DETAILED ACTION
The office action is a response to an application filed on January 12, 2024, wherein claims 41-52 are pending and ready for examination.
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 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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 41, 45, and 49 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Koskela et. al. (Koskela hereafter) (US 20240163952 A1).
Regarding claim 41 Koskela teaches, A method performed by a terminal device, the method comprising:
receiving from a network device (TRP 102 transmits, to the UE 104), an indication of a first transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state (indicated by active transmission configuration indication (TCI) states) in downlink control information (DCI) in a first physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) (for the PDCCH) (Koskela; [0051-0053] the TRP 102 transmits, to the UE 104, a first beam 106 and a second beam 108. A BFI may occur if the second beam 108 selected as a serving beam is blocked by a building 110 or any other obstacle (e.g., a moving vehicle, tree, landscape element, or any object) and, therefore, is no longer able to provide a desired communication quality. In response to the BFI, the UE 104 may trigger a mechanism to recover from beam failure, which is hereinafter referred to as the BFR mechanism… the UE determines a BFD-RS based on the RS indicated by active transmission configuration indication (TCI) states for the PDCCH); and
setting a Beam Failure Indication (BFI)_COUNTER to 0 (the BFI-counter is reset) based on a determination that a reference signal (RS) for beam failure detection is changed from a first RS to a second RS (The BFI counter and BFD timer may be configured, per BFD-RS set or per serving beam) (Koskela; [0055] The MAC layer uses a BFI-counter to count the BFI indications for each respective cell and when it counts a predefined number of BFI instances indicated by the lower layer for the corresponding cell (PCell/SCell), it initiates/triggers the BFR mechanism. The BFI-counter is supervised by a BFD timer. Each time the UE receives a new BFI indication, the BFD timer is triggered (started or restarted), and the BFI counter is incremented. If the BFD timer expires, the BFI-counter is reset. The BFI counter and BFD timer may be configured per TRP, per BFD-RS set or per serving beam or serving beam set).
Regarding claim 45 Koskela teaches, A method performed by a network device, the method comprising:
transmitting to a terminal device (TRP 102 transmits, to the UE 104), an indication of a first transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state in downlink control information (DCI) in a first physical downlink control channel (PDCCH), wherein a Beam Failure Indication (BFI)_COUNTER is set to 0 (the BFI counter is incremented. If the BFD timer expires, the BFI-counter is reset.) based on a determination that a reference signal (RS) for beam failure detection is changed from a first RS to a second RS; and performing a downlink transmission to which the first TCI state is applied (the UE determines a BFD-RS based on the RS indicated by active transmission configuration indication (TCI) states for the PDCCH) (Koskela; [0051-0053] the TRP 102 transmits, to the UE 104, a first beam 106 and a second beam 108. A BFI may occur if the second beam 108 selected as a serving beam is blocked by a building 110 or any other obstacle (e.g., a moving vehicle, tree, landscape element, or any object) and, therefore, is no longer able to provide a desired communication quality. In response to the BFI, the UE 104 may trigger a mechanism to recover from beam failure, which is hereinafter referred to as the BFR mechanism… the UE determines a BFD-RS based on the RS indicated by active transmission configuration indication (TCI) states for the PDCCH [0055] The MAC layer uses a BFI-counter to count the BFI indications for each respective cell and when it counts a predefined number of BFI instances indicated by the lower layer for the corresponding cell (PCell/SCell), it initiates/triggers the BFR mechanism. The BFI-counter is supervised by a BFD timer. Each time the UE receives a new BFI indication, the BFD timer is triggered (started or restarted), and the BFI counter is incremented. If the BFD timer expires, the BFI-counter is reset. The BFI counter and BFD timer may be configured per TRP, per BFD-RS set or per serving beam or serving beam set).
Regarding claim 49 Koskela teaches, A terminal device, comprising:
at least one memory having program instructions stored therein (Koskela; Fig. 5 The storage unit 504 is coupled to the processor 502 and stores processor-executable instructions 508);
at least one processor configured to execute the program instructions that when executed control the terminal device to perform operations comprising (Koskela; Fig. 5, [0063] the processor 502, cause the processor 502 to perform):
receiving from a network device (TRP 102 transmits, to the UE 104,), an indication of a first transmission configuration indicator (TCI) state (indicated by active transmission configuration indication (TCI) states) in downlink control information (DCI) in a first physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) (for the PDCCH) (Koskela; [0051-0053] the TRP 102 transmits, to the UE 104, a first beam 106 and a second beam 108. A BFI may occur if the second beam 108 selected as a serving beam is blocked by a building 110 or any other obstacle (e.g., a moving vehicle, tree, landscape element, or any object) and, therefore, is no longer able to provide a desired communication quality. In response to the BFI, the UE 104 may trigger a mechanism to recover from beam failure, which is hereinafter referred to as the BFR mechanism… the UE determines a BFD-RS based on the RS indicated by active transmission configuration indication (TCI) states for the PDCCH); and
setting a Beam Failure Indication (BFI)_COUNTER to 0 (the BFI-counter is reset) based on a determination that a reference signal (RS) for beam failure detection is changed from a first RS to a second RS (The BFI counter and BFD timer may be configured, per BFD-RS set or per serving beam or serving beam set) (Koskela; [0055] The MAC layer uses a BFI-counter to count the BFI indications for each respective cell and when it counts a predefined number of BFI instances indicated by the lower layer for the corresponding cell (PCell/SCell), it initiates/triggers the BFR mechanism. The BFI-counter is supervised by a BFD timer. Each time the UE receives a new BFI indication, the BFD timer is triggered (started or restarted), and the BFI counter is incremented. If the BFD timer expires, the BFI-counter is reset. The BFI counter and BFD timer may be configured per TRP, per BFD-RS set or per serving beam or serving beam set).
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 42, 46, and 50 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koskela as applied to claims 41, 45, and 49 above, and further in view of Chen et al. (Chen hereafter) (US 20210136739 A1).
Regarding claim 42, 46, and 50 Koskela teaches, The claims 41, 45, and 49,
Koskela further teaches, further comprising: determining that the first TCI state is different from a previously indicated TCI state (Koskela; [0059] The DL RS indicated by the TCI state may be included in the respective set q0 based on the CPI value configured for the CORESET. Alternatively, the CORESETs or the BFD-RS may be divided into groups or sets, respectively, based on any higher layer parameter or implicit determination. Furthermore, the independent BFD procedures for each of the TRP0 and the TRP1 may be configured according to the sets q0_#0 and q0_#1 (for the TRP0 and the TRP1, respectively),); and
receiving from the network device, a downlink transmission to which the first TCI state is applied starting after a beam application timing
However, in the same field of endeavor Chen teaches, receiving from the network device, a downlink transmission to which the first TCI state is applied starting after a beam application timing (Chen; [0043] when transmitting the downlink signals, the network device can configure the TCI state for each downlink signal, and the TCI state includes the index of the CSI-RS resource. The terminal device can assume that a same beam is used for the downlink signal as that for the CSI-RS on the CSI-RS resource, and thus use the same receiving beam as the CSI-RS resource to receive the downlink signal.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date to create the invention of Koskela to include the above recited limitations as taught by Chen in order to report the selected CSI-RS (Chen; [0043]).
Claims 43, 44, 47, 48, 51, and 52 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Koskela as applied to claims 41, 45, and 49 above, and further in view of Liu et al. (Liu hereafter) (US 20240007879 A1).
Regarding claim 43, 47, and 51 Koskela teaches, The claims 41, 45 and 49,
Koskela fails to explicitly teach, further comprising: determining a first set to include one or more indexes for the second RS with same value as respective RS indexes in RS sets corresponding to the TCI state for respective CORESETs
However, in the same field of endeavor Liu teaches, determining a first set to include one or more indexes for the second RS with same value as respective RS indexes in RS sets corresponding to the TCI state for respective CORESETs (Liu; [0044] the UE determines BFD RS set#1 to include periodic CSI-RS resource configuration
indices with the same values as the QCL-TypeD RS indices in the TCI states configured for CORESET#1, CORESET#2 and CORESET#3 and determines BFD RS set#2 to include periodic CSI-RS resource configuration indices with same values as the QCL-TypeD RS indices in the TCI states configured for CORESET#4 and CORESET#5.).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skilled in the art before the effective filing date to create the invention of Koskela to include the above recited limitations as taught by Liu in order to receive a configuration for each of the transmitted capability reports. (Liu; [0045]).
Regarding claims 44, 48 and 52 Koskela-Liu teaches, The claims 43, 47, and 51,
Koskela fails to explicitly teach, further comprising: assessing a downlink radio link quality based on the first set in order to detect beam failure
Liu further teaches, assessing a downlink radio link quality based on the first set in order to detect beam failure (Liu; [0044] the UE determines the BFD RS sets to include periodic CSI-RS resource configuration indices with the same values as the RS indices in the RS sets indicated by the TCI state, which contains one or two RSs with different QCL types, configured for respective CORESET that the UE uses for monitoring PDCCH).
Conclusion
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/W. T/Examiner, Art Unit 2416
/NOEL R BEHARRY/Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2416