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 .
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.
Claim Objections
Claims 11 and 19 are objected to because of the following informalities: “true prior associated” should be --true prior set associated--. Appropriate correction is required.
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.
Claims 1, 9-10, 12, 18 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wong (US 2010/0042881) in view of Ghimire et al. (WO 2022/090766). For dependent claims herein, the motivation to combine is the same as the parent claim unless otherwise noted.
Regarding claim 1, Wong discloses a network node (fig. 2, item 202; para. 27, last two lines) for wireless communication, comprising (para. 61): one or more memories; and one or more processors, coupled to the one or more memories, which are configured, individually or in any combination, to (para. 61): receive, from a user equipment (UE) (item 206.1), a codeword (item 215; para. 27, third sentence; note: ARQ feedback; para. 23, second sentence; note: HARQ) including a
However, Wong fails to disclose a codeword including a plurality of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) bits, decoding each of the plurality of HARQ bits, and a decoding rule that is based at least in part on posterior probabilities. Ghimire discloses these features (page 27, lines 20-21; page 31, line 18 to page 32, lines 10; fig. 8, item S158; page 7, lines 18-27; note: posterior probabilities are updated probabilities in the broadest reasonable interpretation). Therefore, it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to have a codeword including a plurality of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) bits, decoding each of the plurality of HARQ bits, and a decoding rule that is based at least in part on posterior probabilities in the invention of Wong. The motivation to have the modification and/or well-known benefits of the modification include, but are not limited to, realizing physical data transmissions (using bits) and providing current metrics for communication decisions as is known in the art (Ghimire, fig. 8 and pages 7, 27 and 31-32; MPEP 2143(I)(A)(B)(C)(D) - note: e.g., applying known techniques having predictable results).
Regarding claim 9, Wong in view of Ghimire teaches and makes obvious the network node of claim 1, wherein the threshold is tuned to achieve a first bit error rate (BER) associated with decoding ACK bits and a second BER associated with decoding NACK bits (Wong, figs. 7 and 9-11; paras. 17, 51, 53-55 and 57).
Regarding claim 10, Wong in view of Ghimire teaches and makes obvious the network node of claim 1, wherein the threshold is tuned such that an ACK signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at which a first bit error rate (BER) associated with decoding ACK bits is achieved is equal to a NACK SNR at which a second BER associated with decoding NACK bits is achieved (Wong, figs. 7 and 9-11; paras. 17, 51, 53-55 and 57; note: the SNR is equal for given error rates for ACK and NAK, i.e., a given SNR (vertical line) has an error rate for an ACK and NAK).
Regarding claims 12 and 18, these limitations are rejected on the same ground as claims 1 and 9, respectively.
Regarding claim 20, these limitations are rejected on the same ground as claim 1. In addition, Wong discloses a non-transitory computer-readable medium (para. 61) storing a set of instructions, the set of instructions comprising: one or more instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of the network node, cause the network node to perform the method of claim 1.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-8, 11, 13-17 and 19 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.
Conclusion
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/Kevin C. Harper/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2462