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 .
This Office Action is in response to Application filed on November 28, 2023 in which claims 1-20 are presented for examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on June 17, 2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Priority
Receipt is acknowledged of certified copies of papers required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Claim Objections
Claim 18 is objected to because of the following informalities: claim 18 does not end with a period. Appropriate correction is required. See MPEP 608.01(m) Form of Claims [R-10.2019] The claim or claims must commence on a separate physical sheet or electronic page and should appear after the detailed description of the invention. Any sheet including a claim or portion of a claim may not contain any other parts of the application or other material. While there is no set statutory form for claims, the present Office practice is to insist that each claim must be the object of a sentence starting with "I (or we) claim," "The invention claimed is" (or the equivalent). If, at the time of allowance, the quoted terminology is not present, it is inserted by the Office of Data Management. Each claim begins with a capital letter and ends with a period. Periods may not be used elsewhere in the claims except for abbreviations. See Fressola v. Manbeck, 36 USPQ2d 1211 (D.D.C. 1995). Where a claim sets forth a plurality of elements or steps, each element or step of the claim should be separated by a line indentation, 37 CFR 1.75(i).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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 (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) 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.
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, 4-10 and 14, 17-20 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over US 2022/0232639 A1 (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) 21 July 2022 (2022-07-21) in view of WO 2022/061881 A1 (QUALCOMM INC [US]; DAI JING [CN]; LEI JING [US]; WEI CHAO [CN]) 31 March 2022 (2022-03-31).
Regarding claim 1, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) disclose “A method of wireless communication of a user equipment, UE, comprising: receiving, from a base station, a system information block, SIB” (See Paragraph [0109]); “determining whether the SIB includes a set of candidate repetition factors for physical uplink control channel, PUCCH, transmissions” (See Paragraph [0109] describing one or more numbers
of PUCCH repetitions may be configured by a RRC parameter in system information); “determining a particular repetition factor based on at least one of the set of candidate repetition factors and a dynamic indication of a repetition factor” (See Paragraph [0109], wherein the term "DCI" refers to a dynamic indication); and “transmitting an acknowledgement, ACK, or negative acknowledgement, NACK, of a message 4 of the random access procedure in a PUCCH in accordance with the particular repetition factor (this feature is considered as being implicitly disclosed). It is noted however, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) did not specifically detail the aspects of “in response to determining that the SIB includes the set of candidate repetition factors: transmitting, to the base station in a message of a random access procedure, an indication of a capability of the UE for PUCCH repetition” as recited in the instant claim 1. On the other hand, DAI Jing et al. achieved the aforementioned claimed features because the convey of capability information from UE to the network is considered as part of general knowledge and common practice in relevant technical fields. In fact, such a mechanism is disclosed by (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) in (Paragraph [0070]), albeit not for PUCCH repetition. In this aspect, DAI Jing et al. discloses in the same technical context (see DAI Jing et al. Paragraph [0100]) describing the transmission of capability information related to coverage enhancement for Random Access procedure, wherein the term "coverage enhancement" refers to PUCCH repetition. The skilled person in the art, starting from the teaching in (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) to solve the problem stated above, would therefore be prompted by the disclosure of DAI Jing et al. to combine the teaching of both documents, thereby reaching the solution as defined by claim 1, without the exercise of inventive skill.
As per claim 4, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) disclose “receiving, from the base station, the dynamic indication of the repetition factor in at least one of a message 2 of the random access procedure, the message 4, or downlink control information (DCI) scheduling the message 4” (See Paragraph 0019).
As per claims 5-7, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) “wherein the indication of the capability is transmitted in a message 1 or a message 3 of the random access procedure”; “wherein the indication of the capability is carried in a capability field in the message 3; and “wherein the determining the particular repetition factor
based on at least one of the set of candidate repetition factors and the dynamic
indication further comprises: determining the set of candidate repetition factors includes only one repetition factor; and determining that the dynamic indication is not received, wherein the particular repetition factor is determined to be the one repetition factor in the set of candidate repetition factors” (See Paragraph [0109] describing one or more numbers of PUCCH repetitions may be configured by a RRC parameter in system information).
As per claim 8, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) disclose “wherein the determining the particular repetition factor based on at least one of the set of candidate repetition factors and the dynamic indication further comprises: determining the set of candidate repetition factors includes more than one repetition factors; and receiving the dynamic indication that selects the particular repetition factor from the set of candidate repetition factors” (See Paragraph [0109], wherein the term "DCI" refers to a dynamic indication).
As per claim 9-10, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) disclose “determining whether a frequency hopping parameter is included in the SIB; and in response to determining that the frequency hopping parameter is included, transmitting the ACK or the NACK of the message 4 in the PUCCH and/or other PUCCH transmissions using a PUCCH-Config Common information element with frequency hopping in accordance with the frequency hopping parameter; wherein the frequency hopping parameter indicates one
of: no frequency hopping, intra-slot frequency hopping, or inter-slot frequency
hopping” (this feature is considered as being implicitly disclosed).
Regarding claim 14, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) disclose “An apparatus for wireless communication, the apparatus being a user equipment (UE), comprising: a memory; and at least one processor coupled to the memory and configured to: receive, from a base station, a system information block (SIB)” (See Paragraph [0109]); “determine whether the SIB includes a set of candidate repetition factors for physical uplink control channel, PUCCH, transmissions” (See Paragraph [0109] describing one or more numbers of PUCCH repetitions may be configured by a RRC parameter in system information); “determine a particular repetition factor based on at least one of the set of candidate repetition factors and a dynamic indication of a repetition factor” (See Paragraph [0109], wherein the term "DCI" refers to a dynamic indication); and “transmit an acknowledgement, ACK, or negative acknowledgement, NACK, of a message 4 of the random access procedure in a PUCCH in accordance with the particular repetition factor (this feature is considered as being implicitly disclosed). It is noted however, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) did not specifically detail the aspects of “in response to determining that the SIB includes the set of candidate repetition factors: transmit, to the base station in a message of a random access procedure, an indication of a capability of the UE for PUCCH repetition” as recited in the instant claim 14. On the other hand, DAI Jing et al. achieved the aforementioned claimed features because the convey of capability information from UE to the network is considered as part of general knowledge and common practice in relevant technical fields. In fact, such a mechanism is disclosed by (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) in (Paragraph [0070]), albeit not for PUCCH repetition. In this aspect, DAI Jing et al. discloses in the same technical context (see DAI Jing et al. Paragraph [0100]) describing the transmission of capability information related to coverage enhancement for Random Access procedure, wherein the term "coverage enhancement" refers to PUCCH repetition. The skilled person in the art, starting from the teaching in (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) to solve the problem stated above, would therefore be prompted by the disclosure of DAI Jing et al. to combine the teaching of both documents, thereby reaching the solution as defined by claim 14, without the exercise of inventive skill.
As per claim 17, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) disclose “wherein the at least one processor is further configured to: receive, from the base station, the dynamic indication of the repetition factor in at least one of a message 2 of the random access procedure, the message 4, or downlink control information (DCI) scheduling the message 4” (See Paragraph 0019).
As per claims 18-20, (WANG HAI-HAN [TW] ET AL) “wherein the indication of the capability is transmitted in a message 1 or a message 3 of the random access procedure”; “wherein the indication of the capability is carried in a capability field in the message 3; and “wherein the determining the particular repetition factor
based on at least one of the set of candidate repetition factors and the dynamic
indication further comprises: determining the set of candidate repetition factors includes only one repetition factor; and determining that the dynamic indication is not received, wherein the particular repetition factor is determined to be the one repetition factor in the set of candidate repetition factors” (See Paragraph [0109] describing one or more numbers of PUCCH repetitions may be configured by a RRC parameter in system information).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-3 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the prior art of record failed to show “determining whether a reference signal received power (RSRP) threshold is included in the SIB; measuring an RSRP of a downlink reference signal; and determining whether the measured RSRP is lower than the RSRP threshold when the RSRP threshold is configured in the SIB, wherein the indication of the capability is transmitted further in response to a determination that the measured RSRP is lower than the RSRP threshold.” These claimed features if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims would render claim 2 allowable over the prior art of record.
Claim 3 would be allowable at least for it dependency, on claim 2.
Claims 11-13 are allowable over the prior art of record.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the prior art of record failed to show “method of wireless communication of a user equipment (UE), comprising: performing at least one of a first determination of (a) whether a Bandwidth Part (BWP) selected for a random access procedure is configured with a set of random access (RA) resources indicating Msg3 repetition and Msg4 Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) acknowledgement (ACK) repetition as well as other RA resources not indicating Msg3 repetition or Msg4 HARQ ACK repetition and (b) whether a reference signal received power (RSRP) of a downlink reference signal is less than a threshold; and a second determination of whether the BWP is configured with the set of RA resources indicating the Msg3 repetition and the Msg4 HARQ ACK repetition and is configured with no other RA resources; in response to one of the first determination and the second determination being true, determining that both Msg3 repetition and Msg4 HARQ-ACK repetition are applicable for the random access procedure.” These claimed features in conjunction with all the other claimed limitations render claim 11 allowable over the prior art of record.
Claims 12-13 are at least allowable for their dependencies, directly or indirectly on the allowable claim 11.
Claims 15-16 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.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter: the prior art of record failed to show “determining whether a reference signal received power (RSRP) threshold is included in the SIB; measuring an RSRP of a downlink reference signal; and determining whether the measured RSRP is lower than the RSRP threshold when the RSRP threshold is configured in the SIB, wherein the indication of the capability is transmitted further in response to a determination that the measured RSRP is lower than the RSRP threshold.” These claimed features if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims would render claim 15 allowable over the prior art of record.
Claim 16 would be allowable at least for it dependency, on claim 15.
Other References Cited
Cozzo; Carmela US-20240114522-A1 describing a UE (116) that has a transceiver (310) to receive a system information block (SIB) providing information for a first set of PUCCH resources for a transmission of a PUCCH on a primary cell. A processor (340) is operably coupled to the transceiver. The processor is configured to determine a PUCCH resource from the first set of PUCCH resources based on the PUCCH 18resource indicator field. The transceiver is provided to transmit the PUCCH with the number of repetitions using the PUCCH resource on the primary cell, where the number of repetitions is based on the downlink assignment index (DAI) field. The transceiver transmits a medium access control (MAC)
Cirik; Ali Cagatay US-20230199796-A1 describing method for allowing a base station to semi-statically configure a user equipment (UE) with a default downlink control information (BWP) within a set of configured downlink BWPs associated with a PCell. The method allows the UE to determine which BWP is the initial active downlink BWP based on a CORESET configuration obtained using the PBCH, and he base station can configure the UE with a BWP inactivity timer value for the PCell, so that the UE can start or restart the BWP-inactivity timer at any appropriate time.
Conclusion
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/FRANTZ COBY/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2459
January 9, 2026