DETAILED ACTION
Response to Amendment
The Amendment filed 03/09/2026 has been entered.
Claims 1 and 15-33 are pending.
Claims 1 and 15-33 are rejected.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103(a) which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent may not be obtained though the invention is not identically disclosed or described as set forth in section 102 of this title, if the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which said subject matter pertains. Patentability shall not be negatived 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(a) 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, 15-24, and 28-33 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kang et al. (US Patent 12,250,573) in view of Koskela et al. (US Publication 2024/0179548).
With respect to claims 1, 15, and 29, Kang teaches A user equipment (UE), (First device, Figure 11) comprising:
at least one memory; (memory, Figure 11) and at least one processor coupled with the at least one memory (processor coupled with memory, Figure 11) and configured to cause the UE to:
receive, from a serving cell, configuration information related to at least two transmission reception point (TRP) of the serving cell; (when one UE is configured to perform transmission and reception with a plurality of TRPs (or cells), it may mean that a plurality of CORESET groups (or CORESET pools) are configured for one UE, Column 31 lines 25-30. The UE may receive configuration information through/using TRP1 and/or TRP2 from the network side S105. The configuration information may include system information (SI), scheduling information, CSI-related configuration (e.g., CSI report configuration, CSI-RS resource configuration), and the like. The configuration information may include information related to a network-side configuration (i.e., TRP configuration), resource allocation information related to MTRP-based transmission and reception, and the like, Column 31 lines 40-45)
detect a beam failure of a first TRP of the at least wo TRPs; (the UE may measure/estimate a hypothetical BLER based on the reception quality of RS 1 and/or RS 2, and may determine BF (beam failure) accordingly, Column 32 lines 30-35) and
trigger a beam failure recovery (BFR) procedure, (when more than a certain number of BFIs are generated, the UE may determine that a beam failure has occurred, and may perform a beam failure recovery operation, Column 18 lines 20-25) that includes transmitting a first BFR request to the serving cell, (The UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station. Specifically, the UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station through the PUSCH scheduled by the received uplink grant DCI. In this case, the BFR MAC-CE may include the ID of the component carrier (CC) in which the BF has occurred, information on whether a new candidate beam has been found for in the CC, the ID of the found new candidate beam, and information on the TRP ID (e.g., CORESET group ID or BFD RS set ID, etc.) in which the BF has occurred, Column 21 lines 47-56)
Kang doesn’t teach the first BFR request including information for each of the at least two TRPS.
Koskela teaches the first BFR request including information for each of the at least two TRPS. (If the failure of TRP0 is indicated by the first TRP failure information field, the UE may also include a second set of TRP failure information to the MAC CE. If a second TRP (denoted as TRP1) has failed, the UE may indicate the failed second TRP by setting the second TRP failure information field to indicate the second beam failure. If TRP1 has not failed, the UE may set the second TRP failure information field to indicate that TRP1 has not failed, Paragraph 85. After encoding the beam failure indication data to the MAC CE, the UE transmits 304 the MAC CE comprising the encoded beam failure indication data to the access point. The access point may then initiate a beam failure recovery procedure for the UE based on the beam failure indication data comprised in the received MAC CE, Paragraph 88)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Kang with the BFR request including information for each TRP of the at least two TRPS as taught by Koskela. The motivation for combining Kang and Koskela is to be able to improve communication efficiency, and enable the UE to recover more efficiently from a beam failure.
With respect to claim 16, Kang teaches wherein the first BFR request includes information related to the first TRP, and the first BFR request is included in a first medium access control (MAC) control element (CE). (The UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station. Specifically, the UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station through the PUSCH scheduled by the received uplink grant DCI. In this case, the BFR MAC-CE may include the ID of the component carrier (CC) in which the BF has occurred, information on whether a new candidate beam has been found for in the CC, the ID of the found new candidate beam, and information on the TRP ID (e.g., CORESET group ID or BFD RS set ID, etc.) in which the BF has occurred, Column 21 lines 47-56)
With respect to claim 17, Kang teaches the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to: detect a second beam failure of a second TRP before the first BFR request is transmitted to the serving cell; and trigger a second BFR procedure that includes a second BFR request being transmitted to the serving cell. (the UE may perform a BFR operation for each TRP (i.e., a TRP-specific BFR operation). The present disclosure includes embodiments of BFR schemes that can be applied to both when BF occurs for a specific TRP (e.g., a specific CORESET group or a specific BFD RS group) (hereinafter, ‘event 1 occurrence’) and BF occurs for all TRPs (hereinafter, ‘event 2 occurrence’) in a specific frequency band (e.g., CC/BWP). Here, event 2 may be considered as a BF event defined in the existing UE operation (e.g., Rel-15/16) in that BF occurred in the corresponding CC/BWP (that is, BF occurred in all TRPs of the CC/BWP), Column 22 lines 30-41. The event 1 may be divided into detailed events according to the TRP (e.g., CORESET group or BFD RS group) index in which the BF occurred. For example, event 1 may be divided into event 1-1, which is a case where BF for TRP 1 occurs, and event 1-2, which is a case where BF for TRP 2 occurs. That is, information on whether event 1 has occurred may be divided into detailed events according to the occurrence of BF for each TRP and reported, Column 22 lines 60-65)
With respect to claim 18, Kang teaches wherein the serving cell is one of a secondary cell (SCell), a primary cell (PCell), or a primary cell of a second cell group (PSCell). (indicating whether the BFR operation is a BFR operation for an SpCell (i.e., a PCell or a PSCell) (e.g., a BFR operation based on a contention-based RACH for the SpCell) or a BFR operation for the SCell, Column 22 lines 10-16)
With respect to claim 19, Kang teaches wherein the serving cell is the PCell or the PSCell, and the configuration information related to the at least two TRPs includes: a first association relationship between a first beam failure detection reference signal (BFD-RS) set configured for the first TRP, and a reference signal (RS) set for a random access (RA) for a BFR procedure; and a second association relationship between a second BFD-RS set configured for the second TRP, and the RS set for the RA for the BFR procedure. (The base station may configure a candidate beam RS list (‘candidateBeamRSList’) including replaceable candidate beam RSs to the terminal through RRC signaling. And, the base station may configure a dedicated PRACH resource for the candidate beam RSs, Column 18 lines 28-33. The UE may perform a BFR operation for each TRP (i.e., a TRP-specific BFR operation). The present disclosure includes embodiments of BFR schemes that can be applied to both when BF occurs for a specific TRP (e.g., a specific CORESET group or a specific BFD RS group) (hereinafter, ‘event 1 occurrence’) and BF occurs for all TRPs (hereinafter, ‘event 2 occurrence’) in a specific frequency band (e.g., CC/BWP). Here, event 2 may be considered as a BF event defined in the existing UE operation (e.g., Rel-15/16) in that BF occurred in the corresponding CC/BWP (that is, BF occurred in all TRPs of the CC/BWP), Column 22 lines 30-41.)
With respect to claim 20, Kang teaches wherein the serving cell is the PCell or the PSCell, and the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to transmit at least one of the first BFR request or the second BFR request via an available serving cell. (the base station may configure a BFRQ resource (e.g., a scheduling request (SR) PUCCH resource) to the UE. That is, when BF occurs in a specific TRP, the UE may transmit the configured BFRQ (e.g., SR PUCCH) to the base station. At this time, the UE may transmit the BFRQ to the TRP in which the BF has not occurred. And, when transmitting the BFRQ, the UE may explicitly or implicitly report the BFRQ associated with which BFD RS set (or CORESET group) to the base station, Column 21 lines 28-35)
With respect to claim 21, Kang teaches wherein the serving cell is the PCell or the PSCell, and the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to monitor a physical downlink control channel (PDCCH) within a period. (one or a plurality of search spaces for monitoring the PDCCH may be configured in the UE, Column 17 lines 18-24)
With respect to claim 22, Kang teaches wherein: the BFR procedure for the serving cell is successful in response to receiving the PDCCH within the period and based on the PDCCH including a same hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) process identifier (ID) as a physical uplink share channel (PUSCH) carrying a BFR MAC-CE; or the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to perform a radio resource control (RRC) re-establishment procedure for the serving cell in response to not receiving the PDCCH within the period. (The UE may receive a response to the BFR MAC-CE from the base station. Specifically, the response to the BFR MAC-CE may be a DCI indicating that the BFR MAC-CE has been normally received. At this time, the DCI is a DCI transmitted when the base station successfully decodes the PUSCH, and may include at least one of HARQ process ID, new data indicator (NDI), redundancy version (RV), and CGG transmission information (CBGTI), Column 21 lines 55-64)
With respect to claim 23, Kang teaches wherein the second BFR request is included in a second Medium access control (MAC) Control element (CE), and wherein the second BFR request includes information related to a failed TRP among the first TRP and the second TRP. (the plurality of MAC-CEs may include a first MAC-CE and a second MAC-CE. And, based on beam failure being detected in a specific resource group, information related to beam failure may be included in the first MAC-CE and transmitted to the base station. And, based on beam failure being detected in a plurality of resource groups, information related to beam failure may be included in the second MAC-CE and transmitted to the base station, Column 30 lines 7-14)
With respect to claim 24, Kang teaches wherein both a first MAC CE and the second MAC CE can be included in one packet data unit (PDU). (one or more processors 102, 202 may generate a signal (e.g., a baseband signal) including a PDU, a SDU, a message, control information, data or information according to functions, procedures, proposals and/or methods disclosed in the present disclosure to provide it to one or more transceivers 106, 206, Column 35 lines 5-25)
With respect to claims 28 and 32, Kang teaches wherein the first BFR request includes at least one of: a first field as a TRP identifier (ID); a second field as a total number of one or more TRPs associated with a beam failure; a third field indicating whether a TRP is failed or not; or a fourth field indicating whether a subsequent TRP in a MAC CE of the first BFR request is associated with a same cell as a previous TRP in the MAC CE or not. (The UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station. Specifically, the UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station through the PUSCH scheduled by the received uplink grant DCI. In this case, the BFR MAC-CE may include the ID of the component carrier (CC) in which the BF has occurred, information on whether a new candidate beam has been found for in the CC, the ID of the found new candidate beam, and information on the TRP ID (e.g., CORESET group ID or BFD RS set ID, etc.) in which the BF has occurred, Column 21 lines 47-56)
With respect to claim 30, Kang teaches network equipment (NE) (second device, Figure 11) for wireless communication, comprising: at least one memory; (memory, Figure 11) and at least one processor coupled with the at least one memory (processor coupled with memory, Figure 11) and configured to cause the NE to:
transmit, to a user equipment (UE), configuration information related to at least two transmission reception points (TRPs) of a serving cell of the UE; (The UE may receive configuration information through/using TRP1 and/or TRP2 from the network side S105. The configuration information may include system information (SI), scheduling information, CSI-related configuration (e.g., CSI report configuration, CSI-RS resource configuration), and the like. The configuration information may include information related to a network-side configuration (i.e., TRP configuration), resource allocation information related to MTRP-based transmission and reception, and the like, Column 31 lines 40-45)
receive a beam failure recovery (BFR) request from the UE. (The UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station. Specifically, the UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station through the PUSCH scheduled by the received uplink grant DCI. In this case, the BFR MAC-CE may include the ID of the component carrier (CC) in which the BF has occurred, information on whether a new candidate beam has been found for in the CC, the ID of the found new candidate beam, and information on the TRP ID (e.g., CORESET group ID or BFD RS set ID, etc.) in which the BF has occurred, Column 21 lines 47-56)
Kang doesn’t teach the BFR request including information for each TRP of the at least two TRPS,
Koskela teaches the BFR request including information for each TRP of the at least two TRPS. (If the failure of TRP0 is indicated by the first TRP failure information field, the UE may also include a second set of TRP failure information to the MAC CE. If a second TRP (denoted as TRP1) has failed, the UE may indicate the failed second TRP by setting the second TRP failure information field to indicate the second beam failure. If TRP1 has not failed, the UE may set the second TRP failure information field to indicate that TRP1 has not failed, Paragraph 85. After encoding the beam failure indication data to the MAC CE, the UE transmits 304 the MAC CE comprising the encoded beam failure indication data to the access point. The access point may then initiate a beam failure recovery procedure for the UE based on the beam failure indication data comprised in the received MAC CE, Paragraph 88)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Kang with the BFR request including information for each TRP of the at least two TRPS as taught by Koskela. The motivation for combining Kang and Koskela is to be able to improve communication efficiency, and enable the UE to recover more efficiently from a beam failure.
With respect to claim 31, Kang teaches the BFR request included in a medium access control (MAC) control element (CE), and the BFR request includes information related to a failed TRP among the at least two TRPs. (The UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station. Specifically, the UE may transmit the BFR MAC-CE to the base station through the PUSCH scheduled by the received uplink grant DCI. In this case, the BFR MAC-CE may include the ID of the component carrier (CC) in which the BF has occurred, information on whether a new candidate beam has been found for in the CC, the ID of the found new candidate beam, and information on the TRP ID (e.g., CORESET group ID or BFD RS set ID, etc.) in which the BF has occurred, Column 21 lines 47-56)
With respect to claim 33, Kang teaches wherein the at least one processor is configured to cause the NE to: transmit, to the UE, the configuration information related to two secondary cell groups (SCGs) that are configured for one distributed unit (DU); (The UE may receive configuration information through/using TRP1 and/or TRP2 from the network side S105. The configuration information may include system information (SI), scheduling information, CSI-related configuration (e.g., CSI report configuration, CSI-RS resource configuration), and the like. The configuration information may include information related to a network-side configuration (i.e., TRP configuration), resource allocation information related to MTRP-based transmission and reception, and the like, Column 31 lines 40-45)and in response to one SCG within the two SCGs being configured as a TRP, a medium access control (MAC) control element (CE) is associated with one or more serving cells of the one SCG; or in response to each SCG of the two SCGs being configured as the TRP, the MAC CE is associated with the one or more serving cells of the each SCG of the two SCGs. (a TRP may itself be a BS, or each TRP may be a radio head (RH) for a base station, where a BS may have multiple RHs. In some examples, the TRP response to a TRP (e.g., beam group) specific BFRQ may depend on whether the BFRQ is sent in TRP specific BFR MAC-CE (Case 1), as the preamble in CFRA MsgA/1 (Case 2), or in UCI carried in PUCCH/PUSCH (Case 3), Column 24 lines 15-20)
Claims 25-27 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kang et al. (US Patent 12,250,573) in view of Koskela et al. (US Publication 2024/0179548) further in view of Go et al. (US Publication 2025/0038823).
With respect to claims 25, Kang in view of Koskela doesn’t teach wherein based on the second TRP being the failed TRP and the second BFR request including information related to the second TRP, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to one of: transmit the first BFR request without canceling the second BFR request; transmit the second BFR request without canceling the first BFR request; transmit the first BFR request and cancel the second BFR request based on the first BFR request having a higher priority level than the second BFR request; or transmit the second BFR request and cancel the first BFR request based on the second BFR request having a higher priority level than the first BFR request.
Go teaches wherein based on the second TRP being the failed TRP and the second BFR request including information related to the second TRP, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to one of: transmit the first BFR request without canceling the second BFR request; transmit the second BFR request without canceling the first BFR request; transmit the first BFR request and cancel the second BFR request based on the first BFR request having a higher priority level than the second BFR request; or transmit the second BFR request and cancel the first BFR request based on the second BFR request having a higher priority level than the first BFR request. (when a TRP-specific BF occurs in an SpCell (SpCell TRP #2 BF) before a BF for TRP #1 (BFD-RS set #1) occurs in SCell #1 and a PUCCH-SR resource is transmitted in an SpCell to TRP #1, a UE can cancel the PUCCH that was to be transmitted in the SpCell to TRP #1 and transmit a PUCCH-SR resource destined for TRP #2, Paragraph 391. when a BF for different TRPs (i.e., first BFD-RS set index/CORESETpoolIndex/CORESET group index) occurs (detected) in one or more SCells and SpCells belonging to the same cell group, a TRP-based BF occurred (detected) in an SpCell is given priority, paragraph 395)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Kang and Koskela with transmit the first BFR request without canceling the second BFR request as taught by Go. The motivation for combining Kang, Koskela and Go is to be able to prevent PUCCH-SR resources for BFRQ transmission from increasing.
With respect to claims 26, Kang in view of Koskela doesn’t teach wherein based on both the first TRP and the second TRP being the failed TRP, and the second BFR request including information related to the first TRP and information related to the second TRP, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to one of: transmit the second BFR request without canceling the first BFR request in response to triggering the second BFR procedure; transmit the second BFR request and cancel the first BFR request in response to triggering the second BFR procedure; or transmit the first BFR request without canceling the second BFR request.
Go teaches wherein based on both the first TRP and the second TRP being the failed TRP, and the second BFR request including information related to the first TRP and information related to the second TRP, the at least one processor is configured to cause the UE to one of: transmit the second BFR request without canceling the first BFR request in response to triggering the second BFR procedure; transmit the second BFR request and cancel the first BFR request in response to triggering the second BFR procedure; or transmit the first BFR request without canceling the second BFR request. (Due to a BF for TRP #1 (BFD-RS set #1) occurred in SCell #1 transmission of a PUCCH-SR resource in an SpCell to TRP #1 (or TRP #2) is completed, and when a TRP-specific BF occurs in an SpCell before transmitting a BFR MAC-CE to TRP #1 or/and TRP #2 (SpCell TRP #2 BF), a UE may additionally transmit a PUCCH-SR resource in an SpCell to TRP #2 (or TRP #1). Afterwards, the UE transmits a BFR MAC-CE to TRP #1 or/and TRP #2, paragraph 396)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Kang and Koskela with transmit the first BFR request without canceling the second BFR request as taught by Go. The motivation for combining Kang, Koskela and Go is to be able to prevent PUCCH-SR resources for BFRQ transmission from increasing.
With respect to claims 27, Kang in view of Koskela doesn’t teach wherein the second BFR request is transmitted without canceling the first BFR request based on the second BFR request having a higher priority level than the first BFR request.
Go teaches wherein the second BFR request is transmitted without canceling the first BFR request based on the second BFR request having a higher priority level than the first BFR request. (when a TRP-specific BF occurs in an SpCell (SpCell TRP #2 BF) before a BF for TRP #1 (BFD-RS set #1) occurs in SCell #1 and a PUCCH-SR resource is transmitted in an SpCell to TRP #1, a UE can cancel the PUCCH that was to be transmitted in the SpCell to TRP #1 and transmit a PUCCH-SR resource destined for TRP #2, Paragraph 391. when a BF for different TRPs (i.e., first BFD-RS set index/CORESETpoolIndex/CORESET group index) occurs (detected) in one or more SCells and SpCells belonging to the same cell group, a TRP-based BF occurred (detected) in an SpCell is given priority, paragraph 395)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Kang and Koskela with transmit the first BFR request without canceling the second BFR request as taught by Go. The motivation for combining Kang, Koskela and Go is to be able to prevent PUCCH-SR resources for BFRQ transmission from increasing.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claims 1 and 15-33 have been considered but are moot because the arguments do not apply to the new grounds of rejection.
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 extension fee 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 date of this final action.
Any inquiry concerning this communication from the examiner should be directed to ABDULLAHI AHMED whose telephone number is (571) 270-3652. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:00AM-4:30PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Khalid Kassim can be reached on 571-270-3370. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ABDULLAHI AHMED/Examiner, Art Unit 2475
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