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 .
Claim Objections
Applicant is advised that should claims 19 and 24 be found allowable, claim 20 (duplicate of claim 19) and claim 25 (duplicate of claim 24) will be objected to under 37 CFR 1.75 as being substantial duplicates thereof. When two claims in an application are duplicates or else are so close in content that they both cover the same thing, despite a slight difference in wording, it is proper after allowing one claim to object to the other as being a substantial duplicate of the allowed claim. See MPEP § 608.01(m).
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1-6, 13-14, 16-27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over LU et al. (CN101656702A, hereinafter, “LU”, provided in the IDS by the applicant) in view of WANG et al. (CN 110881215A, hereinafter, “WANG”).
Claim 1. LU teaches: A method for processing a Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH) signal, comprising: - See Fig. 1, ¶ [0011], (“the ZC sequence is called the random access preamble sequence.”); ¶ [0021], (“A method for processing a signal to be transmitted…the signal to be transmitted is a Zadoff-Chu sequence”)
obtaining an initial signal, wherein the initial signal has corresponding period information; - in ¶ [0011], (“the ZC sequence is called the random access preamble sequence.”); ¶ [0021], (“A method for processing a signal to be transmitted, applicable to application scenarios where the signal to be transmitted is a Zadoff-Chu sequence…¶ [0025], Nzc is a prime number and is the length of the Zadoff-Chu sequence”, Nzc (eq. period information); ZC sequence (eq. initial signal))
obtaining a signal to be processed by performing a target processing on the initial signal based on the period information; - in ¶ [0107], (“Nzc is a prime number and is the length of the Zadoff-Chu sequence…¶ [0109] Step 102: Calculate the sequence sum of the Zadoff-Chu sequence to be sent: X u(0)… ¶ [0110] Step 103: Using u-1 as the physical root sequence number, generate the corresponding Zadoff-Chu root sequence…and take the conjugate…to obtain the corresponding conjugate sequence”, Nzc (eq. period information)) and
obtaining a target frequency domain signal by performing a frequency domain transformation on the signal to be processed. - in ¶ [0011 - 0012], (“the ZC sequence is called the random access preamble sequence. First, the time domain ZC sequence shown in equation (2) needs to be transformed to the frequency domain before subsequent processing is performed…When a ZC sequence in the time domain is transformed to the frequency domain using the DFT transform, the resulting ZC sequence in the frequency domain can be called the DFT sequence corresponding to the ZC sequence.”)
LU does not explicitly teach:
A method for processing a Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH) signal, comprising:
However, WANG teaches:
A method for processing a Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH) signal, comprising: - in ¶ [0033 - 0034], (“The signal receiver is used to receive the PRACH preamble format 2 signal in 5G and send the received signal to the signal preprocessing module; The signal preprocessing module is used to process the received signal.”); ¶ [0060], (“PRACH represents the Physical Random Access Channel”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified LU with WANG to specify a Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH) signal, as taught by WANG. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to explicitly clarify that the signal being processed is a PRACH signal, as suggested by WANG, The signal receiving end is used to receive the PRACH preamble format 2 signal in 5G and send the received signal to the signal preprocessing module. - ¶ [0085]
Claim 2. Combination of LU and WANG teaches The method of claim 1, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
LU teaches:
wherein a first amount of computation for performing the frequency domain transformation on the signal to be processed is less than - in ¶ [0136 - 0137], (“The processing using the technical solution proposed in this invention requires only 2×839 complex multiplications…proposes a method that only requires 2Nzc complex multiplications to transform a prime-length ZC sequence into a corresponding DFT sequence.”, This processed form of the ZC sequence is the signal to be processed and the required computation is the first amount of computation (which is less than a second amount of computation.)) a second amount of computation for performing the frequency domain transformation on the initial signal. - in ¶ [0016 - 0017], (“As can be seen from equations (3) and (4), performing a DFT transformation on an N-point ZC sequence requires N2 complex multiplications and N(N-1) complex additions, which is computationally very large…using the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) for transformation…requires the number of points N in the sequence to be 2p (p is an integer)…using FFT transformation would result in significant redundancy and complexity”, This defines the second amount of computation.)
Claim 3. Combination of LU and WANG teaches The method of claim 1, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
WANG further teaches:
wherein obtaining the initial signal comprises: obtaining preamble format information of a PRACH; - in ¶ [0054], (“S1: Acquire the signal of PRACH preamble format 2 in 5G;”)
determining, based on the preamble format information, a target number of points for performing the frequency domain transformation on the initial signal; - in ¶ [0015], (“when the receiver receives a signal in 5G PRACH preamble format 2…¶ [0019] Perform a DFT transform on the local ZC sequence in window i-1 to generate a frequency domain ZC sequence, take its conjugate, and then multiply it with the 839-point frequency domain preamble sequence in window i to obtain the sequence related to the frequency domain ZC sequence in window i-1 and the 839-point frequency domain preamble sequence”) and determining the period information corresponding to the initial signal - in ¶ [0071 - 0073], (“The formula for solving the local ZC sequence is: Xu(i) = e
-
j
π
(
i
+
1
)
L
R
A
Where e is a constant, i represents a point in LRA, j is an imaginary number, LRA represents the length of the ZC sequence, and u represents the physical root sequence number.”) based on the target number of points. - in ¶ [0066], (“839-point frequency domain preamble sequence in window I”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified LU with WANG to include operations of obtaining the initial signal, as taught by WANG. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to improve PRACH signal processing, as suggested by WANG, The signal receiving end is used to receive the PRACH preamble format 2 signal in 5G and send the received signal to the signal preprocessing module. - ¶ [0085]
Claim 4. Combination of LU and WANG teaches The method of claim 1, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
LU teaches:
wherein obtaining the signal to be processed by performing the target process on the initial signal based on the period information comprises: - in ¶ [0107], (“Nzc is a prime number and is the length of the Zadoff-Chu sequence…¶ [0109] Step 102: Calculate the sequence sum of the Zadoff-Chu sequence to be sent: X u(0)… ¶ [0110] Step 103: Using u-1 as the physical root sequence number, generate the corresponding Zadoff-Chu root sequence…and take the conjugate…to obtain the corresponding conjugate sequence”, Nzc (eq. period information))
obtaining a first sequence number parameter in the initial signal; - in ¶ [0104], (“Step 101: according to the physics root sequence number of Zadoff-Chu sequence to be sent: u, determine corresponding u -1 and a”)
determining a multiplicative inverse corresponding to the first sequence number parameter based on the period information; - in ¶ [0105 - 0107], (“u*u-1＝a*N zc+1…u-1 is an integer, which is the multiplicative inverse of u, and u-1∈ [1, N ZC-1]; Nzc is a prime number and is the length of the Zadoff-Chu sequence”, This describes determining a multiplicative inverse u-1 of the sequence number u, and this determination is based on the prime-length periodicity of the ZC sequence Nzc (eq. period information).)
determining a sequence of parameters corresponding to the period information, wherein the sequence of parameters comprises a plurality of second sequence number parameters; - in ¶ [0107], (“Nzc is a prime number and is the length of the Zadoff-Chu sequence”); ¶ [0110], (“where k=0, 1,..., Nzc-1.”, The plurality of parameters k=0 to Nzc-1 forms a sequence of parameters bounded by the period Nzc. (eq. plurality of second sequence number parameters); Nzc (eq. period information))
determining a plurality of target sequence values corresponding to the plurality of second sequence number parameters respectively based on the initial signal; - in ¶ [0110], (“Step 103: Using u-1 as the physical root sequence number, generate the corresponding Zadoff-Chu root sequence…where k=0, 1,..., Nzc-1.”, For each parameter k, ZC sequence values are generated and derived from the original ZC construction. These generated values are target sequence values determined from the initial signal.)
extracting a plurality of target conjugate values corresponding to the plurality of target sequence values, respectively; - in ¶ [0110], (“Step 103: Using u-1 as the physical root sequence number, generate the corresponding Zadoff-Chu root sequence…and take the conjugate…to obtain the corresponding conjugate sequence:…where k=0, 1,..., Nzc-1”, This describes performing conjugation of each generated ZC sequence value, resulting in a plurality of conjugates values, one for each k.) and
obtaining the signal to be processed by summing up the plurality of target conjugate values based on the initial signal. – See Fig. 2, ¶ [0109], (“Step 102: Calculate the sequence sum of the Zadoff-Chu sequence to be sent: X u(0)”); ¶ [0114], (“This concludes the method for processing signals to be transmitted…After obtaining the DFT sequence corresponding to the ZC sequence, the DFT sequence can be used for subsequent processing.”)
Claim 5. Combination of LU and WANG teaches The method of claim 1, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
LU teaches:
wherein obtaining the target frequency domain signal by performing the frequency domain transformation process on the signal to be processed comprises: - in ¶ [0011 - 0012], (“the ZC sequence is called the random access preamble sequence. First, the time domain ZC sequence shown in equation (2) needs to be transformed to the frequency domain before subsequent processing is performed…When a ZC sequence in the time domain is transformed to the frequency domain using the DFT transform...”) obtaining the target frequency domain signal by performing a Discrete Fourier Transformation (DFT) on the signal to be processed. - in ¶ [0114], (“This concludes the method for processing signals to be transmitted…After obtaining the DFT sequence corresponding to the ZC sequence, the DFT sequence can be used for subsequent processing…after obtaining the DFT sequence of the ZC sequence to be transmitted using the method of the present invention, the DFT sequence can be transformed into an OFDM signal after carrier mapping, IFFT, and CP addition processing, and then transmitted outward.”)
Claim 6. Combination of LU and WANG teaches The method of claim 1, - refer to the indicated claim for reference(s).
WANG further teaches:
wherein the signal to be processed is a baseband signal. - in ¶ [0004], (“processes the baseband signal to obtain the unique properties of the random access preamble”)
It would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have modified LU with WANG to include the signal to be processed is a baseband signal, as taught by WANG. One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to make this modification to explicitly clarify that the signal to be processed is a baseband signal, as suggested by WANG, The signal receiving end is used to receive the PRACH preamble format 2 signal in 5G and send the received signal to the signal preprocessing module. - ¶ [0085]
Claim 13 is the apparatus claim corresponding to the method claim of Claim 1 and is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 1 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claim 14 is rejected under the same rationale as Claim 1 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 16, 18, 23 are rejected under the same rationale as Claim 3 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 17, 19-20, 24-25 are rejected under the same rationale as Claim 4 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 21, 26 are rejected under the same rationale as Claim 5 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Claims 22, 27 are rejected under the same rationale as Claim 6 since they recite nearly identical limitations.
Conclusion
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/SHIMA WASEL/Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2475
/KHALED M KASSIM/supervisory patent examiner, Art Unit 2475