DETAILED ACTION
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 Amendment
Applicant’s amendment, filed on 06/26/2026, has been entered and carefully considered.
Claims 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, and 20 have been amended; Claim 2, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11-12, 14, 16, 18 and 19 have been cancelled and Claims 1, 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 15, 17, and 20 are currently pending.
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 3, 10 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Matsumura et al (US 2025/0253905 A1), in view of InterDigital, Inc, “FL Summary on TRI/TPMI Enhancements; first round”, hereinafter as “InterDigital”, further in view of Rahman et al (US 11,184,865 B2).
Regarding Claim 3, 10, 17, Matsumura teaches a user equipment (UE)/method comprising:
a transceiver configured to:
transmit UE capability information, wherein the UE capability information indicates a group of full power TPMIs ([0099], “It has been under study that the UE reports UE capability information (ul-FullPwrMode2-TPMIGroup-r16; which may be referred to as TPMI group capability information) related to a TPMI set (which may be referred to as a TPMI group) enabling full power transmission regarding mode 2”),
receive a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) configuration, wherein the PUSCH configuration includes a first parameter indicating a codebook for a transmit precoding matrix indicator (TPMI) ([0050, “the UE may be configured with whether to use codebook based PUSCH transmission or use non-codebook based PUSCH transmission by a higher layer parameter “txConfig” indicating a transmission scheme. The parameter may indicate a value of “codebook” or “non-codebook (nonCodebook)”) and a second parameter indicating an uplink (UL) full power transmission mode, wherein the second parameter indicates fullpowerMode2 ([0115], “a configuration of uplink full power transmission for the PUSCH (for example, a higher layer parameter ul-FullPowerTransmission)”; [0103], “When the UL full power transmission mode information configured for the UE indicates fullpowerMode2, the UE may perform PUSCH full power transmission in accordance with mode 2”), and
receive the TPMI ([0065], “The UE may determine a precoding matrix corresponding to a TPMI index obtained from the DCI (for example, DCI format 0_1; the same applies hereinafter) for scheduling UL transmission, out of a plurality of precoders (which may be referred to as precoding matrices, codebooks, or the like) for CB-based transmission”); and
a processor operably coupled to the transceiver, the processor, based on the PUSCH configuration, configured to:
determine a PUSCH transmission ([0051], “a codebook based PUSCH (codebook based PUSCH transmission, codebook based transmission) may mean a PUSCH when the UE is configured with “codebook” as a transmission scheme”); and
determine a power level for the PUSCH transmission, wherein the transceiver is further configured to transmit the PUSCH transmission with the determined power level, wherein the power level corresponds to full power when the TPMI is a full power TPMI ([0109], “The UE configured with mode 2 (also referred to as a mode 2 UE) by the UL full power transmission mode information may apply s=1 regarding the precoder corresponding to the TPMIs (which may be referred to as full power TPMIs) reported as the TPMI group”),
wherein the TPMI indicates a precoding matrix ([0128], also see Fig. 9, precoding matrix for 8 antenna ports) and a number of layers for the PUSCH transmission ([0100], “The number of columns in each matrix may represent the number of layers”),
wherein the power level corresponds to full power when the TPMI is included in the group of full power TPMIs ([0196], “A third embodiment relates to full power transmission using eight antenna ports for the mode 2 UE”; [0197], “The mode 2 UE may apply s=1 regarding the precoders corresponding to the TPMIs (which may be referred to as the full power TPMIs) reported as the TPMI group”), wherein
Matsumura teaches codebook based on 8-antenna-port full-power UL operation ([0196], “A third embodiment relates to full power transmission using eight antenna ports for the mode 2 UE”). However, Matsumura does not explicitly teach that partitioning the eight antenna ports into two antenna-port groups of four for the Ng=2 codebook case.
Interdigital teaches this feature (page 14, Section 2.4, Table 7, “For a full-coherent or partial-coherent 8TX UE, antenna ports can be divided into one or two or four antenna port groups, the antenna ports within an antenna port group are fully-coherent and the antenna ports in different antenna port groups are non-coherent”).
Before the effective filing date for the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill to modify the codebook-based eight-antenna-port full-power uplink transmission of Matsumura such that, for the Ng=2 codebook case, the eight antenna ports are partitioned into two antenna-port groups of four ports each – the ports within each group being fully coherent and the ports across the two groups being non-coherent – as taught by Interdigital. One of ordinary skill would have been motivated to do so because Interdigital expressly teaches that an 8TX UE may be full-coherent or only partial coherent, and that dividing the eight antenna ports into coherent antenna-port groups accommodates the actual coherence capability of the device. This enables full-power transmission for the very “mode 2” 8TX UE addressed by Matsumura even where the UE’s power amplifiers cannot transmit coherently across all eight ports – directly furthering Matsumura’s stated purpose of achieving full power with eight antenna ports. The modification is no more than the use of a known technique (antenna-port grouping) to improve a similar device (Matsumura’s eight-port full power UE) in the same way, yielding the predictable result of full-power transmission across the two coherent port groups.
The aforementioned references don’t explicitly teach that the UE capability information indicates the group of full power TPMIs via a parameter taking a value from {g1, g2} to indicate one of the two antenna port groups corresponding to the indicated full power TPMIs.
Rahman teaches that the UE capability information indicates the group of full power TPMIs via a parameter taking a value from {g1, g2} to indicate one of the two antenna port groups corresponding to the indicated full power TPMIs (Col 33, 3rd paragraph, “Alt 2-1, the B-bit signaling indicates TPMIs or TPMI groups comprising (rank 1) vectors or (rank 2) matrices from a group G=(G1,G2), where the B value, and groups G1 and G2 are according to at least one of Table 25, Table 26, and Table 27”).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the teaching of Rahman in the system disclosed by Matsumura in view of Interdigital, such that the group of full power TPMIs is indicated, via UE capability signaling, by a parameter taking a value from the two-element group set corresponding to the two four-port antenna port groups {g1, g2} defined by Interdigital for the Ng=2 codebook. A person of ordinary skill would have been motivated to do so because Rahman expressly teaches indicating a UE’s full-power TPMI groups through UE capability signaling in which a parameter selects one of two-member group set G=(G1, GT2), and Interdigital defines exactly two antenna port groups {g1, g2} for the eight-port Ng=2 case. Applying Rahman’s two-valued group-selection capability signaling technique to Interdigital’s two antenna port groups is the use of a known technique to improve a similar device (Matsumura’s eight-port, mode 2 full power UE) in the same way, yielding the predictable results of a capability parameters whose value identifies which of the two coherent port groups corresponds to the reported full-power TPMIs.
Claims 6, 13 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Matsumura et al (US 2025/0253905 A1), in view of InterDigital, Inc, “FL Summary on TRI/TPMI Enhancements; first round”, hereinafter as “InterDigital”, further in view of Rahman et al (US 11,184,865 B2), further in view of Guo (US 2022/0141803 A1).
Regarding Claim 6, 13 and 20, the aforementioned references teach all of the limitations of the parent claim, further teaches, wherein:
the UE capability information indicates whether the UE supports sounding reference signal (SRS) configurations with different number of antenna ports per SRS resource (Rahman, Col 60, lines 61-Col 61, line 3, the UE may be configured with multiple SRS resources having different numbers of SRS ports, reported per UE capability), the PUSCH configuration includes a third parameter indicating a set of SRS resources, including (i) at least one SRS resource with eight ports (Interdigital, Section 3.3, Interdigital teaches extending this Mode-2 arrangement to the 8TX UE, which yield s an SRS resource set including an eight-port SRS resource together with a smaller (four-or two ports) SRS resource) and (ii) one SRS resource with four ports or one SRS resource with two ports (Rahman, Col 60, line 61 to Col 61, line 3: Rahman discloses a Mode-2 SRS resource set containing SRS resources with different port counts (e.g., a 4-port SRS resource and a 2 port SRS resource),
when the codebook for eight antenna ports corresponds to Ng = 4, the codebook associated with the four port SRS resource is 'nonCoherent' (Interdigital, page 15, CMCC: “One thing for clarification, Ng=1, 2, 4 can be supported for full-coherent UE, and the antennas are coherent across groups, Ng=2, 4 can be supported for partial-coherent UE, and the antennas are non-coherent across groups: It’s noted that when Ng=4, the eight antenna ports are divided into four antenna port groups (two ports each), wherein ports within a group are fully coherent and ports in different groups are non-coherent. For 4 port SRS resource case, it’s necessary to span multiple two-port coherent groups, the ports of that four-port resources are non-coherent across groups).
The aforementioned references fail to disclose that when the codebook for antenna ports corresponds to Ng = 2, the codebook associated with the two port SRS resource is 'nonCoherent', when the codebook for eight antenna ports corresponds to Ng = 2, the codebook associated with the four port SRS resource can be configured as 'partialAndNonCoherent or 'nonCoherent', subject to UE capability.
However, Guo discloses that when the codebook for antenna ports corresponds to Ng = 2, the codebook associated with the two port SRS resource is 'nonCoherent' (Guo, [0046], “In the SRS resource set configured for codebook based PUSCH transmission, one SRS resource with 4 ports and one SRS resource with 2 ports are configured. If the codebook subset configured is “partialAndNonCoherent”, the UE shall assume the codebook subset of “nonCoherent” is used when SRS resource with 2 antenna ports is indicated for PUSCH transmission’; [0047]), when the codebook for eight antenna ports corresponds to Ng = 2, the codebook associated with the four port SRS resource can be configured as 'partialAndNonCoherent or 'nonCoherent', subject to UE capability (Guo, [0047], [0046]).
Before the effective filing date of the claimed invention, it would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the teaching of Guo in the system disclosed by Matsumura in view of Interdigital and Rahman for the purpose of configuring, for the eight-antenna-port codebook, the codebook subset associated with each SRS resource according to that resource’s port count – assigning ‘nonCoherent’ to the two-port SRS resource and “partialAndNonCoherent’ or ‘nonCoherent’ to the four -port SRS resource subject to UE capability. A person of ordinary skill would have been motivated to do so because Matsumura, as modified by Interdigital, provides an eight-antenna-port mode-2 full-power SRS resource set in which resource of differing port counts (an eight-port resource together with a four- or two-port resource) are configured, and Guo supplies the established, rule-based method for determining the codebook subset of each such resource according to its number of antenna ports. Applying Guo’s per-port-count codebook-subset rules to the SRS resources of the modified Matsumura system is the use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way, yielding the predictable result that each SRS resource is assigned the codebook subset appropriate to its port count.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1, 8, 15 are allowed.
The following is an examiner’s statement of reasons for allowance:
With respect to Claims , 1, 8 and 15, the prior art of record whether taken alone or in combination, fails to teach or render obvious a user equipment (UE) that, in combination with all of the other recited limitations, transmits a PUSCH transmission with a determined power level corresponding to full power when the TPMI is full power TPMI, wherein the full power TPMI indicates the specific precoding matrix W recited in the claim for each case in which the codebook corresponds to Ng=2, Ng-4, and Ng=9 – in combination with the second parameter of the PUSCH configuration indicating fullpowerMode1.
Any comments considered necessary by applicant must be submitted no later than the payment of the issue fee and, to avoid processing delays, should preferably accompany the issue fee. Such submissions should be clearly labeled “Comments on Statement of Reasons for Allowance.”
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.
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/SIMING LIU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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