DETAILED ACTION
This communication is in response to Application No. 18/583,755 filed on 2/21/2024. The amendment presented on 4/29/2026, which amends claims 1-2, 7, 9-11, 13-16, 21, 23-25, 27-28, and 30 and provides change to the specification, is hereby acknowledged. Claims 1-30 have been examined.
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 with respect to claims 1-30 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.
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 1-2, 4-5, 9, 13-16, 18-19, 23, and 27-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Akkarakaran et al. (hereinafter Akkarakaran)(US 2021/0014834) in view of Abotabl et al. (hereinafter Abotabl)(US 2022/0369287).
Regarding claims 1 and 15, Akkarakaran teaches as follows:
An apparatus for wireless communication at a relay user equipment (UE)(UE 120 in figure 2), comprising:
at least one memory (282 in figure 2); and
at least one processor (interpreted as the receive processor 258, the transmit processor 264, and the controller/processor 280 in figure 2) coupled to the at least one memory and, based at least in part on information stored in the at least one memory (memory 242 and/or memory 282 may comprise a non-transitory computer-readable medium storing one or more instructions for wireless communication. For example, the one or more instructions, when executed by one or more processors of the base station 110 and/or the UE 120, may perform or direction operations of, for example, process 800 of FIG. 8, process 900 of FIG. 9, and/or other processes as described herein, see, ¶ [0044] and figure 2), the at least one processor is configured to:
identify a feasibility of full-duplex (FD) relaying at the relay UE (interpreted as the receiver UE in figure 6A and the transmitter UE in figure 7A) using a first antenna and a second antenna at the relay UE (UE 120 may be equipped with R antennas 252a through 252r, see, ¶ [0040] and figure 2)(a UE may be capable of using beamforming and/or a plurality of antenna panels to transmit and/or receive one or more multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) streams. Each stream may be transmitted and/or received on a respective beam that is spatially multiplexed with other beams. However, a UE may have particular capabilities associated with simultaneous and/or partially overlapped reception of streams from a BS (which may be referred to as downlink streams) and streams from other UEs (which may be referred to as sidelink streams), see, ¶ [0083]), the FD relaying at the relay UE (the receiver UE may transmit, to the BS and/or the one or more transmitter UEs, an indication of one or more reception parameters of the receiver UE. The one or more reception parameters may be based at least in part on the receiver UE's reception capabilities, see, ¶ [0102] and figure 6A)(the one or more transmission parameters may be one or more MU-MIMO transmission parameters. The one or more transmission parameters may be based at least in part on the transmission capabilities of the transmitter UE. In some aspects, the transmitter UE may transmit the indication of the one or more transmission parameters to the BS and/or to the receiver UEs, see, ¶ [0108] and figure 7A) comprising downlink reception of a transmission from a network node (interpreted as the BS) via the first antenna and sidelink transmission forwarding the transmission to a remote UE (interpreted as the transmitter UE in figure 6A and the receiver UE in figure 7A) via the second antenna (a UE may have particular capabilities associated with simultaneous and/or partially overlapped reception of streams from a BS (which may be referred to as downlink streams) and streams from other UEs (which may be referred to as sidelink streams), see, ¶ [0083])(a UE may have particular capabilities associated with simultaneous and/or partially overlapped transmission of streams to a BS (which may be referred to as uplink streams) and sidelink streams to other UEs, see, ¶ [0084]); and
transmit, for the network node, an FD relay assistance information message based on the identified feasibility of the FD relaying the transmission from the network node to the remote UE at the relay UE (the receiver UE may transmit, to the BS and/or the one or more transmitter UEs, an indication of one or more reception parameters of the receiver UE. The one or more reception parameters may be based at least in part on the receiver UE's reception capabilities, see, ¶ [0102] and figure 6A).
Akkarakaran does not explicitly teach that the downlink reception and the sidelink transmission are overlapped in time.
Abotabl teaches as follows:
A full duplex UE (equivalent to applicant’s relay UE) may transmit PSSCH to another UE (equivalent to applicant’s remote UE) in a full-duplex manner while receiving downlink transmissions from a base station (equivalent to applicant’s network node)(see, ¶ [0085]);
in some aspects of wireless communication UEs may autonomously select resources for SL transmissions. A UE may additionally communicate in a full-duplex (FD) mode in which the UE may transmit SL communication via a SL channel to a second UE while receiving downlink (DL) communication via a DL channel from a base station. A FD mode may be one of an in-band FD (IBFD) mode and a sub-band FDD. For example, in-band full duplex (IBFD) operation may include the transmission and reception of signals at overlapping times and overlapping in frequency (see, ¶ [0005]); and
full-duplex communication supports transmission and reception of information over a same frequency band in manner that overlap in time. In this manner, spectral efficiency may be improved with respect to the spectral efficiency of half-duplex communication, which supports transmission or reception of information in one direction at a time without overlapping uplink and downlink communication (see, ¶ [0065]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran with Abotabl to include the full duplex UE as taught by Abotabl in order to improve spectral efficiency.
Regarding claims 2, 16, and 29, Akkarakaran teaches as follows:
Wherein to identify the feasibility of the FD relaying at the relay UE, the at least one processor is further configured to: identify that the FD relaying of the transmission at the relay UE is feasible, wherein the FD relay assistance information message includes an indication that the FD relaying of the transmission at the relay UE is feasible (the receiver UE may transmit, to the BS and/or the one or more transmitter UEs, an indication of one or more reception parameters of the receiver UE. The one or more reception parameters may be based at least in part on the receiver UE's reception capabilities, see, ¶ [0102] and figure 6A)(the one or more transmission parameters may be one or more MU-MIMO transmission parameters. The one or more transmission parameters may be based at least in part on the transmission capabilities of the transmitter UE. In some aspects, the transmitter UE may transmit the indication of the one or more transmission parameters to the BS and/or to the receiver UEs, see, ¶ [0108] and figure 7A).
Regarding claims 4 and 18, Akkarakaran teaches as follows:
Wherein the FD relay assistance information message further includes one or more indications of one or more relay UE-recommended parameters for at least one sidelink grant associated with the FD relaying at the relay UE, and the one or more relay UE-recommended parameters for the at least one sidelink grant include a sidelink time/frequency resource (if the transmitter UEs are operating in an autonomous mode (e.g., a mode in which the transmitter UEs autonomously schedule sidelink communications from a configured pool of time-frequency resources) and/or are out of coverage of a serving BS, the transmitter UEs may coordinate the transmission of the sidelink streams and/or the corresponding DMRS transmissions among the transmitter UEs (see, ¶ [0092]).
Regarding claims 5 and 19, Akkarakaran teaches as follows:
Wherein the FD relay assistance information message further includes one or more indications of one or more relay UE-recommended parameters for a downlink transmission associated with the FD relaying at the relay UE, and the one or more relay UE-recommended parameters for the downlink transmission include one or more downlink multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) parameters (a UE may transmit, to a BS and/or one or more other UEs, an indication of one or more reception parameters (e.g., one or more MU-MIMO reception parameters) of the UE, see, ¶ [0085])(the MIMO reception capabilities of the receiver UE may determine the receiver UE's capability to receive DMRS transmissions associated with downlink streams and/or sidelink streams received at the receiver UE, see, ¶ [0090]).
Regarding claims 9 and 23, Akkarakaran teaches of transmitting the indication of UE capabilities as presented above and further teaches as follows:
The receiver UE may be configured with reception capabilities. The reception capabilities of the receiver UE may be based at least in part on a hardware configuration of the receiver UE, the software and/or firmware configuration of the receiver UE, the network configuration or subscription of the receiver UE in the wireless network, and/or the like (see, ¶ [0090]).
Akkarakaran does not explicitly teach of scheduling transmission of the indication.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl to include scheduling transmission of UE capabilities in order to regularly update the UE capabilities based on updated software or firmware configuration of the receiver UE, the network configuration or subscription of the receiver UE.
Regarding claims 13 and 27, Akkarakaran teaches as follows:
A UE may have particular capabilities associated with simultaneous overlapped reception of streams from a BS (which may be referred to as downlink streams) and streams from other UEs (which may be referred to as sidelink streams)(see, ¶ [0083]); and
a UE may have particular capabilities associated with simultaneous overlapped transmission of streams to a BS (which may be referred to as uplink streams) and sidelink streams to other UEs (see, ¶ [0084]).
UEs and/or gNBs may be equipped with full-duplex capability, which may also be governed by limits on the rank (for example, the number of streams) that can be processed on both transmit and receive links simultaneously (as in full-duplex operation)(see, ¶ [0119]).
Therefore, they are rejected for similar reason as presented above.
Regarding claim 14, Akkarakaran teaches the receiver and the transmitter as presented above.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl to include the well-known transceiver combining a transmitter and a receiver in order to save space and cost through integration.
Regarding claims 28 and 30, Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl teaches similar limitations as presented above in the rejection of claims 1 and 15 and Akkarakaran further teaches as follows:
An apparatus for wireless communication at a network node (interpreted as the base station (BS) 110 in figure 2) comprising at least one memory (242 in figure 2) and at least one processor (interpreted as the transmit processor 220, receive processor 238, and the controller/processor 240 in figure 2) coupled to the at least one memory and, based at least in part on information stored in the at least one memory (see, ¶ [0044] and figure 2); and
schedule a first downlink transmission from the network node to the relay UE (a scheduler 246 may schedule UEs for data transmission on the downlink and/or uplink, see, ¶ [0044] and figure 2).
Therefore, they are rejected for similar reason as presented above.
Claims 3 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Akkarakaran et al. (hereinafter Akkarakaran)(US 2021/0014834) in view of Abotabl et al. (hereinafter Abotabl)(US 2022/0369287), and further in view of Zhou et al. (hereinafter Zhou)(US 2021/0050950).
Regarding claims 3 and 17, Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl teaches all limitations as presented above except for specifying number of sidelink grants.
Zhou teaches as follows:
Determining, by the UE, the number of sidelink resources that may be used for sidelink transmission in one slot, according to at least one of a time domain granularity, a frequency domain granularity, a code domain granularity of the resources used for the sidelink transmission indicated in the configuration of the resources used for the sidelink transmission, as well as the total size (see, ¶ [0404]); and
the UE determines whether there is more than one sidelink resources used for sidelink transmission in one slot according to whether the UE has the capability to support simultaneous transmission of a plurality of sidelink transmissions (see, ¶ [0405]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl with Zhou to include determining a number of sidelink resources based on UE capabilities as taught by Zhou in order to efficiently support simultaneous transmission of a plurality of sidelink transmissions.
Claims 6 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Akkarakaran et al. (hereinafter Akkarakaran)(US 2021/0014834) in view of Abotabl et al. (hereinafter Abotabl)(US 2022/0369287), and further in view of Huangfu et al. (hereinafter Huangfu)(US 2023/0123083).
Regarding claims 6 and 20, Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl teaches all limitations as presented above except for the MIMO parameters.
Huangfu teaches as follows:
The parameter related to channel encoding and decoding includes one or more of the following: channel state information CSI, precoding matrix information PMI, an encoding length, an information bit length, a code rate, and a modulation order (see, ¶ [0049]); and
the MIMO-related parameter may include an antenna configuration, channel state information CSI, precoding matrix information PMI, and the like (see, ¶ [0137]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl with Huangfu to include the precoding matrix information as taught by Huangfu in order to efficiently support the channel encoding and decoding.
Claims 7-8, 11-12, 21-22, and 25-26 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Akkarakaran et al. (hereinafter Akkarakaran)(US 2021/0014834) in view of Abotabl et al. (hereinafter Abotabl)(US 2022/0369287), and further in view of Yi et al. (hereinafter Yi)(US 2021/0105126).
Regarding claims 7-8, 11, 21-22, and 25, Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl teaches all limitations as presented above except for the well-known hybrid automatic repeat request – acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) feedback.
Yi teaches as follows:
The base station may send/transmit one or more DCIs comprising resource assignments and HARQ-ACK feedback resource indications for downlink communications. The base station may send/transmit one or more sidelink (SL) DCI messages comprising resource assignment and SL HARQ-ACK feedback resource indication for sidelink communications. The HARQ-ACK feedback messages for downlink communications and/or sidelink communications may be sent/transmitted via PUCCHs. The base station may schedule the resources such that the wireless device may not transmit HARQ-ACK feedback messages for downlink communications and sidelink communications via a same time resource. (see, ¶ [0223]).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl with Yi to include the well-known HARQ-ACK feedback messages for downlink and sidelink communications as taught by Yi in order to efficiently perform error corrections.
Regarding claims 12 and 26, Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl and Yi teaches all limitations as presented above except for the indication of an application time.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl and Yi to include identifying application time for changed or updated information in order to efficiently synchronize the application for multiple links.
Claims 10 and 24 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Akkarakaran et al. (hereinafter Akkarakaran)(US 2021/0014834) in view of Abotabl et al. (hereinafter Abotabl)(US 2022/0369287), and further in view of Khoshnevisan et al. (hereinafter Khoshnevisan)(US 2022/0046555).
Regarding claims 10 and 24, Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl teaches all limitations as presented above except for transmitting the well-known medium access control (MAC) control element (CE).
Khoshnevisan teaches as follows:
The UE may transmit, to the base station, a power headroom report (PHR) medium access control (MAC) control element (CE) based at least in part on the occurrence of the triggering event. The PHR MAC-CE may be for one or more uplink component carriers of the UE that are associated with one or more CORESET pool index values (see, ¶ [0075] and 504 in figure 5).
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Akkarakaran in view of Abotabl with Khoshnevisan to include the well-known medium access control (MAC) control element (CE) as taught by Khoshnevisan in order to efficiently transmit a message or a report on the occurrent of the triggering event.
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 Jeong S Park whose telephone number is (571)270-1597. The examiner can normally be reached Monday through Friday 8:00-4:30 ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Glenton B Burgess can be reached at 571-272-3949. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/JEONG S PARK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454
June 26, 2026
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