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 .
DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Applicant's response filed under 37 C.F.R. § 1.111 in response to a Non-Final Office Action. Claims 1, 3, 5, 8 - 10, 12 - 14, 16, and 18-19 have been amended; Claim 21 has been added; Claim 4 has been canceled. Claims 1 - 3 and 5 - 21 are subject to examination.
Acknowledgement is made to this application's amendment to claim 19 to obviate the previous 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection. The previous 35 U.S.C. 112(b) rejection to claim 19-20 is hereby withdrawn.
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed 02/23/2026, have been fully considered but they are not persuasive for the following reasons:
Applicant's Argument:
Applicant argues in substance that "Thus, Selvanesan does not disclose that the relay UE can use the same resource for transmitting status indications related to the relay and the RX UE (e.g., as shown in FIG. 7 as referenced by paragraph [0321])".
Examiner's Response:
The Examiner respectfully disagrees. The SELVANESAN reference teaches the limitations "transmitting, by the first user equipment to the radio access network node using one of the at least one uplink control channel resource that is usable to transmit at least one status indication corresponding to downlink protocol data unit traffic directed to the first user equipment or directed to the at least one second user equipment". SELVANESAN teaches in Fig. 7 Par. 0321 that “The feedback {circle around (5)} for the transmission from the TX UE 402 to the relay UE 400 may be transmitted on first resources of the PSFCH … TX UE 402 provides the PSFCH resources for the overall feedback {circle around (3)} and the feedback {circle around (5)}”.
The claims merely recites “at least one uplink control channel resource”, therefore the examiner contends that two feedback resource, in fact can be interpreted to be two uplink control resource – one used for individual and the other used for combined. By this rationale, SELVANESAN teaches the limitations " at least one uplink control channel resource” and therefore the rejection is maintained. Due to claim amendments, the rejection is updated.
Regarding all other arguments presented by Applicant, the arguments are substantially the same as those which have already been addressed above and, in the interest of brevity, the Examiner directs Applicant to those responses above.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claim 9-11 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor, or for pre-AIA the applicant regards as the invention.
Claim 9 recites “the third downlink protocol data unit” in line 7. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim(s) 10-11 are also rejected because they are dependent upon rejected claims 9 as set forth above and include limitations of the claims 9 respectively.
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.
Claim(s) 1-3, 5-9, and 21 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over SELVANESAN et al. (SELVANESAN hereafter) (US 20230171036 A1) in view of XU et al. (XU hereafter) (US 20220078755 A1).
Regarding claim 1, SELVANESAN teaches, A method (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16), comprising:
receiving, from a radio access network node by a first user equipment comprising a processor, a control information reporting configuration comprising at least one resource grant indication indicative of at least one uplink control channel resource usable, by the first user equipment, to transmit at least one status indication (SELVANESAN; the gNB provides the PUCCH resources for the overall feedback {circle around (3)} and the feedback {circle around (5)} about the first part of the transmission received at the relay UE using the following means: in the same DCI, Par. 0325-0326) corresponding to downlink protocol data unit traffic directed to the first user equipment or directed to at least one second user equipment communicatively coupled with the first user equipment (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16; The gNB 402 transmits to the relay UE over the Uu interface 414 the control, like the DCI, and the data of the transmission. The DCI also includes the resources to be used by the relay UE 400 for relaying the transmission to the RX UE 404, Par. 0430; acknowledgement to confirm receipt of a transmission or a packet or a PDU, Par. 0347);
receiving, by the first user equipment, at least one downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16; The gNB 402 transmits … the data of the transmission, Par. 0430); and
transmitting, by the first user equipment to the radio access network node using one of the at least one uplink control channel resource that is usable to transmit at least one status indication corresponding to downlink protocol data unit traffic directed to the first user equipment or directed to the at least one second user equipment (SELVANESAN; element FB1, Fig. 16), at least one status indication indicative of at least one decoding status corresponding to at least one decoding attempt to decode the at least one downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; The relay node 400 sends over the Uu interface 414 to the gNB 402 a HARQ feedback, FB1 , indicating the status of the transmission from the gNB 402 to the relay UE 400, Par. 0432; a relay ... providing relaying functionality as in an amplify and forward (AF) relay, or a decode-and-forward relay (DF), Par. 0062),
wherein the at least one decoding status is a first decoding status, wherein the at least one status indication is a first status indication, wherein the at least one decoding attempt is a first decoding attempt, by the first user equipment, to decode the at least one downlink protocol data unit, wherein the first decoding status is an acknowledgement indication indicative of a first result of the first decoding attempt being a successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; element FB1, Fig. 16), and further comprising:
storing, by the first user equipment to a memory, the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; If the relay UE 400 receives a NACK from the receiving UE 404, the relay UE 400 may continue attempting retransmissions to the remote UE 404 … while maintaining the transmission in its buffer, Par. 0298);
transmitting, by the first user equipment to the at least one second user equipment, the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; The relay UE 400 sends a SCI and the data of the transmission over the sidelink connection 408 to the RX UE 404, Par. 0433);
receiving, by the first user equipment from the at least one second user equipment, a second status indication indicative of a second decoding attempt, by the at least one second user equipment, to decode the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; The RX UE 404 sends a HARQ feedback about the status of the transmission at the RX UE to the relay UE 400, Par. 0434); and
based on the second status indication, performing, by the first user equipment, a communication operation with respect to the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; The relay UE 400 reports over the Uu interface 414 the feedback received from the RX UE 404 to the gNB 402, Par. 0435).
Although SELVANESAN teaches decoding the downlink transmission, but failed to explicitly teach,
decode according to decoding information corresponding to the second user equipment.
However, in the same field of endeavor, XU teaches,
decode according to decoding information corresponding to the second user equipment (XU; each relay UE 1610, 1620, 1630 at each hop would decode DCI/SCI and try to decode data traffic. If the data traffic can be decoded successfully, then the relay UE forms an SCI that indicates remaining resource allocation and scheduling info and re-encodes the data before transmitting them to relay UE at a next hop or a destination node, 0141; The DCI/SCI at each hop may carry other scheduling information, such as MCS and/or HARQ process ID, Par. 0159).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN to include the use of MCS (modulation and coding scheme) as taught by XU in order to decode data (XU; Par. 0141).
Regarding claim 2, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one downlink protocol data unit is directed to the at least one second user equipment (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “3”).
Regarding claim 3, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 1, wherein the at least one downlink protocol data unit is a first downlink protocol data unit, wherein the at least one decoding status corresponds to a third decoding attempt, by the first user equipment, to decode, according to decoding information corresponding to the second user equipment (SELVANESAN; In case the transmission from the transmitting entity to the relay UE failed, the relay UE may send a NACK to the transmitting entity requesting a retrainsmission, Par. 0739), a second protocol data unit directed to the second user equipment, wherein the third decoding attempt is determined to be at least one failure to successfully decode the second downlink protocol data unit, and wherein the at least one status indication is a third status indication that comprises at least one negative acknowledgement ("NACK") indicative of the at least one failure to successfully decode the second downlink protocol data unit. (SELVANESAN; The relay node 400 sends over the Uu interface 414 to the gNB 402 a HARQ feedback, FB1 , indicating the status of the transmission from the gNB 402 to the relay UE 400, Par. 0432; the threshold may be less than a configured or preconfigured maximum number of retransmissions for the transmission, Par. 0153).
Regarding claim 5, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 1, wherein the second status indication is indicative of the second decoding attempt, by the at least one second user equipment, having been determined to be a failure to successfully decode the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit, and wherein the communication operation comprises retransmitting, by the first user equipment to the at least one second user equipment, the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; UE receives a feedback from the receiving entity indicating a non-successful receipt … retransmit the transmission to the receiving entity, Par. 0081-0083).
Regarding claim 6, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 5, wherein the receiving of the second status indication and the retransmitting of the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit to the at least one second user equipment facilitate avoiding, by the at least one second user equipment, transmitting, to the radio access network node, the second status indication indicative of the failure, by the at least one second user equipment, to successfully decode the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; UE receives a feedback from the receiving entity indicating a non-successful receipt … retransmit the transmission to the receiving entity, Par. 0081-0083).
Regarding claim 7, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 6, wherein the second status indication comprises a NACK indication (SELVANESAN; UE receives a feedback from the receiving entity indicating a non-successful receipt, Par. 0081).
Regarding claim 8, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 1,
wherein the second status indication is indicative of the second decoding attempt, by the at least one second user equipment, having been determined to be a success in decoding the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit, and wherein the communication operation comprises flushing, by the first user equipment from the memory, the successfully decoded downlink protocol data unit. (XU; After receiving an ACK feedback, the relay UE at the previous hop could flush a buffer, Par. 0130).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN to include the use of flushing buffer as taught by XU in order to reuse memory (XU; Par. 0130).
Regarding claim 9, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 1, wherein a first downlink protocol data unit of the at least one downlink protocol data unit is directed to the first user equipment (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “1”), wherein a second downlink protocol data unit of the at least one downlink protocol data unit is directed to the at least one second user equipment (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “3”), and wherein a third status indication of the at least one status indication is indicative of a third decoding status of the at least one decoding status corresponding to a third decoding attempt of the at least one decoding attempt, by the first user equipment, to decode the third downlink protocol data unit (SELVANESAN; In case the transmission from the transmitting entity to the relay UE failed, the relay UE may send a NACK to the transmitting entity requesting a retrainsmission, Par. 0739; the threshold may be less than a configured or preconfigured maximum number of retransmissions for the transmission, Par. 0153).
Regarding claim 21, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 1, further comprising:
receiving, by the first user equipment before the at least one decoding attempt, the decoding information corresponding to the second user equipment (XU; The DCI/SCI at each hop may carry other scheduling information, such as MCS and/or HARQ process ID, Par. 0159).
The rational and motivation for adding this teaching of XU is the same as for Claim 1.
Claim(s) 10 and 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over SELVANESAN-XU in view of Chou et al. (Chou hereafter) (US 20250293816 A1).
Regarding claim 10, SELVANESAN-XU teaches, The method of claim 9, wherein the control information reporting configuration comprises a transmission indication indicative of a transmission usable by the first user equipment to transmit, to the radio access network node, the at least one status indication, and wherein the first status indication and the second status indication are transmitted, using the at least one uplink control channel resource, according to a status indication multiplexing format (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “5”).
SELVANESAN-XU failed to explicitly teach,
multiplexing format.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Chou teaches,
multiplexing format (Chou; The UE can multiplex feedback related to the data scheduled by sequence of downlink assignments and transmit the multiplexed feedback (e.g., in a type-2 HARQ codebook) in accordance with the uplink grant., Par. 0099).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN-XU to include the use of uplink grant as taught by Chou in order to multiplex harq (Chou; Par. 0099).
Regarding claim 11, SELVANESAN-XU-Chou teaches, The method of claim 10, wherein the status indication multiplexing format is one of: a code multiplexing format or a sequence multiplexing format (Chou; The UE can multiplex feedback related to the data scheduled by sequence of downlink assignments and transmit the multiplexed feedback (e.g., in a type-2 HARQ codebook) in accordance with the uplink grant., Par. 0099).
The rational and motivation for adding this teaching of Chou is the same as for Claim 10.
Claim(s) 12 and 18 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over SELVANESAN in view of Takeda et al. (Takeda hereafter) (US 20220124763 A1) and in further view of XU.
Regarding claim 12, SELVANESAN teaches, An extended reality processing unit, comprising:
a processor configured to process executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations, comprising (SELVANESAN; the relay UE, Par. 0325):
receiving, from a radio network node, a control information reporting configuration comprising a resource grant indication indicative of an uplink control channel resource usable to transmit at least one status indication (SELVANESAN; the gNB provides the PUCCH resources for the overall feedback {circle around (3)} and the feedback {circle around (5)} about the first part of the transmission received at the relay UE using the following means: in the same DCI, Par. 0325-0326) corresponding to downlink traffic directed to an appliance (SELVANESAN; user device … smart glass, Par. 0134) that is communicatively coupled with the processing unit (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16; The gNB 402 transmits to the relay UE over the Uu interface 414 the control, like the DCI, and the data of the transmission. The DCI also includes the resources to be used by the relay UE 400 for relaying the transmission to the RX UE 404, Par. 0430);
receiving, from the radio network node, a downlink packet corresponding to a traffic flow (SELVANESAN; used data flow, Par. 0314) directed to the appliance (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16; The gNB 402 transmits … the data of the transmission, Par. 0430; The relaying entity may receive … transmissions or packets that are to be relayed to a receiving entity, Par. 0071);
attempting to decode, corresponding to the appliance, the downlink packet to result in a decoding attempt (SELVANESAN; a relay ... providing relaying functionality as in an amplify and forward (AF) relay, or a decode-and-forward relay (DF), Par. 0062); and
transmitting, to the radio network node via the uplink control channel resource, a status indication indicative of a decoding status corresponding to the decoding attempt (SELVANESAN; The relay UE 400 reports over the Uu interface 414 the feedback received from the RX UE 404 to the gNB 402, Par. 0435).
Although SELVANESAN teaches wearable device, smart glass, but failed to explicitly teach that wearable device, smart glass are extended reality appliance.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Takeda teaches in Fig. 3 and Par. 0035 that “various types of future devices may be considered in the NR-IoT. For example, the type of the device (terminal) may be at least one of wearable, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR)”.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN to include the use of various virtual reality devices as taught by Takeda in order to relay NR-IoT communication (Takeda; Fig. 3).
Although SELVANESAN teaches decoding the downlink transmission, but SELVANESAN-Takeda failed to explicitly teach,
decode according to decoding information corresponding to the appliance.
However, in the same field of endeavor, XU teaches,
decode according to decoding information corresponding to the appliance (XU; each relay UE 1610, 1620, 1630 at each hop would decode DCI/SCI and try to decode data traffic. If the data traffic can be decoded successfully, then the relay UE forms an SCI that indicates remaining resource allocation and scheduling info and re-encodes the data before transmitting them to relay UE at a next hop or a destination node, 0141; The DCI/SCI at each hop may carry other scheduling information, such as MCS and/or HARQ process ID, Par. 0159).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN- Takeda to include the use of MCS (modulation and coding scheme) as taught by XU in order to decode data (XU; Par. 0141).
Regarding claim 18, SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU teaches, The extended reality processing unit of claim 12, wherein the downlink packet is a first downlink packet, wherein the decoding attempt corresponds to a failure, by the extended reality processing unit, to decode, according to the decoding information corresponding to the extended reality appliance (XU; The DCI/SCI at each hop may carry other scheduling information, such as MCS and/or HARQ process ID, Par. 0159), the downlink packet, wherein the status indication comprises a negative acknowledgement (“NACK”), and wherein the operations further comprise:
responsive to the transmitting of the NACK (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “2”), receiving, from the radio network node, a second downlink packet that is a retransmitted version of the first downlink packet (SELVANESAN; In case the transmission from the transmitting entity to the relay UE failed, the relay UE may send a NACK to the transmitting entity requesting a retransmission, Par. 0738);
successfully decoding the second downlink packet to result in a successfully decoded second downlink packet (SELVANESAN; The relay node 400 sends over the Uu interface 414 to the gNB 402 a HARQ feedback, FB1 , indicating the status of the transmission from the gNB 402 to the relay UE 400, Par. 0432);
storing the successfully decoded second downlink packet to a memory (SELVANESAN; If the relay UE 400 receives a NACK from the receiving UE 404, the relay UE 400 may continue attempting retransmissions to the remote UE 404 … while maintaining the transmission in its buffer, Par. 0298); and
transmitting the successfully decoded second downlink packet to the extended reality appliance (SELVANESAN; the relay UE 400 may continue attempting retransmissions to the remote UE 404, Par. 0298).
The rational and motivation for adding this teaching of XU is the same as for Claim 12.
Claim(s) 13-14 and 16-17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU in view of YANG et al. (YANG hereafter) (US 20220386315 A1).
Regarding claim 13, SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU teaches, The extended reality processing unit of claim 12, wherein the extended reality appliance is a first extended reality appliance, wherein the downlink packet is a first downlink packet, wherein the traffic flow directed to the extended reality appliance is a first traffic flow, wherein the decoding attempt is a first decoding attempt, wherein the decoding status is a first decoding status, wherein the status indication is a first status indication indicative of the first decoding status, and wherein the operations further comprise:
receiving a second downlink packet corresponding to a second traffic flow directed to a second extended reality appliance communicatively coupled with the extended reality processing unit (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “3”; one or more receiving entities, Par. 0022);
attempting to decode, according to decoding information corresponding to the second extended reality appliance (XU; The DCI/SCI at each hop may carry other scheduling information, such as MCS and/or HARQ process ID, Par. 0159), the second downlink packet to result in a second decoding attempt; and
transmitting, to the radio network node via the uplink control channel resource, a second status indication indicative of a second decoding status corresponding to the second decoding attempt (SELVANESAN; The relay UE 400 reports over the Uu interface 414 the feedback received from the RX UE 404 to the gNB 402, Par. 0435).
SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU fails to explicitly teach,
the uplink control channel resource.
However, in the same field of endeavor, YANG teaches,
the uplink control channel resource (YANG; the relay UE 706 may multiplex … one or more sidelink HARQ-ACKs in a same PUCCH … the first UE 702 and the second UE 704 may feedback HARQ-ACKs for the corresponding transmission to the relay UE 706, which may multiplex … the HARQ-ACK feedback in a same transmission to the base station 708, Par. 0078).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU to include the use of multiplexing as taught by YANG in order to multiplex plurality of harqs (YANG; Par. 0078).
Regarding claim 14, SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU - YANG teaches, The extended reality processing unit of claim 13, wherein the first status indication and the second status indication are transmitted in an uplink control information message (YANG; The PUCCH carries uplink control information (UCI), Par. 0051).
The rational and motivation for adding this teaching of YANG is the same as for Claim 13.
Regarding claim 16, SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU - YANG teaches, The extended reality processing unit of claim 13, wherein the first decoding status corresponds to a first successful decoding of the first downlink packet, wherein the first status indication is an ACK indicative of the first successful decoding of the first downlink packet, and wherein the operations further comprise:
storing the first downlink packet to a memory (SELVANESAN; If the relay UE 400 receives a NACK from the receiving UE 404, the relay UE 400 may continue attempting retransmissions to the remote UE 404 … while maintaining the transmission in its buffer, Par. 0298);
transmitting the first downlink packet to the first extended reality appliance (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “3”);
responsive to the transmitting of the first downlink packet to the first extended reality appliance, receiving a third status indication indicative of a second successful decoding, by the first extended reality appliance, of the first downlink packet (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “4”),
responsive to the receiving of the third status indication, erasing the first downlink packet from the memory (XU; After receiving an ACK feedback, the relay UE at the previous hop could flush a buffer, Par. 0130).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN-Takeda- YANG to include the use of flushing buffer as taught by XU in order to prepare for another transmission (XU; Par. 0130).
Regarding claim 17, SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU - YANG teaches, The extended reality processing unit of claim 13, wherein the first decoding status corresponds to a successful decoding of the first downlink packet, wherein the first status indication is an ACK indicative of the successful decoding of the first downlink packet, and wherein the operations further comprise:
storing the first downlink packet to a memory (SELVANESAN; If the relay UE 400 receives a NACK from the receiving UE 404, the relay UE 400 may continue attempting retransmissions to the remote UE 404 … while maintaining the transmission in its buffer, Par. 0298);
transmitting the first downlink packet to the first extended reality appliance (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “3”);
responsive to the transmitting of the first downlink packet to the first extended reality appliance, receiving a third status indication indicative of an unsuccessful decoding, by the first extended reality appliance, of the first downlink packet (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “4”); and
responsive to the receiving of the third status indication, retransmitting the first downlink packet to the first extended reality appliance (SELVANESAN; If the relay UE 400 receives a NACK from the receiving UE 404, the relay UE 400 may continue attempting retransmissions to the remote UE 404, Par. 0298).
Claim(s) 15 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU - YANG in view of Chou et al. (Chou hereafter) (US 20250293816 A1).
Regarding claim 15, SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU - YANG teaches, The extended reality processing unit of claim 14.
SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU - YANG failed to explicitly teach,
wherein the first status indication and the second status indication are multiplexed in the uplink control information message according to one of: a code-based multiplexing format or a sequence-based multiplexing format.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Chou teaches,
wherein the first status indication and the second status indication are multiplexed in the uplink control information message according to one of: a code-based multiplexing format or a sequence-based multiplexing format (Chou; The UE can multiplex feedback related to the data scheduled by sequence of downlink assignments and transmit the multiplexed feedback (e.g., in a type-2 HARQ codebook) in accordance with the uplink grant., Par. 0099).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN-Takeda-XU to include the use of uplink grant as taught by Chou in order to multiplex harq (Chou; Par. 0099).
Claim(s) 19 and 20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over SELVANESAN in view of Takeda et al. (Takeda hereafter) (US 20220124763 A1) and in further view of XU.
Regarding claim 19, SELVANESAN teaches, A non-transitory machine-readable medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processor of an processing unit, facilitate performance of operations, comprising (SELVANESAN; the relay UE, Par. 0325):
receiving, from a radio network node, a control information reporting configuration comprising at least one resource grant indication indicative of at least one control channel resource usable to transmit at least one status indication (SELVANESAN; the gNB provides the PUCCH resources for the overall feedback {circle around (3)} and the feedback {circle around (5)} about the first part of the transmission received at the relay UE using the following means: in the same DCI, Par. 0325-0326) corresponding to extended reality traffic directed to at least one appliance (SELVANESAN; one or more receiving entities, Par. 0022; user device … smart glass, Par. 0134) that is communicatively coupled with the processing unit (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16; The gNB 402 transmits to the relay UE over the Uu interface 414 the control, like the DCI, and the data of the transmission. The DCI also includes the resources to be used by the relay UE 400 for relaying the transmission to the RX UE 404, Par. 0430);
receiving, from the radio network node, a first downlink packet corresponding to a first extended reality traffic flow (SELVANESAN; used data flow, Par. 0314) directed to a first appliance (smart glass) of the at least one appliance (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16; The gNB 402 transmits … the data of the transmission, Par. 0430; The relaying entity may receive … transmissions or packets that are to be relayed to a receiving entity, Par. 0071);
attempting to decode, corresponding to the first appliance, the first downlink packet to result in a first decoding attempt (SELVANESAN; a relay ... providing relaying functionality as in an amplify and forward (AF) relay, or a decode-and-forward relay (DF), Par. 0062);
receiving, from the radio network node, a second downlink packet corresponding to a second extended reality traffic flow directed to a second appliance (smart glass) of the at least one appliance (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16; The gNB 402 transmits … the data of the transmission, Par. 0430; The relaying entity may receive … transmissions or packets that are to be relayed to a receiving entity, Par. 0071);
attempting to decode, corresponding to the second appliance, the second downlink packet to result in a second decoding attempt (SELVANESAN; a relay ... providing relaying functionality as in an amplify and forward (AF) relay, or a decode-and-forward relay (DF), Par. 0062); and
transmitting, to the radio network node employing the at least one control channel resource (SELVANESAN; The relay UE 400 reports over the Uu interface 414 the feedback received from the RX UE 404 to the gNB 402, Par. 0435), a first status indication indicative of a first decoding status corresponding to the first decoding attempt and a second status indication indicative of a second decoding status corresponding to the second decoding attempt (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “2”),
wherein the first extended reality appliance and the second extended reality appliance are different extended reality appliances (SELVANESAN; one or more receiving entities, Par. 0022; user device … smart glass, Par. 0134).
Although SELVANESAN teaches wearable device, smart glass, but failed to explicitly teach that wearable device, smart glass are extended reality appliance.
However, in the same field of endeavor, Takeda teaches in Fig. 3 and Par. 0035 that “various types of future devices may be considered in the NR-IoT. For example, the type of the device (terminal) may be at least one of wearable, augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR)”.
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN to include the use of various virtual reality devices as taught by Takeda in order to relay NR-IoT communication (Takeda; Fig. 3).
Although SELVANESAN teaches decoding the downlink transmission, but SELVANESAN-Takeda failed to explicitly teach,
decode according to decoding information corresponding to the appliance.
However, in the same field of endeavor, XU teaches,
decode according to decoding information corresponding to the appliance (XU; each relay UE 1610, 1620, 1630 at each hop would decode DCI/SCI and try to decode data traffic. If the data traffic can be decoded successfully, then the relay UE forms an SCI that indicates remaining resource allocation and scheduling info and re-encodes the data before transmitting them to relay UE at a next hop or a destination node, 0141; The DCI/SCI at each hop may carry other scheduling information, such as MCS and/or HARQ process ID, Par. 0159).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the invention to incorporate the teachings of SELVANESAN- Takeda to include the use of MCS (modulation and coding scheme) as taught by XU in order to decode data (XU; Par. 0141).
Regarding claim 20, SELVANESAN- Takeda-XU teaches, The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 19, wherein the first status indication is a negative acknowledgement (“NACK”) wherein the second status indication is an acknowledgement (“ACK”), and wherein the operations further comprise:
storing the second downlink packet to a memory of the extended reality processing unit (SELVANESAN; while maintaining the transmission in its buffer, Par. 0298);
transmitting, to the second extended reality appliance the second downlink packet (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “3”);
responsive to the transmitting of the NACK, receiving from the radio network node, a retransmitted version of the first downlink packet (SELVANESAN; In case the transmission from the transmitting entity to the relay UE failed, the relay UE may send a NACK to the transmitting entity requesting a retransmission, Par. 0738);
storing the retransmitted version of the first downlink packet to the memory (SELVANESAN; while maintaining the transmission in its buffer, Par. 0298); and
transmitting to the first extended reality appliance the retransmitted version of the first downlink packet (SELVANESAN; Fig. 16 element “3”).
Conclusion
Applicant's amendment necessitated the new ground(s) of rejection presented in this Office action. Accordingly, THIS ACTION IS MADE FINAL. See MPEP § 706.07(a). 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.
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/SHARMIN CHOWDHURY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2416
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