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 .
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument.
The assertion of official notice that was given in the rejection of claims 9 and 23 was not traversed, rendering the asserted subject matter admitted prior art. See MPEP 2144.03 C.
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, 10-20, and 24-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nam, US 20180042028 in view of Zeng, US 20180368108.
Claims 1 and 29: Nam discloses a UE and method for wireless communications at a user equipment (UE), comprising:
one or more processors; one or more memories coupled with the one or more processors and storing instructions executable by the one or more processors (Fig. 3 and its description) to cause the UE to:
receive, from a base station, a control message that indicates a joint transmission configuration (The UE is configured, based on RRC signaling from the base station, to derive CSI based on non-coherent or coherent joint transmission. ¶¶ 170 and 242. This shows a configuration for a distributed system associated with the base station. See e.g. ¶181.);
receive one or more reference signals from respective antenna panels (Reference signals are received at the UE. ¶243. These signals are received from a group of antenna panels. ¶¶ 181 and 198.);
generate a feedback report indicating one or more channel state information parameters for the one or more groups of distributed antenna panels based at least in part on the joint transmission configuration and the one or more reference signals; and transmit the feedback report to the base station (CSI values are derived, and a CSI report is generated and transmitted. ¶¶ 244-245).
Nam discloses a system for joint transmission from multiple TRPs, but does not disclose that its system operates with joint transmissions from one or more groups of distributed antenna panels of a single base station. Therefore Nam fails to disclose that the control message indicates a joint transmission configuration of the base station for one or more groups of distributed antenna panels of the base station; receiving reference signals from the distributed antenna panels of the base station; and generating a feedback report for the distributed antenna panels of the base station.
Zeng discloses a UE that receives joint transmissions from a base station having a group of distributed antenna panels, and determining transmission characteristics for the group of antenna panels (See ¶¶ 68 and 72).
It would have been obvious to the skilled artisan before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Nam by enabling the channel state feedback report to be generated based on multiple distributed panels of a single base station, as suggested in Zeng. Zeng describes determining joint transmission properties for multi-panel transmissions from a single base station to the UE. Zeng ¶l72. Zeng would have suggested to the POSITA that Nam’s system would be advantageously modified by enabling reporting for joint transmissions from multi-panel base stations, as this would have provided expanded capabilities for the system and would have resulted in improved transmissions. When Nam is modified to operate as disclosed but with joint transmissions from a multi-panel base station, the invention recited in these claims is rendered obvious.
Claims 15 and 30: the Nam-Zeng combination described above discloses a base station and method for wireless communications at a base station, comprising:
one or more a processors; one or more memories coupled with the one or more processors and storing instructions executable by the one or more processors (Nam Fig. 2 and its description) to cause the base station to:
transmit, to a user equipment (UE), a control message that indicates a joint transmission configuration of the base station for one or more groups of distributed antenna panels of the base station (The UE is configured, based on RRC signaling from the base station, to derive CSI based on non-coherent or coherent joint transmission. Nam ¶¶ 170 and 242. This shows a joint transmission configuration of a multi-panel base station. Zeng ¶¶ 68 and 72.);
transmit, to the UE, one or more reference signals using respective antenna panels of the one or more groups of distributed antenna panels of the base station (Reference signals are transmitted to the UE. Nam ¶243. These signals are received from a group of antenna panels. Nam ¶¶ 181 and 198 and Zeng ¶¶ 68 and 72); and
receive, from the UE, a feedback report indicating one or more channel state information parameters for the one or more groups of distributed antenna panels of the base station based at least in part on the joint transmission configuration and the one or more reference signals (CSI values are derived by the UE, and a CSI report thus generated is received from the UE. ¶¶ 244-245. This report indicates CSI of the panels of the base station, as suggested in Zeng ¶¶ 68 and 72.).
Claim 2: Nam discloses: receive a first channel state information reference signal via a first set of resources from a first group of antenna panels of the one or more groups of distributed antenna panels; and receive a second channel state information reference signal via a second set of resources from a second group of antenna panels of the one or more groups of distributed antenna panels (¶¶ 181 and 243).
Claim 3: Nam discloses: generate a first channel state information parameter for the first group of antenna panels based at least in part on the first channel state information reference signal; and generate a second channel state information parameter for the second group of antenna panels based at least in part on the second channel state information reference signal, wherein the feedback report comprises the first and second channel state information parameters according to a reporting order that is based at least in part on the first and second sets of resources (¶244).
Claim 4: Nam discloses: receive an indication of the reporting order from the base station, the reporting order configured for the UE (¶¶254-256).
Claim 5: Nam discloses that the reporting order corresponds to an increasing order or a decreasing order of respective resource identifiers for the first and second sets of resources (¶¶254-256).
Claim 6: Nam discloses: generate one or more co-phasing coefficients for the feedback report based at least in part on the joint transmission configuration indicating a fully coherent configuration or a partially coherent configuration, the one or more co-phasing coefficients for the one or more groups of distributed antenna panels (¶¶193 and 198).
Claim 10: Nam-Zeng discloses: generate one or more co-phasing coefficients for the feedback report, each of the one or more co-phasing coefficients corresponding to a respective group of the one or more groups of the distributed antenna panels of the base station wherein at least one of the one or more co-phasing coefficients is zero based at least in part on the joint transmission configuration being a partially coherent configuration (Nam ¶¶ 198-202. Zeng ¶¶ 68 and 72).
Claim 11: Nam-Zeng discloses: generate one or more co-phasing coefficients for the feedback report, each of the one or more co-phasing coefficients corresponding to a respective group of the one or more groups of the distributed antenna panels of the base station, each group associated with a respective layer of a joint transmission for the UE, wherein at least one of the one or more co-phasing coefficients is zero based at least in part on the joint transmission configuration being a non-coherent configuration (Nam ¶¶ 198-202. Zeng ¶¶ 68 and 72).
Claim 12: Nam-Zeng discloses: generate a precoder matrix for the feedback report based at least in part on the joint transmission configuration being a fully coherent configuration, wherein each column of the precoder matrix includes at least one non-zero value, the precoder matrix corresponding to a group of the one or more groups of the distributed antenna panels of the base station (Nam ¶203. Zeng ¶¶ 68 and 72).
Claim 13: Nam discloses that the joint transmission configuration comprises one of a fully coherent configuration, a partially coherent configuration, or a non-coherent configuration (¶¶ 102 and 170-174).
Claim 14: Nam discloses: receive the control message via radio resource control (RRC) signaling, a medium access control (MAC) control element (MAC-CE), or downlink control information (DCI) (¶¶ 170 and 242).
Claims 16-20, 24-26, and 28: see rejection of claims 2-6, 10-12, and 13, respectively.
Claim 27: Nam discloses select the joint transmission configuration for communicating, using the distributed system associated with the base station, with the UE (implicit in ¶102).
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 7-9 and 21-23 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Nam-Zeng in view of Faxer, US 20210143870.
Claim 7: Nam-Zeng fails to disclose: generate one or more channel state information reference signal resource indicators, each of the one or more channel state information reference signal resource indicators corresponding to a respective group of the one or more groups of the distributed antenna panels of the base station.
Faxer discloses: generate one or more channel state information reference signal resource indicators, each of the one or more channel state information reference signal resource indicators corresponding to a respective group of the one or more groups of the distributed antenna panels of the base station (¶¶134-136).
It would have been obvious to the skilled artisan before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Nam with these teachings in Faxer, the rationale being to ensure proper CSI measurement and reporting.
Claim 8: the Nam-Zeng-Faxer combination teaches or suggests: separately encode each channel state information reference signal resource indicator for each group of the one or more groups of the distributed antenna panels of the base station, wherein the feedback report includes the separately encoded channel state information reference signal resource indicator for each group (Nam ¶181, Faxer ¶¶134-136).
Claim 9: the Nam-Zeng-Faxer combination fails to explicitly teach jointly encode the one or more channel state information reference signal resource indicators for the one or more groups of the distributed antenna panels of the base station, wherein the feedback report includes the jointly encoded one or more channel state information reference signal resource indicators. However, official notice is taken that this was well known in the art, and would have been obvious to include in the Nam-Faxer combination in order to reduce overhead bandwidth requirements.
Claims 21-23: see rejection of claims 7-9, respectively.
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.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ROBERT J HANCE whose telephone number is (571)270-5319. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 11:00am-7:00pm ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Michael Fuelling can be reached at (571) 270-1367. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ROBERT J HANCE/Reexamination Specialist, Art Unit 3992
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