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 .
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 102
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)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale, or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claim(s) 1, 4, 6, 9 and 11-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Tsai et al. (US Publication 2018/0324641 A1).
In regards to claims 1, 6, 11 and 12 Tsai et al. (US Publication 2018/0324641 A1) teaches, a method for performing operations of a User Equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising: generating a Medium Access Control (MAC) Protocol Data Unit (PDU) containing a MAC Service Data Unit (SDU) (see paragraph 399; multiplexing MAC SDUs in a MAC PDU) associated with a logical channel (see paragraph 76; Logical channel prioritization (LCP) procedure and multiplexing of MAC control element and MAC SDUs); and transmitting the MAC PDU based on there being no measurement gap at the time of the transmission (see paragraphs 358-364; To generate a transmission, the HARQ process shall: [0359] if the MAC PDU was obtained from the Msg3 buffer; or [0360] if Sidelink Discovery Gaps for Transmission are not configured by upper layers, and there is no measurement gap at the time of the transmission and, in case of retransmission, the retransmission does not collide with a transmission for a MAC PDU obtained from the Msg3 buffer in this TTI; or [0361] if Sidelink Discovery Gaps for Transmission are configured by upper layers, and there is no measurement gap at the time of the transmission and, in case of retransmission, the retransmission does not collide with a transmission for a MAC PDU obtained from the Msg3 buffer, and there is no Sidelink Discovery Gap for Transmission in this TTI; or [0362] if Sidelink Discovery Gaps for Transmission are configured by upper layers, and there is no measurement gap at the time of the transmission and, in case of retransmission, the retransmission does not collide with a transmission for a MAC PDU obtained from the Msg3 buffer, and there is a Sidelink Discovery Gap for Transmission, and there is no configured grant for transmission on SL-DCH in this TTI: [0363] instruct the physical layer to generate a transmission according to the stored uplink grant with the redundancy version corresponding to the CURRENT_IRV value; [0364] increment CURRENT_IRV by 1), wherein, based on there being the measurement gap at the time of the transmission, a Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP) duplication of a Radio Bearer (RB) related to the logical channel is activated (see paragraph 649; the UE may only duplicate all PDCP PDU for a radio bearer if the UE is configured to use data duplication to serve the radio bearer and the UE is in the activation state of data duplication. The UE may be configured to establish a first logical channel and a second logical channel for the radio bearer).
In regards to claims 4 and 9, Tsai teaches, wherein the MAC PDU is transmitted using a configured grant resource defined at time of the transmission (see paragraphs 312-313; if there is a MAC PDU in the Msg3 buffer and the uplink grant was received in a Random Access Response: obtain the MAC PDU to transmit from the Msg3 buffer).
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.
Claim(s) 2 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai as stated above further in view of Chen et al. (US Publication 2019/0254117 A1).
In regards to claims 2 and 7, Tsai teaches all the limitations of the parent claims as stated above.
In further regards, Tsai fails to teach, wherein the PDCP duplication of the RB is activated based on 2 consecutive MAC SDUs associated with the logical channel being lost.
Chen et al. (US Publication 2019/0254117 A1) however teaches, wherein the PDCP duplication of the RB is activated based on 2 consecutive MAC SDUs associated with the logical channel being lost (see paragraph 62; if the PDCP entity can be aware of the activation/deactivation of the PDCP duplication function, the PDCP entity may determine that the PDCP PDU(s) may be lost based on a shorter reordering time).
Tsai and Chen are both related to data duplication.
Therefore, it would have been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present application to incorporate the use of determine the lost packet(s) as taught by Chen into the teachings of Tsai. The motivation to do so would be optimizing URLLC services, which rely on transmission of identical data over two independent radio paths to maximize reliability.
Claim(s) 3, 5, 8 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tsai as stated above further in view of Kuo et al. (US Publication 2022/0132557 A1).
In regards to claims 3, 5, 8 and 10, Tsai teaches all the limitations of the parent claims as stated above.
In further regards, Tsai fails to teach, based on a negative response of the MAC SDU being received, the PDCP duplication of the RB related to the logical channel is activated and wherein the PDCP duplication of the RB is activated based on the measurement gap being overlapped with a configured grant resource defined at time of the transmission.
Kuo et al. (US Publication 2022/0132557 A1) however teaches, , based on a negative response of the MAC SDU being received, the PDCP duplication of the RB related to the logical channel is activated (see paragraph 136; the criteria for activation/deactivation for duplication; see paragraph 152; The data transmission performance may be indicated by absolute or average performance of at least one past packet. The performance may be determined by evaluating if, for example, the number of received HARQ negative acknowledgments (NACK) for the Transport Block (or part of it) has exceeded a threshold or if the number of Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) NACK concerning the original LCH has exceeded a threshold. In particular, the threshold may be set to one and in such a case the triggering criteria will be met once a single HARQ NACK or ARQ NACK is received) and wherein the PDCP duplication of the RB is activated based on the measurement gap being overlapped with a configured grant resource defined at time of the transmission (see paragraphs 142; the CG can be prioritized or deprioritized in cases of resource collision with other grants based on certain pre-configured criteria that may be relevant to the counterpart packets of the duplicates in another carrier (e.g. another serving cell(s)).
Tsai and Kuo both relate to data duplication.
Therefore it would have to been obvious for one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the present application to incorporate the use of a NACK threshold as taught by Kuo into the teachings to Tsai. The motivation to do so would be to optimize resource utilization by only implementing duplication when needed such as when the radio quality degrades for and effective transmission for URLLC traffic.
Relevant Prior Art
Prior art Babaei et al. (US Publication 2018/0368132 A1) teaches, packet duplication control with PDCP duplication process and logical channel mapping restrictions (see figures 25-26).
Prior art Lee et al. (US Patent 11924891 B2) teaches, a process for transmitting a MAC PDU of random access procedure (see figure 15).
Conclusion
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/JAY P PATEL/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2466