence ID (See section 3.4: for the configuration of SL-PRS, the higher layer signaling is used, and the high-layer signaling is involved to configure some SL-PRS parameters, such as com N, number of symbols M, configuration of resource pool and configuration of resource, etc.).
In regard to claim 7, note Vivo discloses wherein the higher layer signaling is based on a sidelink positioning protocol (SLPP) between a location management function (LMF) entity and at least one UE (See section 3.4: the higher layer signaling can be PC5-SLPP between UEs, and the high-layer configuration may be received ed from an LMF).
In regard to claims 8-14, these are method claims, corresponding to the apparatus in claims 1-7. Therefore, claims 8-14 have been analyzed and rejected as previously discussed with respect claims 1-7.
Conclusion
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/LIN YE/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2638