DETAILED ACTION
This communication is responsive to Application #18731391 filed 06/03/2024. Claim(s) 1-6 is/are subject to examination.
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 § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph:
The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the applicant regards as his invention.
Claims 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) or 35 U.S.C. 112 (pre-AIA ), second paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor (or for applications subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 112, the applicant), regards as the invention.
Claim 1 and 2 recites the limitation "the set of symbols". There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim. For the purpose of examination, the examiner will interpret the claim as “a set of symbols”. Claims 3-6 are rejected as being dependent on claim 1.
Claim 2 recites the limitation “Y =…”. Y is not clearly defined by the claims. For the purpose of examination, the examiner will define Y as a resulting impairment vector. Claims 3-6 are rejected as being depending on claim 2.
Claim 3 recites the limitation
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. Each Y is not clearly defined by the claims. For the purpose of examination, the examiner will define Y~ as the resulting impairment covariance matrix. Claims 4-6 are rejected as being depending on claim 3.
Claim 6 recites the limitation “the spatially white noise vector”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
Claim 6 recites the limitation “the symbols”. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim.
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) 1-6 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by CHEN et al. (US 20170324462 A1), hereby referred to as CHEN.
Claim 1:
CHEN teaches A method of decoding a set of symbols from the plurality of signals received on multiple antennas of a receiver in a MIMO (Multiple input and Multiple Output) communication system, the method comprising: receiving a first set of signals on a corresponding a first set of antennas (CHEN: FIG. 1 wherein MIMO receivers receive a plurality of signals on a set of antennas); receiving a channel characteristic corresponding to the first set of signals, wherein the channel characteristics are arranged in a first matrix form (CHEN: EQ. 5-7 and para 28 (“…vector…may have been precoded at the transmitter using a…pre-coding matrix, and the resulting signal is transmitted through…transmit antenna…H always refers to the composite channel matrix between…received signals and…transmitted signals…”) wherein channel characteristics are arranged in vector/matrix form for further processing); performing Hermitian transform on the channel characteristic to form a second matrix, wherein the second matrix is a covariant matrix (CHEN: eq. 3 and para 30 (“The impairment vector n, which includes interference and thermal noise on Nrx receive antennas…In the first case, the impairment covariance matrix R is the identity matrix scaled by noise variance…transpose-conjugate operator…the impairment is modeled as a Hermitian matrix with non-zero off-the-diagonal entries…”) wherein R is the second covariant matrix); performing Cholesky decomposition on the second matrix to generate a third matrix, wherein the third matrix is a triangular matrix (CHEN: para 46 (“The spatial whitening filter generated by the whitening filter generation unit 406 can be obtained by computing the Cholesky decomposition of the inverse of the impairment covariance matrix R…”) and para 56 (“…the whitening filter can be generated by first computing the Cholesky decomposition of the impairment covariance matrix and then computing the inverse of the triangular Cholesky factor matrix followed by conjugate-transposing the result...”)wherein the third matrix is obtained after performing Cholesky decomposition); performing successive interference cancellation using the third matrix and the first set of signal to generate an estimate of the set of symbols (CHEN: FIG. 4 item 424, FIG. 5 item 510 (“generate estimates of bits of the data from the received signal”), and para 25 (“Similarly, a NAICS receiver using successive interference cancellation may use MMSE to first detect neighbor cell signal, subtract the detected interference from received signal and then detect the desired signal…”) wherein the results/third matrix is used in a success interference cancellation algorithm to generate an estimate).
Claim 2:
CHEN teaches the method of claim 1, wherein the first set of received signals is equal to:
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(CHEN: eq. 6 (“n=H2x2+w”) and para 32 (“…where H2, x2 represent the channel matrix and the transmitted symbol vector from the interfering neighbor cell respectively, and w the thermal noise.”)).
Claim 3:
CHEN teaches the method of claim 2, wherein said performing Hermitian transform comprise the operation represented by the relation:
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(CHEN: eq 6 the Hermitian transform operation).
Claim 4:
CHEN teaches the method of claim 3, wherein said performing Cholesky decomposition comprise the operation represented by the relation:
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(CHEN: eq 10 and para 46
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).
Claim 5:
CHEN teaches the method of claim 4, further comprising partitioning the second matrix into sub matrices that are of the order less than the order of the second matrix and performing the Cholesky decomposition and its inverse recursively on the partitioned sub matrices (CHEN: para 56 (“…first computing the Cholesky decomposition of the impairment covariance matrix and then computing the inverse of the triangular Cholesky factor matrix followed by conjugate-transposing the result…”) and para 57 (“…the Cholesky factorization that is calculated using either upper or lower triangular factor matrix…the impairment will be de-correlated whether upper or lower triangular matrix is used…”) wherein the triangular matrix are the portioned sub matricies).
Claim 6:
CHEN teaches the method of claim 5, further comprising creating the spatially white noise vector and performing successive interference cancellation on the symbols to decode the data symbols (CHEN: eq 15-16, FIG. 4 item 424, FIG. 5 item 510 (“generate estimates of bits of the data from the received signal”), and para 25 (“Similarly, a NAICS receiver using successive interference cancellation may use MMSE to first detect neighbor cell signal, subtract the detected interference from received signal and then detect the desired signal…”) wherein the results/third matrix is used in a success interference cancellation algorithm to generate an estimate).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
HADANI et al. (US 20190081836 A1) Fig. 9 teaches performing Cholesky factorization to provide a channel estimate.
TOMEBA et al. (US 20160173175 A1) para 150-158 teaches performing Cholesky factorization
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ANGELIE T NGO whose telephone number is (571)272-0180. The examiner can normally be reached Mon - Thur: 8am - 5pm; 2nd Fri: 8am - 3pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Noel Beharry can be reached at (571) 270-5630. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/A.T.N./ Examiner, Art Unit 2416
/NOEL R BEHARRY/ Supervisory Patent Examiner, Art Unit 2416
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