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 .
Applicant’s preliminary amendment filed 12/15/2023 is acknowledged.
Claims 1-6,8,10-12,14-18,21,22, and 24 are amended.
Claims 7,9,13,23, and 25 are cancelled.
Claims 1-6,8,10-12,14-22, and 24 are pending.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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 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.
Claim(s) 1,2,4,10,12,14,15,21,22, and 24 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Pi (US 20160277092).
Re claim 1:
Pi discloses a method performed by a wireless communication device, the method comprising: determining at least one range and/or resolution indicator, RRI, for sub-band Channel Quality Indicator, CQI, based on sub-band CQI values for two or more sub-bands (Para.[0040] In other words, the communication stations can use the same CQI table with different resolution and/or different dynamic range to report or interpret different kinds of CQI. In many cases, a UE may report more than one kind of CQI to the base station… The wideband CQI is averaged over a set of sub-bands and Para. [0024] The wideband CQI index may contain more bits than each subband differential CQI index, and each subband differential CQI index comprising more bits than each subband delta CQI index and – Examiner Note: the number of bits is the resolution);
determining sub-band differential CQI values for the sub-band CQI values relative to a wide-band CQI value based on the determined RRI (Para.[0040] With this approach, the differences between the sub-band CQIs and the wideband CQI, which we call differential sub-band CQI, are reported together with the wideband CQI); and
transmitting the determined at least one RRI for sub-band CQI and the determined sub-band differential CQI values to a network node (Para.[0040] In this case, the wideband CQI is reported using a full CQI, the sub-band CQI can be reported using a differential CQI).
Re claim 2:
Pi discloses a method performed by a network node, the method comprising: receiving, from a wireless communication device, at least one range and/or resolution indicator, RRI, for sub-band Channel Quality Indicator, CQI, the RRI being based on sub-band CQI values for two or more sub-bands (Para.[0040] In other words, the communication stations can use the same CQI table with different resolution and/or different dynamic range to report or interpret different kinds of CQI. In many cases, a UE may report more than one kind of CQI to the base station… The wideband CQI is averaged over a set of sub-bands and Para. [0024] The wideband CQI index may contain more bits than each subband differential CQI index, and each subband differential CQI index comprising more bits than each subband delta CQI index and – Examiner Note: the number of bits is the resolution);
receiving, from the wireless communication device, sub-band differential CQI values (Para.[0040] In this case, the wideband CQI is reported using a full CQI, the sub-band CQI can be reported using a differential CQI); and
determining the sub-band CQI values for the two or more sub-bands for the wireless communication device based on the sub-band differential CQI values and the at least one RRI for sub-band CQI (Para.[0042] At the receiver side, the sub-band CQI index can be obtained by adding the differential sub-band CQI index back to the wideband CQI index).
Re claim 4:
Pi discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one RRI for sub- band CQI comprises a range and/or resolution indicator that is common to all of the two or more sub-bands (Para.[0040] For example, 5 bits can be used for a full CQI report while 3 bits can be used for a differential CQI. A CQI table with 32 entries as shown in Table 5 can be used to report a full CQI. The differential compression approach can be viewed as constructing a smaller CQI sub-table from the original CQI table for reporting the differential CQI. As an example, assuming the full CQI index is 22, a 3-bit differential CQI sub-table can be constructed by selecting 8 rows around CQI index 22 from the original CQI table and Para.[0040] Para.[0040] In this case, the wideband CQI is reported using a full CQI, the sub-band CQI can be reported using a differential CQI and Para.[0040] The wideband CQI is averaged over a set of sub-bands – Examiner Note: The RRI of 5 bits is common to the two or more sub-bands used in the wideband CQI).
Re claim 10:
Pi discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one RRI comprises an individual RRI for each of the two or more sub-bands (Para.[0040] For example, 5 bits can be used for a full CQI report while 3 bits can be used for a differential CQI. A CQI table with 32 entries as shown in Table 5 can be used to report a full CQI. The differential compression approach can be viewed as constructing a smaller CQI sub-table from the original CQI table for reporting the differential CQI. As an example, assuming the full CQI index is 22, a 3-bit differential CQI sub-table can be constructed by selecting 8 rows around CQI index 22 from the original CQI table and Para.[0040] The wideband CQI is averaged over a set of sub-bands – Examiner Note: The RRI of 5 bits is for the two or more sub-bands used in the wideband CQI).
Re claim 12:
Pi discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one RRI comprises a range and/or resolution indicator that is common to all of the two or more sub-bands and a separate range and/or resolution indicator for at least one of the two or more sub-bands (Para.[0040] For example, 5 bits can be used for a full CQI report while 3 bits can be used for a differential CQI. A CQI table with 32 entries as shown in Table 5 can be used to report a full CQI. The differential compression approach can be viewed as constructing a smaller CQI sub-table from the original CQI table for reporting the differential CQI. As an example, assuming the full CQI index is 22, a 3-bit differential CQI sub-table can be constructed by selecting 8 rows around CQI index 22 from the original CQI table and Para.[0040] The wideband CQI is averaged over a set of sub-bands – Examiner Note: the wideband CQI and differential CQI are sent using separate resolutions).
Re claim 14:
Pi discloses the method of claim 1,wherein the at least one RRI is a range and resolution indicator for sub-band CQI, and the range and resolution indicator for sub-band CQI comprises information that indicates a maximum sub-band CQI value and a minimum sub-band CQI value as the range for the sub-band CQI (Para.[0045] In a third embodiment according to the principles of the present invention, the upper and lower limit indices for the differential CQI can be adjusted depending on the value of the full CQI. The full CQI represents the CQI index that is selected by a UE based upon the channel condition. In other words, the range of the differential CQI can be adjusted depending on the value of the full CQI. For example, assume the full CQI is 5 bits and uses the original CQI table shown in Table 1), and
wherein a resolution for sub-band CQI is given by a number of bits used for sub-band differential CQI (Para.[0040] For example, 5 bits can be used for a full CQI report while 3 bits can be used for a differential CQI).
Re claim 15:
Pi discloses the method of claim 1,wherein the at least one RRI is a range and resolution indicator for sub-band CQI, and the range and resolution indicator for sub-band CQI comprises information that indicates a minimum sub-band CQI value and a resolution for sub-band CQI (Para.[0045] In a third embodiment according to the principles of the present invention, the upper and lower limit indices for the differential CQI can be adjusted depending on the value of the full CQI. The full CQI represents the CQI index that is selected by a UE based upon the channel condition. In other words, the range of the differential CQI can be adjusted depending on the value of the full CQI. For example, assume the full CQI is 5 bits and uses the original CQI table shown in Table 1).
Re claim 21:
Pi discloses the method of claim 1,wherein the at least one RRI comprises separate indicators for two or more groups of sub-bands that are divided from the two or more sub-bands (Para.[0045] In the example given in Table 8, the UE first selects a wideband CQI index of 2 from Table 1. Then, the UE constructs a differential CQI sub-table (i.e., Table 8) by using the wideband CQI index of 2 as a reference. Afterwards, the UE selects a sub-band CQI of 3 from the differential CQI sub-table. Finally, the UE reports a 5-digit wideband CQI index of 2, and a 3-digit sub-band CQI index of 3. Note that if the UE selects another wideband CQI index, e.g., a wideband CQI index of 5, then, the UE has to construct another differential CQI sub-table).
Re claim 22: Claim 22 is rejected on the same grounds of rejection set forth in claim 1.
Re claim 24: Claim 22 is rejected on the same grounds of rejection set forth in claim 2.
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) 3 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pi (US 20160277092) in view of Raghavan (US 20230022249).
Re claim 3:
As discussed above, Pi meets all the limitations of the parent claims.
Pi does not explicitly disclose the method of claim 2, further comprising using the determined sub-band CQI values to perform selection of a modulation and coding scheme, MCS, for a transmission to or from the wireless communication device based on the determined sub-band CQI values.
Raghavan discloses the method of claim 2, further comprising using the determined sub-band CQI values to perform selection of a modulation and coding scheme, MCS, for a transmission to or from the wireless communication device based on the determined sub-band CQI values (para.[0058] The UE may then report the CQI index value to the base station and the base station may use the CQI index value to derive a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) (e.g., based on a lookup table that relates CQI index values to different MCSs), which the base station may use for subsequent communications with the UE).
Pi and Raghavan are analogous because they both pertain to data communications.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Pi to include determining MCS based on CQI as taught by Raghavan in order to improve CQI reporting across multiple subbands (Raghavan Para.[0004]).
Claim(s) 16 and 17 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Pi (US 20160277092) in view of Hindy (US 20240250733).
Re claim 16:
As discussed above, Pi meets all the limitations of the parent claims.
Pi does not explicitly disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one RRI comprises one range and/or resolution indicator per transport block for which the sub-band differential CQI values are reported.
Hindy discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one RRI comprises one range and/or resolution indicator per transport block for which the sub-band differential CQI values are reported (Table 4 Wide-band CQI for the first TB; Subband differential CQI for the first TB CQI Examiner Note: the wide-band CQI and differential CQI are for one TB, as shown by Table 4 of Hindy. Pi shows the resolutions for wide-band and differential CQI).
Pi and Hindy are analogous because they both pertain to data communications.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Pi to include range and resolution per transport block as taught by Hindy in order to improve spectral efficiency (Hindy Para.[0043]).
Re claim 17:
As discussed above, Pi meets all the limitations of the parent claims.
Pi does not explicitly disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one RRI comprises a common range and/or resolution indicator for two or more transport blocks for which the sub-band differential CQI values are reported.
Hindy discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the at least one RRI comprises a common range and/or resolution indicator for two or more transport blocks for which the sub-band differential CQI values are reported (Table 8 Subband differential CQI for the second TB of all even subbands Examiner Note: the differential CQI is for all even TBs, as shown by Table 8 of Hindy. Pi shows the resolutions for differential CQI).
Pi and Hindy are analogous because they both pertain to data communications.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Pi to include range and resolution for transport blocks as taught by Hindy in order to improve spectral efficiency (Hindy Para.[0043]).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5,6,8,11, and 18-20 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.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Bae (US 20250088242) shows a bit for indicating the CQI resolution.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MOHAMMAD SAJID ADHAMI whose telephone number is (571)272-8615. The examiner can normally be reached 8:30-5:00 PM.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Sujoy Kundu can be reached at (571) 272-8586. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/MOHAMMAD S ADHAMI/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2471
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