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 .
Claims 1-19 and 22 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The IDS statements filed to date have been considered by the examiner.
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) 1-7, 12-17, and 22 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Sun et al., US 2018/0124753, (“Sun”).
Independent Claims
Regarding claim 1, Sun teaches “A method for processing a group-scheduling instruction, performed by a network device (see, e.g., Fig. 2, scheduling entity/base station 202 for a “network device”), and comprising:
sending a group-scheduling instruction for a user equipment (UE) group, wherein the UE group comprises one or more UEs” (see Fig. 2, UEs 204a or scheduled entity for a “UE group”; see paragraph nos. 0049, 0065 and in particular, paragraph no. 0049, “ In some examples, access to the air interface may be scheduled, wherein a scheduling entity (e.g., a base station) allocates resources (e.g., time-frequency resources) for communication among some or all devices and equipment within its service area or cell. Within the present disclosure, as discussed further below, the scheduling entity may be responsible for scheduling, assigning, reconfiguring, and releasing resources for one or more scheduled entities. That is, for scheduled communication, UEs or scheduled entities utilize resources allocated by the scheduling entity”; see also, paragraph no. 0065, “The DCI within the PDCCH provides downlink resource assignments and/or uplink resource grants for one or more scheduled entities. Multiple PDCCHs may be transmitted each slot and each PDCCH may carry user-specific DCI or common DCI (e.g., control information broadcast to a group of scheduled entities)”).
Regarding independent claim 22, this independent claim is a corresponding apparatus claim of the method claim 1 and recites similar subject matter. As such, the rationale behind the above rejection of claim 1 applies with equal force to this independent claim and as further amplified below to highlight the minor differences between the claims. See Fig. 5 for the claimed structural elements of the claim.
Regarding independent claim 12, Sun teaches “A method for processing a group-scheduling instruction, performed by a user equipment (UE) (see, e.g., Fig. 2, UE/scheduled entity 204a for a “UE”), and comprising:
receiving a group-scheduling instruction for a UE group, wherein the UE group comprises one or more UEs” (see Fig. 2, UEs 204a or scheduled entity for a “UE group”; see paragraph nos. 0049, 0065 and in particular, paragraph no. 0049, “ In some examples, access to the air interface may be scheduled, wherein a scheduling entity (e.g., a base station) allocates resources (e.g., time-frequency resources) for communication among some or all devices and equipment within its service area or cell. Within the present disclosure, as discussed further below, the scheduling entity may be responsible for scheduling, assigning, reconfiguring, and releasing resources for one or more scheduled entities. That is, for scheduled communication, UEs or scheduled entities utilize resources allocated by the scheduling entity”; see also, paragraph no. 0065, “The DCI within the PDCCH provides downlink resource assignments and/or uplink resource grants for one or more scheduled entities. Multiple PDCCHs may be transmitted each slot and each PDCCH may carry user-specific DCI or common DCI (e.g., control information broadcast to a group of scheduled entities)”).
Dependent Claims
Regarding claim 2, Sun teaches “wherein the UE group comprises one or more multimodal output UEs, or one or more federated learning UEs” (see Fig. 2 which shows a UE 204a which is a “multimodal output UE” as that term is broadly construed since the UE 204a includes a screen for receiving a user input, a microphone, a camera, etc.).
Regarding claims 3 and 15, Sun teaches “wherein the group-scheduling instruction comprises downlink control information (DCI) of a group type physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), wherein the DCI of the group type PDCCH is downlink control information transmitted by a physical downlink control channel for the UE group” (paragraph no. 0065, “The DCI within the PDCCH provides downlink resource assignments and/or uplink resource grants for one or more scheduled entities. Multiple PDCCHs may be transmitted each slot and each PDCCH may carry user-specific DCI or common DCI (e.g., control information broadcast to a group of scheduled entities)”).
Regarding claim 4, Sun teaches “wherein the UE group has a group radio network temporary identity (RNTI), wherein the group RNTI is configured at least to scramble the DCI of the group type PDCCH” (paragraph no. 0065, “Each DCI may further include a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) bit that is scrambled with a radio network temporary identifier (RNTI), which may be a specific user RNTI or a group RNTI, to allow the scheduled entity to determine the type of control information sent in the PDCCH”).
Regarding claims 5 and 14, Sun teaches “wherein the group RNTI comprises at least one of:
a downlink group RNTI configured to scramble a downlink transmission of the UE group (see paragraph no. 0065, “Each DCI may further include a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) bit that is scrambled with a radio network temporary identifier (RNTI), which may be a specific user RNTI or a group RNTI, to allow the scheduled entity to determine the type of control information sent in the PDCCH”);
an uplink group RNTI configured to scramble an uplink transmission of the UE group; or
an uplink-downlink general group RNTI configured to scramble the uplink transmission and the downlink transmission of the UE group”.
Regarding claims 6 and 16, Sun teaches “wherein the DCI of the group type PDCCH comprises at least one of first-type DCI, second-type DCI, or third-type DCI, wherein the first-type DCI has different independent grant information for different UEs in the UE group (see paragraph no. 0117, “Each DCI Component 804 may include scheduling assignments (e.g., downlink assignments and/or uplink grants) for one or more scheduled entities. Thus, each DCI component 804 is a separate DCI intended for one or more scheduled entities … However, if the DCI components 804 contain control information for different scheduled entities”);
the second-type DCI has common grant information for all of the UEs in the UE group, and the common grant information is used for resource scheduling for the UEs in the UE group;
the third-type DCI has common information for at least part of the UEs in the UE group and independent information for a UE in the UE group.”
Regarding claims 7 and 17, Sun teaches “wherein the first-type DCI comprises grant blocks, and the grant blocks correspond to the UEs in the UE group, respectively” (see Fig. 8 and paragraph nos. 0117, 0118; each DCI component shown in Fig. 8 corresponds to a “grant block”).
Regarding claim 13, Sun teaches “wherein the UE group has a group radio network temporary identity (RNTI), and the method further comprises: descramble, based on the group RNTI, the group-scheduling instruction” (see paragraph no. 0065, “Each DCI may further include a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) bit that is scrambled with a radio network temporary identifier (RNTI), which may be a specific user RNTI or a group RNTI, to allow the scheduled entity to determine the type of control information sent in the PDCCH”).
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 9-10 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sun in view of Su et al., US 2020/0187237, (“Su”).
Regarding claims 9 and 19, Sun teaches “wherein the third-type DCI comprises first-level DCI and at least one piece of second-level DCI, wherein
the first-level DCI indicates the common information;
the second-level DCI indicates the independent information; and/or
the first-level DCI is further configured to schedule the second-level DCI” (the last alternative limitation is taught by Sun, see paragraph nos. 0113, 0114 which disclose that the DCI may be split into a first DCI control portion (DCI-1) 706 (“first-level DCI”) and a second control portion (DCI-2) 710 (“second-level DCI”)).
Sun does not appear to explicitly teach “the third-type DCI” of the wherein clause in claims 9 and 19 since the DCI (“third-type DCI”) of Sun may be user-specific DCI or common DCI (see paragraph no. 0065) and not user-specific DCI and common DCI as would be required by claims 9 and 19 (see e.g., claim 6 which claim 9 depends from which defines “the third-type DCI” of claim 9).
Su teaches that a base station may schedule UEs by DCI and that the DCI may include a single DCI (scheduling information for one UE) and a group DCI (scheduling information for multiple UEs). Hence, the DCI of Su is a “third-type DCI” as required by claims 9 and 19.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Sun by incorporating the teachings of Su to enable the base station to efficiently transmit overhead signaling to a group of UEs by incorporating both UE-specific DCI control information and group-UE DCI control information in the same DCI transmission.
Regarding claim 10, Sun does not teach but Su teaches “receiving capability information reported by a UE in the UE group, wherein the capability information indicates a type of a scheduling instruction supported by the UE corresponding to the capability information” (see paragraph no. 0020, “the terminal transmits a request message and/or capability message to the base station to request the base station to configure a first scheduling mode for the terminal or to report a scheduling mode supported by the terminal”; note that the “UE group” may include one UE, see claim 1).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Sun by incorporating the teachings of Su to enable the UE to report its scheduling capability to the base station such that the base station can efficiently send scheduling information (e.g., resources) to the UE, thereby improving the downlink transmissions to the UE.
Claim(s) 11 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Sun and Su as applied to claim 10 above, and further in view of Chang, US 2019/0116490, (“Chang”).
Sun and Su do not teach but Chang teaches “wherein the capability information indicates at least one of:
whether the UE supports decoding the group-scheduling instruction; or
a type of the scheduling instruction for which the UE supports decoding, wherein the type of the scheduling instruction comprises at least one of a group-scheduling instruction for the UE group, or a separate scheduling instruction for a UE” (the “separate scheduling instruction for a UE” limitation of the second alternative limitation is taught by Chang, see paragraph no. 0043).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of this claimed invention to modify Sun and Su by incorporating the teachings of Chang to enable the UE to report its specific scheduling capability to the base station such that the base station can efficiently send scheduling information (e.g., resources) to the UE, thereby improving the downlink transmissions to the UE.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 8 and 18 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.
Regarding claims 8 and 18, the prior art of record does not teach or fairly suggest the claim limitation “wherein the common grant information comprised in the second-type DCI is configured to determine resource scheduling for a UE in the UE group based on a grant rule, and the grant rule comprises a pre-negotiated grant rule or a protocol-agreed grant rule, wherein the grant rule is configured to determine resource allocation for the UEs in the UE group.”
Conclusion
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/WON TAE C KIM/Examiner, Art Unit 2414