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 action is response to the application filed on 12/18/2023. Claims 1-30 are pending and herein considered.
Oath/Declaration
The receipt of oath/declaration is acknowledged.
Drawings
The drawings were received on 12/18/2023. These drawings are reviewed and accepted by the Examiner.
Specification
The lengthy specification has not been checked to the extent necessary to determine the presence of all possible minor errors. Applicant’s cooperation is requested in correcting any errors of which applicant may become aware in the specification.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS), submitted on 12/18/2023, is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CRR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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 of this title, 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.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1, 7-8, 12-16, 22-23, 27 and 30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xu et al. (U.S 2020/0204312) in view of Kim et al. (U.S 2020/0163048).
For claim 1:
Xu discloses a method of wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE) (see Xu, at least figure 1; wireless communication performed by a user equipment (UE)), the method comprising:
receiving, from a base station (BS), a multi-transport block (TB) repetition configuration indicating a first number of repetitions and a second number of repetitions (see Xu, at least paragraph [0448]-[0449]; the base station may configure the wireless device with a repetition number of eight slots);
receiving, from the BS, downlink control information (DCI) indicating a beam pattern including a plurality of beam directions (see Xu, at least Figure 26B and paragraph [0257]; [0480]; At 4520, the wireless device may receive a downlink control information (DCI). The DCI may indicate a number of PDSCH transmission occasions for transmission repetitions of a transport block (TB), and [0384]-[0385]; [0392]; wireless device may transmit one or more beam management reports to a base station );
communicating, with the BS based on the multi-TB repetition configuration and the beam pattern (see Xu, at least figure 26B; Beam failure in multiple TRPs and paragraph [0257]; [0276]; [0281]-[0283]; [0448]; transmission (e.g., aggregationFactorDL larger than 1), in which a same symbol allocation may be applied across the repetition transmission (e.g., the same symbol allocation may be applied across aggregationFactorDL consecutive slots). The wireless device may expect that a transport block (TB) may be repeated within each symbol allocation among each of the aggregationFactorDL consecutive slots) , a first TB and a second TB associated with a same scheduling grant (see Xu, at least Figures 27-28 and 41B, paragraph [0275]; UL/DL scheduling grant), wherein the communicating the first TB and the second TB includes: communicating the first number of repetitions for the first TB; and communicating the second number of repetitions for the second TB (see Xu, at least paragraph [0449]; The multiple PDSCHs may be from different transport blocks (e.g., PDSCH0 may be from TB0, PDSCH1 may be from TB1, PDSCH2 may be from TB2, PDSCH3 may be from TB3, etc.).
Xu does not explicitly disclose receiving, from the BS, downlink control information (DCI) indicating a beam pattern including a plurality of beam directions.
Kim, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses Xu fails: the paging DCI and the paging message transmitted in the PO are also transmitted in the same pattern as the beam pattern of the SS block, the UE which has determined the index of the SS block received with the best quality may determine a slot in the PO and a beam direction of paging for decoding (see Kim, at least paragraph [0094] and [0054]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by Kim. The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks in order to support multiple-TB transmission with repetitions for each TB where the network may support both of the above-described paging message transmission methods.
For claims 7 and 22:
In addition to rejection in claims 7 and 22, Xu-Kim further discloses mapping, to a multi-TB repetition sequence including the first number of repetitions and the second number of repetitions (see Xu, at least paragraph [0448]; a wireless device may be configured with repetition transmission (e.g., aggregationFactorDL larger than 1), in which a same symbol allocation may be applied across the repetition transmission (e.g., the same symbol allocation may be applied across aggregationFactorDL consecutive slots). The wireless device may expect that a transport block (TB) may be repeated within each symbol allocation among each of the aggregationFactorDL consecutive slots), one of the beam pattern or a pre-configured beam pattern different from the beam pattern based on the first number of repetitions of the first TB, the second number of repetitions of the second TB (see Xu, at least paragraph [0257]; [0263]; DM-RS pattern, and/or scrambling sequence may be same or different), and a number of scheduled TBs associated with the scheduling grant (see Xu, at least paragraph [0255]; the DCI 517 on PDCCH 515 may indicate at least one of following: one or more downlink assignments and/or one or more uplink scheduling grants).
For claims 8, 23 and 30:
In addition to rejection in claims 8, 23 and 30, Xu- Kim further discloses: receiving, from the BS, a redundancy version (RV) configuration indicating a first RV value for the first repetition of the first TB and a second RV value for the first repetition of the second TB; mapping a first preconfigured RV sequence starting from the first RV value to the first number of repetitions; and mapping a second preconfigured RV sequence starting from the second RV value to the second number of repetitions independently of the first number of repetitions (see Xu, at least figure 33B, and paragraph [0446]; The base station may select transmit bits based on reading a required number of bits from the circular buffer. The exact selected bits for transmission may depend on a redundancy version (RV) (e.g., RV0, RV1, RV2 or RV3) corresponding to a different starting position in the circular buffer. The base station, by selecting a different RV, may generate different set of coded bits representing a same set of information bits. The different starting position in the circular buffer may be defined such that both RV0 and RV3 are self-decodable, which means RV0 and RV3 may include systematic bits under typical scenario).
For claim 12:
In addition to rejection in claim 12, Xu- Kim further discloses wherein: the communicating the first number of repetitions of the first TB comprises receiving a first number of downlink (DL) repetitions of the first TB; and the communicating the first number of repetitions of the first TB comprises receiving a second number of DL repetitions of the second TB (see Xu, at least paragraph [0448]; a wireless device may be configured with repetition transmission (e.g., aggregationFactorDL larger than 1), in which a same symbol allocation may be applied across the repetition transmission (e.g., the same symbol allocation may be applied across aggregationFactorDL consecutive slots). The wireless device may expect that a transport block (TB) may be repeated within each symbol allocation among each of the aggregationFactorDL consecutive slots).
For claim 13:
In addition to rejection in claim 12, Xu- Kim further discloses wherein: the communicating the first number of repetitions of the first TB comprises transmitting a first number of uplink (UL) repetitions of the first TB; and the communicating the first number of repetitions of the first TB comprises transmitting a second number of UL repetitions of the second TB (see Xu, at least paragraph [0274]-[0275]; uplink power control commands for one or more cells, one or more timing information (e.g., TB transmission/reception timing, HARQ feedback timing, etc.), etc. In an example, a DCI may indicate an uplink grant comprising transmission parameters for one or more transport blocks).
For claim 14:
In addition to rejection in claim 14, Xu-Kim further discloses wherein the DCI indicates the scheduling grant (see Xu, at least paragraph [0255]; the DCI 517 on PDCCH 515 may indicate at least one of following: one or more downlink assignments and/or one or more uplink scheduling grants).
For claim 15:
In addition to rejection in claim 15, Xu-Kim further discloses wherein the scheduling grant is a semi-static grant (see Xu, at least paragraph [0257]; [0259]; [0260]-[0263] a base station may semi-statistically configure a UE with a maximum number of front-loaded DM-RS symbols for PUSCH and/or PUCCH).
For claim 16:
For claim 16, claim 16 is directed to a method which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 16 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
For claim 27:
For claim 27, claim 27 is directed to a user equipment (UE) which has similar scope as claim 1. Therefore, claim 27 remains un-patentable for the same reasons.
Claims 2-3, 17 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Xu et al. (U.S 2020/0204312) in view of Kim et al. (U.S 2020/0163048) further in view of MODERATOR (NOKIA), et al., "Summary #1 of Multi-TRP PUCCB and PUSCB Enhancements", 3GPP TSG RAN WG1 #106-e, 3GPP Draft, R1-2108298, 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), Mobile Competence Centre, 650, Route Des Lucioles, F-06921 Sophia-Antipolis Cedex, France, Vol. RAN WG1, No. e-Meeting, 20210816-20210827, 51 Pages, 17 August 2021 (2021-08-17), XP052042113, page 43; hereinafter “MODERATOR- R1-2108298”.
For claims 2 and 17:
In addition to rejection in claims 2 and 17, Xu-Kim further discloses determining a multi-TB repetition sequence including the first number of repetitions and the second number of repetitions (see Xu, at least paragraph [0449]; The multiple PDSCHs may be from different transport blocks (e.g., PDSCH0 may be from TB0, PDSCH1 may be from TB1, PDSCH2 may be from TB2, PDSCH3 may be from TB3, etc.); and
Xu-Kim does not explicitly discloses mapping the beam pattern to the multi-TB repetition sequence, wherein the beam pattern indicates a preconfigured pattern of beam directions.
MODERATOR- R1-2108298, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses Xu-Kim fails: a sequential mapping pattern is configured and mapping pattern is configured, frequency hopping is performed among the repetitions with the same beam (see MODERATOR- R1-2108298, at least page 5, Scheme 1, Proposal 2.3, also see page 34).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by MODERATOR- R1-2108298. The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks in order to support TDMed PUCCH scheme(s) to improve reliability and robustness for PUCCH using multi-TRP and/or multi-panel.
For claims 3 and 18:
In addition to rejection in claims 3 and 18, Xu-Kim further discloses determining a multi-TB repetition sequence including the first number of repetitions and the second number of repetitions (see Xu, at least paragraph [0449]; The multiple PDSCHs may be from different transport blocks (e.g., PDSCH0 may be from TB0, PDSCH1 may be from TB1, PDSCH2 may be from TB2, PDSCH3 may be from TB3, etc.);
Xu-Kim does not explicitly discloses mapping the beam pattern to the first number of repetitions of the first TB in a multi-TB repetition sequence including the first number of repetitions and the second number of repetitions, wherein the beam pattern indicates a preconfigured pattern of beam directions; and mapping the beam pattern to the second number of repetitions of the second TB in the multi-TB repetition sequence.
MODERATOR- R1-2108298, from the same or similar fields of endeavor, discloses Xu-Kim fails: a sequential mapping pattern is configured and mapping pattern is configured, frequency hopping is performed among the repetitions with the same beam (see MODERATOR- R1-2108298, at least page 5, Scheme 1, Proposal 2.3, also see page 34) and (see MODERATOR- R1-2108298, at least page 12, #8; The configured RV sequence (via "repK-RV") is applied, separately for PUSCH repetitions corresponding to the first TRP, and and the second TRP with a an RV offset for the starting RV corresponding to the second TRP (similar to the case of dynamic multi-TRP PUSCH repetition).
Therefore, it would have been obvious statement before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a system comprises a method as taught by MODERATOR- R1-2108298. The motivation for doing this is to provide a system networks in order to support TDMed PUCCH scheme(s) to improve reliability and robustness for PUCCH using multi-TRP and/or multi-panel.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 4-6, 9-11, 19-21, 24-26, 28 and 29 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, set forth in this Office action.
Conclusion
The prior arts made or record and not relied upon are considered pertinent to applicant's disclosures. Ye et al. (U.S 2022/0303950), discloses the Mechanisms for Indicating Beam Directions and the beam indication information may indicate a virtual beam pattern from a predetermined list of virtual beam patterns, wherein each of the virtual beam patterns specifies a virtual beam index for each of the temporal units of the temporal interval. The beam indication information may also include a mapping of the virtual beam indices to corresponding actual beam indices.
Zhang et al. (U.S 11,272,576), discloses Receive beamforming makes it possible to determine the direction from which the wave (front) arrives, and suppress selected interfering signals by applying a beam pattern null in the direction of the interfering signal. Adaptive beamforming is a technique for continually applying beamforming to a moving receiver, which typically requires rapid signal processing and powerful algorithms.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to LAN HUONG TRUONG whose telephone number is (571)270-5829. The examiner can normally be reached on Mon-Fri (7:30AM-5:00PM).
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, RICKY NGO can be reached on 571-272-3139. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/Lan-Huong Truong/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit: 2464
01/20/2026