DETAILED ACTION
Response to Remark
This communication is considered fully responsive to the amendment filed on 05/22/26.
Independent claims have been amended.
The previous 102 rejection by HE has been replaced with a new 103 rejection over HE in view of Takeda.
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 of this title, 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, 7-13, 23, 24, and 29-34 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over HE et al. (US 2023/0040353, “HE”) in view of Takeda et al. (US 2022/0131669, “Takeda”; Provisional 63/094,996, hereinafter “Prov’996”).
Regarding claim 1, HE discloses a method for receiving a temporary reference signal, performed by a user equipment (UE), comprising:
- receiving, by the UE, a medium access control control element (MAC CE) signaling sent by a base station, wherein the MAC CE signaling comprises a first indication field (See 425 Fig.4 and ¶.53, the gNB transmits a MAC CE on the cell to the UE. The MAC CE may indicate to the UE that a deactivated SCell is to be activated. In addition, the MAC CE may also indicate to the UE that aperiodic reference signals are to be transmitted on the SCell);
- determining, by the UE, a secondary cell to be activated, wherein the first indication field corresponds to the secondary cell to be activated (See ¶.53, UE that a deactivated SCell is to be activated. In addition, the MAC CE may also indicate to the UE that aperiodic reference signals are to be transmitted on the SCell); and
- receiving, by the UE, a temporary reference signal in the secondary cell to be activated (See 430 Fig.4 and ¶.53, UE receives ‘Reference signals’; See ¶.44, FIG. 4 shows a signaling diagram 400 for SCell activation with temporary aperiodic reference signals according to various exemplary embodiments. The signaling diagram is provided as a general overview of a scenario in which SCell activation with temporary aperiodic reference signals may be utilized),
- wherein the method further comprises: determining, by the UE, a length of a packet data unit (PDU) of the MAC CE signaling based on an indication of the base station (See ¶.73, the MAC CE may have a fixed size and include multiple fields. In one example, the MAC CE may include a single-octet bitmap that contains seven Ci fields and one reserved bit (R). In another example, the MAC CE may include a four-octet bitmap that contains 31 Ci fields and one reserved bit (R). The Ci field indicates that activation/deactivation status of the SCell corresponding to the SCell index “i.” The field value may be set to a first value (e.g., 1) to indicate that the SCell i shall be activated. The field value may be set to a second value (e.g., 0) to indicate that the corresponding SCell i shall be deactivated; See further claims 1 and 14),
- wherein the MAC CE signaling comprises a subset selection field, and the subset selection field is configured to indicate a temporary reference signal (TRS) subset corresponding to the first indication field (See ¶.84, the exemplary embodiments also introduce techniques to reduce latency of the SCell activation with TRS triggering. One of these pre-configured aperiodic CSI-RS resource sets may be selected by the MAC CE through a CSI-RS triggering field common to all CCs or on a per-CC basis. Alternatively, a default CSI-RS resource set may be configured and is used when there is no CSI-RS triggering field included in the MAC CE; See ¶.57, FIG. 5 shows a table 500 illustrating an example configuration of a minimum number of temporary reference signal bursts triggered by a MAC CE. The UE may validate the aperiodic reference signal resources configured for SCell activation based, in part, on measurement cycle configuration (e.g., discontinuous reception (DRX), etc.) and CA configuration. The type of information included in the table 500 may be hard encoded into the 3GPP Standards or provisioned to the UE 110 in any other appropriate manner; Examiner’s Note: Takeda further discloses those limitations; See 2720 Fig.27 of Takeda, ‘transmit, to the UE, a MAC-CE that indicates the one or more parameters for the aperiodic reference signal’; Prov’996 discloses
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).
HE does not explicitly disclose what Takeda discloses,
- wherein the subset selection field carries a bit number, and there is a correspondence relationship between the bit number carried in the subset selection field and the temporary reference signal subset (Takeda, See ¶.15, a number of bits in the information field may be configured by radio resource control (RRC) signaling or may be determined based on a number of available tracking reference signal (TRS) states. In some examples of the method, apparatuses, and non-transitory computer-readable medium described herein, the information field may be mapped to one or more of a TRS timing or slot, a TRS resource, a TRS power offset, or any combinations thereof, for one or multiple serving cells; Prov’996 shows the same contents;
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),
- wherein the correspondence relationship is predefined by a protocol, or is configured by the base station through a radio resource control (RRC) signaling (Takeda, See ¶.31, a number of bits in the information field may be configured by RRC signaling or may be determined based on a number of available TRS states. In some examples of the method, apparatuses, and non-transitory computer-readable medium described herein, the information field may be mapped to one or more of a TRS timing or slot, a TRS resource, a TRS power offset, or any combinations thereof, for one or multiple serving cells; Prov’996 shows the same contents;
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See ¶.127, in some cases a DCI from the base station may include a field that provides an indication of the one or more temporary reference signal parameters. In some cases, the DCI may reuse a CSI request field from an uplink grant to indicate the temporary reference signal 655 parameters, in which a number of bits in the field is either configured by RRC signaling or is determined by a number of TRS triggering states. In some cases, a TRS triggering field is linked to {TRS timing/slot, TRS configuration (resource and/or power offset)} for one or multiple serving cells. In other cases, the DCI may reuse one or more PDSCH scheduling information fields in a downlink DCI format that triggers the temporary reference signal 655. For example, the time/frequency resources that the temporary reference signal 655 is mapped to may be indicated by FDRA/TDRA fields that may be present for PDSCH scheduling; Prov’996 shows;
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;
See further ¶.173, ¶.207, and claim 12).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to apply the method of “wherein the subset selection field carries a bit number, and there is a correspondence relationship between the bit number carried in the subset selection field and the temporary reference signal subset, wherein the correspondence relationship is predefined by a protocol, or is configured by the base station through a radio resource control (RRC) signaling” as taught by Takeda into the system of HE, so that it provides a way for TRS triggering field that indicates temporary reference signal details to carry indication of temporary reference signal for the i-th cell amongst the SCells to-be-activated by this MAC-CE (Takeda, See ¶.139).
Regarding claim 2, HE discloses “the MAC CE signaling further comprises a second indication field, and the second indication field corresponds to the first indication field (See ¶.53, the MAC CE may also indicate to the UE that aperiodic reference signals are to be transmitted on the SCell).”
Regarding claim 4, HE discloses “the temporary reference signal in the determined secondary cell to be activated is sent from a base station to the UE (See 430 Fig.4).”
Regarding claim 7, it is a method claim for receiving a temporarily reference signal corresponding to the claim 1 and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claim 8, HE discloses “the indication information is: downlink control information; coding information of downlink control information; or a MAC CE signaling (See 425 Fig.4, MAC CE).”
Regarding claim 9, HE discloses “the indication information comprises at least one of: a control resource set identifier (ID); a search space ID; or a cell ID (See ¶.55, resource set ID; See Fig.8 and ¶.78, TRS resource set ID).”
Regarding claim 10, HE discloses “the first indication field corresponds to a temporary reference signal subset (See ¶.9, temporary aperiodic reference signals; a burst of temporary reference signals).”
Regarding claim 11, HE discloses “determining, by the UE, the secondary cell to be activated according to the indication information, comprises: determining, by the UE, the secondary cell to be activated according to configuration information of the temporary reference signal subset (See ¶.55, each aperiodic reference signal resource set may include a set of reference signals and corresponding set-specific parameters. For example, the SCell activation configuration information may include a resource set ID which may be used to differentiate between reference signal resource sets. The corresponding reference signals may be configured in a number of bursts where each burst consists of one or more samples. Thus, the SCell activation configuration information may also indicate a number of reference signals and/or a number of bursts for the reference signal resource set; See ¶.56, a burst of temporary reference signals (TES) may be referred to as a “TRS burst.” However, as mentioned above, the exemplary embodiments are not limited to TRS and the aperiodic reference signals may be any appropriate type of reference signal. In some embodiments, the TES burst may be defined in a frequency range specific manner, e.g., frequency range 1 (FR1), frequency range 2 (FR2), etc. For example, in FR1, a TRS burst may consist of two slots with four CSI-RS resources (four samples). In FR2, a TRS burst may comprise either one slot with two CSI-RS resources (two samples) or two slots with four CSI-RS resources).”
Regarding claim 12, HE discloses “the configuration information of the temporary reference signal subset is N groups of temporary reference signal configuration information among M groups of temporary reference signal configuration information of the secondary cell to be activated, wherein M and N are positive integers, and N≤M (See Fig.6, ¶.67-68).”
Regarding claim 13, HE discloses “the temporary reference signal in the determined secondary cell to be activated is sent by a base station (See Fig.4).”
Regarding claim 23, it is a user equipment claim corresponding to the method claim 1, except the limitation “a processor and a memory (See Fig.3)” and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claim 24, it is a user equipment claim corresponding to the method claim 1 and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claim.
Regarding claims 29-34, they are claims corresponding to claims 8-13, respectively and are therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of the claims.
Claim 3 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over HE in view of Takeda and further in view of Babaei (US 2022/0225215, “Babaei”).
Regarding claim 3, HE does not explicitly disclose what Babaei discloses “a number of the second indication field is more than one, one of the more than one second indication field corresponds to an identifier (ID) of one secondary cell, and is configured to indicate an activation state of the secondary cell (Babaei, See ¶.154, when MAC CE is used for fast SCell activation, target SCell ID may be included in the MAC CE. In an example, TRS triggering information (e.g., trigger state ID) may be included in the MAC CE; See further ¶.277).”
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date to apply “a number of the second indication field is more than one, one of the more than one second indication field corresponds to an identifier (ID) of one secondary cell, and is configured to indicate an activation state of the secondary cell” as taught by Babaei into the system of HE and Takeda, so that it provides a way of activating the target Scell by using the Scell ID (Babaei, ¶.154).
Response to Arguments
Applicant's arguments filed have been considered. But, in view of the applicant’s amendment to the claims, examiner has clarified and totally remapped the rejection to the argued claim limitations, using the prior art of record in the current prosecution of the claims and a new prior art by Takeda for the newly added claim limitations. The previous 102 rejection by HE has been replaced with a new 103 rejection over HE in view of Takeda.
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 date of this final action.
Contact Information
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jung H Park whose telephone number is 571-272-8565. The examiner can normally be reached M-F: 7:00 AM-3:00 PM.
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/JUNG H PARK/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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