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 .
This Office action is in response to the preliminary amendment filed on 06/27/2024. Claims 1-4 and 8-12 have been amended and claim 13 has been canceled.
Claims 1-12 are presented for examination.
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on applications 10-2023-0062038 and 10-2023-0104460 filed in Republic of Korea on 05/12/2023 and 08/09/2023.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 06/27/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
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.
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, 6 and 11-12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WU et al. (US 2021/0385854 A1), in view of 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.11.0 (Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16), 09/2022, Falconetti et al. (US 12,041,618 B2).
As to claim 1, WU discloses the invention as claimed, including a method performed by a terminal in a wireless communication system, the method comprising:
transmitting a message A for a random access procedure (Fig. 2, 210; ¶0006, “The random access method includes: a terminal device sends a first message to a network device, wherein the first message includes a random access preamble”; ¶0007, “The random access method includes: a network device receives a first message sent by a terminal device, wherein the first message includes a random access preamble”; ¶0018, “in the two-step random access procedure, after the terminal device sends the first message to the network device”);
receiving downlink control information (DCI) that schedules a physical downlink shared channel (PDSCH), wherein the DCI is scrambled by an MsgB-radio network temporary identifier (RNTI) (¶0086, “the network device may use a DCI format 1_0 scrambled by the C-RNTI or TC-RNTI to schedule initial transmission or retransmission of the Msg4. The random access is completed if the terminal device receives the DCI format 1_0 scrambled by the C-RNTI and its corresponding PDSCH”; ¶0087, "The DCI format 1_0 scrambled by the TC-RNTI may include: an uplink and downlink DCI indicator (1 bit), frequency resource allocation (its size is determined according to a DL BWP), time resource allocation (4 bits), mapping of virtual resource blocks (VRBs) to physical resource blocks (PRBs) (1 bit), MCS (5 bits), NDI (1 bit), an RV (2 bits), a HARQ process number (4 bits), a downlink allocation indicator (DAI) (2 bits reserved), a transmit power control command for PUCCH (2 bits), a PUCCH resource indicator (3 bits), and a PDSCH-to-HARQ feedback time indicator (3 bits)”; ¶0174, “the network device sends first DCI scrambled by a first RNTI to the terminal device, the first DCI is used for scheduling a first PDSCH, and the first PDSCH includes the response information for the preamble (situation A)”);
receiving the PDSCH scheduled by the DCI through physical resource blocks (PRBs) allocated by the DCI (¶0086, “the network device may use a DCI format 1_0 scrambled by the C-RNTI or TC-RNTI to schedule initial transmission or retransmission of the Msg4. The random access is completed if the terminal device receives the DCI format 1_0 scrambled by the C-RNTI and its corresponding PDSCH”; ¶0087, "The DCI format 1_0 scrambled by the TC-RNTI may include: an uplink and downlink DCI indicator (1 bit), frequency resource allocation (its size is determined according to a DL BWP), time resource allocation (4 bits), mapping of virtual resource blocks (VRBs) to physical resource blocks (PRBs) (1 bit)”; ¶0174).
Although WU discloses resource allocation in frequency domain (¶0075; ¶0083; ¶0087; ¶0129; ¶0142), WU does not specifically disclose based on a first number of PRBs allocated by the DCI is greater than a second number of PRBs, and a transport block (TB) provided by the PDSCH is not received correctly or a random access preamble identifier (RAPID) associated with PRACH transmission from the terminal is not identified, transmitting a physical random access channel (PRACH) no later than a first time length after a last symbol of the PDSCH.
However, 3GPP discloses based on a number of PRBs allocated by the DCI (section 8.3: PUSCH scheduled by RAR UL grant, “The frequency domain resource allocation is by uplink resource allocation type 1 [6, TS 38.214]. For an initial UL BWP size of
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RBs, a UE processes the frequency domain resource assignment field as follows…frequency resource assignment field as for the frequency resource assignment field in DCI format 0_0 as described in [5, TS 38.212]”), a transport block (TB) provided by the PDSCH is not received correctly or a random access preamble identifier (RAPID) associated with PRACH transmission from the terminal is not identified, transmitting a physical random access channel (PRACH) no later than a first time length after a last symbol of the PDSCH (section 8.1: Random access preamble, “A configuration by higher layers for a PRACH transmission includes the following: A configuration for PRACH transmission [4, TS 38.211]”; section 8.2: Random access response - Type-1 random access procedure, “if the UE does not correctly receive the transport block in the corresponding PDSCH within the window, or if the higher layers do not identify the RAPID associated with the PRACH transmission from the UE, the higher layers can indicate to the physical layer to transmit a PRACH. If requested by higher layers, the UE shall be ready to transmit a PRACH no later than NT, 1 +0.75 msec after the last symbol of the window, or the last symbol of the PDSCH reception, where NT, 1 is a time duration of N1 symbols corresponding to a PDSCH processing time for UE processing capability…”; section 8.2A: Random access response - Type-2 random access procedure, “if the UE does not correctly receive the transport block in the corresponding PDSCH within the window, or if the higher layers do not identify the RAPID associated with the PRACH transmission from the UE, the higher layers can indicate to the physical layer to transmit only PRACH according to Type-1 random access procedure or to transmit both PRACH and PUSCH according to Type-2 random access procedure [11, TS 38.321]”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of WU to include based on a number of PRBs allocated by the DCI, a transport block (TB) provided by the PDSCH is not received correctly or a random access preamble identifier (RAPID) associated with PRACH transmission from the terminal is not identified, transmitting a physical random access channel (PRACH) no later than a first time length after a last symbol of the PDSCH, as taught by 3GPP because it would improve the efficiency of the random access procedure by enabling the UE to promptly retransmit PRACH after unsuccessful reception (3GPP; section 8).
Falconetti, on the other hand, discloses based on a first number of PRBs allocated by the DCI is greater than a second number of PRBs (Claims 1, 4, 12, 15, “determine a first number of physical resource blocks (PRBs) for a short control channel element (sCCE) in a two symbol sPDCCH and determine a second number of PRBs for a sCCE in a three symbol sPDCCH, the first number of PRBs being greater than the second number of PRBs configure the wireless device using the determined first number of PRBs for the two symbol sPDCCH and using the second number of PRBs for the two symbol sPDCCH”). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of WU to include based on a first number of PRBs allocated by the DCI is greater than a second number of PRBs, as taught by Falconetti because it would provide an indication of whether the PDSCH reception involves a large resource allocation, thereby reducing access delay and improving random access reliability (Falconetti; Claims 1, 4, 12, 15).
As to claim 6, WU discloses the method of claim 1, wherein the transmitting of the message A comprises: identifying a bandwidth (BW) of a PUSCH resource for the message A through system information; and transmitting the message A based on the BW of the PUSCH resource for the message A being equal to or smaller than the max scheduled transmission BW of the terminal (¶0075, “The UL grant of 27 bits in each MAC RAR may include PUSCH frequency resource allocation, PUSCH time resource allocation”; ¶0083, “an uplink and downlink DCI indicator (1 bit), frequency resource allocation, time resource allocation (4 bits), a frequency hopping flag (1 bit), MCS (5 bits), a new data indicator (NDI) (1 bit reserved), an RV (2 bits), a HARQ process number (4 bits reserved), a transmit power control command for PUSCH (2 bits), and an UL/supplement UL (SUL) carrier indicator (1 bit). A size of the frequency resource allocation may be determined according to an uplink band width part (BWP)”; ¶0087; ¶0116, “the response information for the preamble may further include at least one of: indicator information of at least one uplink BWP, indicator information of at least one uplink sub-band, indicator information of at least two time domain resources, indicator information of at least two frequency domain resources, a channel access type corresponding to the second PUSCH, and a channel access priority corresponding to the second PUSCH”).
As to claim 11, it is rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim 1 above. In addition, WU discloses a terminal in a wireless communication system (Fig. 10, 600), the terminal comprising: a transceiver (Fig. 10, 630); and a processor (Fig. 10, 610) coupled with the transceiver (Fig. 10; ¶0249-0252).
As to claim 12, it is rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim 1 above. In addition, WU discloses a communication device comprising: at least one processor; and at least one computer memory coupled with the at least one processor and storing an instruction that instructs operations (Fig. 10; ¶0249-0252).
Claim 2 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WU et al. (US 2021/0385854 A1), 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.11.0 (Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16), 09/2022, Falconetti et al. (US 12,041,618 B2), further in view of GUO et al. (US 2023/0058672 A1).
As to claim 2, WU does not specifically disclose wherein the second number of PRBs is determined based on a max scheduled transmission bandwidth of the terminal.
However, GUO discloses wherein the second number of PRBs is determined based on a max scheduled transmission bandwidth of the terminal (¶0022, “the number of physical resource blocks is smaller than or equal to the maximum number of PRBs, wherein the maximum number of PRBs is determined based on at least one of the maximum bandwidth supported by the wireless terminal, the maximum symbols per slot used for data scheduling”; ¶0023, “the number of physical resource blocks is smaller than or equal to the maximum number of PRBs, wherein the maximum number of PRBs is determined based on at least one of the maximum bandwidth supported by the wireless terminal, the maximum symbols per slot used for data scheduling”; ¶0059-¶0060). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of WU to include the PDSCH includes wherein the second number of PRBs is determined based on a max scheduled transmission bandwidth of the terminal, as taught by GUO because this mechanism maximizes spectral efficiency and data throughput for the terminal by avoiding resource overallocation (GUO; ¶0022-¶0023).
Claims 3 and 9-10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WU et al. (US 2021/0385854 A1), 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.11.0 (Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16), 09/2022, Falconetti et al. (US 12,041,618 B2), further in view of Lin et al. (US 2022/0369376 A1).
As to claims 3 and 9-10, they are rejected for the same reasons set forth in claim 1 above. In addition, Lin discloses the PDSCH includes a success random access response (success RAR), transmitting acknowledge (ACK) information through a PUCCH, wherein a time between the last symbol of the PDSCH and a first symbol of the PUCCH is not smaller than a second time length; wherein the success RAR includes an indicator related to transmission timing of the ACK information, and wherein the indicator includes a value that is determined based on at least one of the first number of the PRBs, the second number of the PRBs, and the SCS; and wherein the success RAR includes the indicator related to transmission timing of the ACK information, and wherein a slot position of the PUCCH is determined based on a sum of an offset value received through a system information block (SIB) or the DCI and a value included in the indicator (¶0058; ¶0094, “In response to a PUSCH transmission scheduled by a RAR UL grant when a UE has not been provided with a Cell-RNTI, the UE attempts to detect a DCI format 1_0 with CRC scrambled by a corresponding Temporary Cell-RNTI (TC-RNTI) scheduling a PDSCH that includes a UE contention resolution identity [as described in TS 38.321]. In response to the PDSCH reception with the UE contention resolution identity, the UE transmits HARQ-acknowledgement (ACK) information in a PUCCH. The PUCCH transmission is within a same active UL bandwidth part (BWP) as the PUSCH transmission. A minimum time between the last symbol of the PDSCH reception and the first symbol of the corresponding PUCCH transmission with the HARQ-ACK information is equal to NT,1+0.5 msec”; ¶0096, “FIG. 3A for transmission of HARQ-ACK information on PUCCH in an initial UL BWP of NBWPsize physical reference blocks (PRBs). NBWPsize defines the number of PRBs in a BWP”; ¶0107, “the DCI format 1_0, the PDSCH-to-HARQ-timing-indicator field values map to {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}. For the DCI format 1_1, if present, the PDSCH-to-HARQ-timing-indicator field values map to values for a set of number of slots”; ¶0108; ¶0205, “the HARQ feedback principle may be that only a UE, which successfully receives the success RAR/fallback RAR and concludes from the contention resolution information that it is targeted by the success RAR/fallback RAR, transmits HARQ feedback (i.e. transmits HARQ ACK)”; ¶0215, “DCI may include one or more of the following parameters to indicate the PUCCH resource within a slot and the slot level resource respectively”; ¶0218; ¶0223; ¶0261, “the UE transmits HARQ-ACK information in a PUCCH. The PUCCH transmission is within a same active UL BWP as the PUSCH transmission. A minimum time between the last symbol of the PDSCH reception and the first symbol of the corresponding PUCCH transmission with the HARQ-ACK information is equal to NT,1+0.5 msec. NT,1 is a time duration of N1 symbols corresponding to a PDSCH reception time for UE…”; ¶0275; ¶0371). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of WU to include the PDSCH includes a success random access response (success RAR), transmitting acknowledge (ACK) information through a PUCCH, wherein a time between the last symbol of the PDSCH and a first symbol of the PUCCH is not smaller than a second time length; wherein the success RAR includes an indicator related to transmission timing of the ACK information, and wherein the indicator includes a value that is determined based on at least one of the first number of the PRBs, the second number of the PRBs, and the SCS; and wherein the success RAR includes the indicator related to transmission timing of the ACK information, and wherein a slot position of the PUCCH is determined based on a sum of an offset value received through a system information block (SIB) or the DCI and a value included in the indicator, as taught by Lin because it would prevent corrupted or premature HARQ-ACK responses, thereby avoiding unnecessary uplink interference and retransmissions (Lin; ¶0205-¶0206).
Claims 7-8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WU et al. (US 2021/0385854 A1), 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.11.0 (Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16), 09/2022, Falconetti et al. (US 12,041,618 B2), further in view of AWADIN et al. (US 2023/0188261 A1).
As to claims 7-8, although WU discloses a 2-step PRACH procedure (Fig. 5; ¶0088, “Time delay of the four-step random access procedure is relatively large, which is not suitable for low-delay and high-reliability scenarios of the 5G. Considering characteristics of related services with the low-delay and high-reliability, a scheme for the two-step random access procedure is proposed”), WU does not specifically disclose wherein the PUSCH resource is determined not to be used for a 2-step PRACH procedure based on the BW of the PUSCH resource for the message A being equal to or smaller than the max scheduled transmission BW of the terminal; and wherein the first time length is determined based on at least one of the first number of PRBs allocated by the DCI and the second number of PRBs corresponding to the max scheduled transmission bandwidth among a plurality of values.
However, AWADIN discloses wherein the PUSCH resource is determined not to be used for a 2-step PRACH procedure based on the BW of the PUSCH resource for the message A being equal to or smaller than the max scheduled transmission BW of the terminal (¶0175; ¶0366, “If the UE is in RRC-idle/inactive states and/or no additional configured BWPs other than the BWP in which the 2-step RACH is initialized, the gNB may configure a “dummy” BWP for the purpose of transmitting the repetition of MsgA-PUSCH…to configure the frequency domain location and bandwidth of this “dummy” BWP an RRC parameter such as locationAndBandwidth may be indicated as part of Msg-PUSCH-Config. The value of this parameter may be interpreted as in resource indicator value (RIV) as same as in BWP IE to provide the starting position and the bandwidth of a BWP as a number of contiguous PRB”; ¶0383, “Solutions for Msg2 in 4-step RACH and MsgB in 2-step RACH are described herein…”); wherein the first time length is determined based on at least one of the first number of PRBs allocated by the DCI and the second number of PRBs corresponding to the max scheduled transmission bandwidth among a plurality of values (¶0258, “time domain resource assignment which point to one row of the TDRA table. Each row provides the parameter K0 and the SLIV”; ¶0277, “In DCI format 1_0 with CRC scrambled by SI-RNTI, the frequency domain resource assignment field has ┌ log2(NRBDL,BWP(NRBDL,BWP+1)/2)┐ bits, where NRBDL,BWP is the number of PRB in the initial DL BWP to provide resource allocation type 1, the start and length of PRBs for PDSCH. For example, if the maximum bandwidth of BWP for reduced capability NR devices is 24 PRBs, then frequency domain resource assignment field has 9 bits”; ¶0279-0280; ¶0396). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of WU to include the PDSCH includes wherein the PUSCH resource is determined not to be used for a 2-step PRACH procedure based on the BW of the PUSCH resource for the message A being equal to or smaller than the max scheduled transmission BW of the terminal; and wherein the first time length is determined based on at least one of the first number of PRBs allocated by the DCI and the second number of PRBs corresponding to the max scheduled transmission bandwidth among a plurality of values, as taught by AWADIN because it would ensure that the user equipment (UE) is never assigned a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) resource size for Message A that exceeds its maximum transmission capability (AWADIN; ¶0326; ¶0353).
Claims 4-5 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over WU et al. (US 2021/0385854 A1), 3GPP TS 38.213 V16.11.0 (Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network; NR; Physical layer procedures for control (Release 16), 09/2022, Falconetti et al. (US 12,041,618 B2), Lin et al. (US 2022/036376 A1), further in view of GUO et al. (US 2023/0058672 A1).
As to claims 4-5, WU does not specifically disclose wherein the second number of PRBs is determined based on a max scheduled transmission bandwidth of the terminal; wherein the second time length is selected among a plurality of values based on subcarrier spacing (SCS); wherein the terminal is a device that has a limit of the max scheduled transmission bandwidth, wherein the plurality of values includes a first value for 15 KHz SCS and a second value for 30 KHz SCS, wherein the first value is larger by a first difference value than a time duration value that is applied for ACK transmission according to success RAR reception of a device without the limit of the max scheduled transmission bandwidth, wherein the second value is larger by a second difference value than the time duration value that is applied for ACK transmission according to success RAR reception of the device without the limit of the max scheduled transmission bandwidth, and wherein the first difference value is defined to be twice the second difference value.
However, GUO discloses wherein the second number of PRBs is determined based on a max scheduled transmission bandwidth of the terminal (¶0022, “the number of physical resource blocks is smaller than or equal to the maximum number of PRBs, wherein the maximum number of PRBs is determined based on at least one of the maximum bandwidth supported by the wireless terminal, the maximum symbols per slot used for data scheduling”; ¶0023, “the number of physical resource blocks is smaller than or equal to the maximum number of PRBs, wherein the maximum number of PRBs is determined based on at least one of the maximum bandwidth supported by the wireless terminal, the maximum symbols per slot used for data scheduling”; ¶0059-¶0060); wherein the second time length is selected among a plurality of values based on subcarrier spacing (SCS) (Table 3; ¶0118, “the bandwidth in the unit of MHz represents the frequency domain resource. In some embodiments, the bandwidth may be at least one of the values {1, 2, 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100} MHz. In some embodiments, the maximum transmission bandwidth configuration NRB for each UE channel bandwidth and subcarrier spacing is specified in Table 3 below”); wherein the terminal is a device that has a limit of the max scheduled transmission bandwidth, wherein the plurality of values includes a first value for 15 KHz SCS and a second value for 30 KHz SCS, wherein the first value is larger by a first difference value than a time duration value that is applied for ACK transmission according to success RAR reception of a device without the limit of the max scheduled transmission bandwidth, wherein the second value is larger by a second difference value than the time duration value that is applied for ACK transmission according to success RAR reception of the device without the limit of the max scheduled transmission bandwidth, and wherein the first difference value is defined to be twice the second difference value (Table 3; ¶0022-¶0023; ¶0118, “the bandwidth in the unit of MHz represents the frequency domain resource. In some embodiments, the bandwidth may be at least one of the values {1, 2, 2.5, 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100} MHz. In some embodiments, the maximum transmission bandwidth configuration NRB for each UE channel bandwidth and subcarrier spacing is specified in Table 3 below”); ¶0119, “the maximum number of available PRBs for each maximum transmission bandwidth may be determined by the transmission bandwidth and the minimum guard for each transmission bandwidth and SCS (kHz). For a UE, all PRBs falling within the UE channel bandwidth not covering the minimum guard band may be used”; ¶0171-¶0175). It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify the system of WU to include the limitations above, as taught by GUO because this would allow the bandwidth-limited terminal having the plurality of values includes a first value (15 kHz SCS) and a second value (30 kHz SCS), thereby spectrum flexibility and seamless coexistence across diverse 5G NR networks (GUO; ¶0022-¶0023; ¶0118).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
LIU et al. (US 2021/0289536 A1), WEI et al. (US 2021/0168874 A1), Lin et al. (US 2023/0136327 A1) disclose a user equipment and a method for a 2-step random-access procedure.
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/JUNGWON CHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2454 July 15, 2026
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