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 action is in response to the application filed on 24 June 2024.
Claims 1-20 are under examination.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 24 June 2024. The submission is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
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)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1 and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Denis et al. (US Publication 2021/0194560).
With respect to claims 1 and 7, Denis teaches A device comprising: at least one processor; and a computer-readable medium having stored thereon, computer executable instructions, that when executed by the at least one processor, (processor, figure 5) cause the device to perform operations including:
determining beam parameters for at least one of a transmit beam at a base station or a receive beam at the device based on a probability function of a beamforming angle (the UE determines an estimate, {circumflex over (ψ)}, of the angle of arrival as well as the standard deviation thereof, σ.sub.ψ, paragraph 70)
transmitting beam parameter information based on the beam parameters to the base station for use in transmitting reference signals on at least one transmit beam at the base station; (The UE transfers to the BS its updated position estimate, {circumflex over (d)}, paragraph 65)
receiving the reference signals on at least one receive beam based on the beam parameter information; (the BS sends second downlink pilot symbols. The second pilot symbols may be identical to the first pilot symbols sent, paragraph 69))
measuring the reference signals that have been received on the at least one receive beam; (jointly with the estimation of the position on the downlink pilots (sent by the BS at step 520 and) received by the UE. In such a case, the update of the position and the update of the angle of arrival are carried out in a single step, paragraph 71) and
determining a modified probability function of the beamforming angle based in part on measurements of the reference signals for use in determining a subsequent iteration of the beam parameters for the at least one of the transmit beam at the base station or the receive beam at the device. (The first loop and second loop being independent from each other, provided they share the same UE position estimate, {circumflex over (d)} (and therefore the same beam β.sub.j,k), it will be appreciated that they can be run in parallel or in an interleaved manner. Once the conditions set out at steps 535 and 545 are both met for the same beam, the iterative algorithm stops, paragraph 78. Whatever the embodiment envisaged, the iterations are stopped when both constraints on standard deviation (or variance) of position and standard deviation (or variance) of angle of arrival are met. Furthermore, in order to avoid lengthy convergence and therefore unacceptably high latency, the iterations may also be stopped whenever a predetermined number of iterations has been reached, paragraph 80)
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.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
The factual inquiries set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 148 USPQ 459 (1966), that are applied for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness
Claims 2 and 8 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Denis et al. (US Publication 2021/0194560) in view of Sun et al. (US Publication 2021/0160964).
With respect to claims 2 and 8, Denis doesn’t teach wherein the beam parameter information indicates at least one of: an identification of the transmit beam to be used at the base station for a particular time slot; or a number of training time slots.
Sun teaches wherein the beam parameter information indicates at least one of: an identification of the transmit beam to be used at the base station for a particular time slot; or a number of training time slots. (UE 906 may assign a logical antenna panel ID to the determined antenna panel and transmit beam report 912 to gNB 904. The beam report 912 may include the logical antenna panel ID. Upon receipt of the beam report 912, gNB 904 may configure a beam and transmit beam indication 914 to UE 906. The beam indication 914 may include the logical antenna panel ID to use for communications, paragraph 108)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Denis with the beam parameter information indicates at least one of: an identification of the transmit beam to be used at the base station for a particular time slot; or a number of training time slots as taught by Sun. The motivation for combining Denis and Sun is to be able to optimize for efficient panel management
Claims 3 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Denis et al. (US Publication 2021/0194560) in view of “Deep Learning Assisted Calibrated Beam Training for Millimeter-Wave Communication Systems; IEEE transactions on communications, VOL. 69, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2021” (herein referred to as Ma).
With respect to claims 3 and 9, Denis doesn’t teach further comprising: performing at least one additional iteration of a beam sweeping cycle, wherein determining the beam parameters in the at least one additional iteration comprises: using the modified probability function of the beamforming angle together with power of the reference signals transmitted on the transmit beam or received on the receive beam and a number of the at least one additional iteration for performing the determining of the beam parameters.
Ma teaches further comprising: performing at least one additional iteration of a beam sweeping cycle, wherein determining the beam parameters in the at least one additional iteration comprises: using the modified probability function of the beamforming angle together with power of the reference signals transmitted on the transmit beam or received on the receive beam and a number of the at least one additional iteration for performing the determining of the beam parameters. (Equation 33-35, beam index with the maximum power of the received signal is used as the classification label of the wide beam prediction, section V page 8)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Denis with using the modified probability function of the beamforming angle together with power of the reference signals transmitted on the transmit beam or received on the receive beam and a number of the at least one additional iteration for performing the determining of the beam parameters as taught by MA. The motivation for combining Denis and MA is to be able to select the next iteration’s beam.
Claims 4 and 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Denis et al. (US Publication 2021/0194560) in view of Islam et al. (US Publication 2020/0267733).
With respect to claims 4 and 10, Denis doesn’t teach further comprising: receiving at least one of confirmation information or modification information from the base station pertaining to the beam parameter information transmitted by the UE.
Islam teaches further comprising: receiving at least one of confirmation information or modification information from the base station pertaining to the beam parameter information transmitted by the UE. (when the UE informs the base station about the change, the base station may determine not to change the current beam to the second beam if the change from the current beam to the second beam is not appropriate (e.g., if the second beam interferes with a neighboring base station). When the base station determines that the change from the current beam to the second beam is appropriate (e.g., does not interfere with a neighboring base station), the base station sends a beam change instruction to the UE (e.g., via a PDCCH) to indicate that the base station will change the beam, paragraph 81)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Denis with receiving at least one of confirmation information or modification information from the base station pertaining to the beam parameter information transmitted by the UE as taught by Islam. The motivation for combining Denis and Islam is to be able to improve spectral efficiency, lowered costs, and improved services.
Claims 5, 6, 11 and 12 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Denis et al. (US Publication 2021/0194560) in view of Guo et al. (US Publication 2018302889).
With respect to claims 5 and 11, Denis doesn’t teach further comprising: receiving, by the UE, beam failure recovery information.
Guo teaches further comprising: receiving, by the UE, beam failure recovery information. (the UE can be configured to continue monitoring the beam failure detection RS to assess if a beam failure trigger condition is met or not when the UE sends beam recovery request and monitors beam recovery response as shown in FIG. 13B, paragraph 139)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Denis with receiving, by the UE, beam failure recovery information bas taught by Guo. The motivation for combining Denis and Guo is to be able to achieve better tradeoff between time resource overhead and beam recovery request transmission efficiency.
With respect to claims 6 and 12, Denis doesn’t teach wherein the beam failure recovery information indicates at least one of: an indication of sets of beams to be used by either the base station or the UE during beam failure recovery; a number of training time slots during the beam failure recovery; whether training will be uplink training or downlink training during the beam failure recovery; or power for reference signals used for the training during the beam failure recovery.
Guo teaches wherein the beam failure recovery information indicates at least one of: an indication of sets of beams to be used by either the base station or the UE during beam failure recovery; a number of training time slots during the beam failure recovery; whether training will be uplink training or downlink training during the beam failure recovery; or power for reference signals used for the training during the beam failure recovery. (f the UE is configured with both SSB and CSI-RS for new beam identification, the UE can be requested to only report one CSI-RS resource index as the new beam when reporting beam failure recovery request in PUCCH channel, paragraph 267)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Denis with receiving, by the UE, beam failure recovery information as taught by Guo. The motivation for combining Denis and Guo is to be able to achieve better tradeoff between time resource overhead and beam recovery request transmission efficiency.
Claims 13 and 17 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lee et al. (US Publication 2022/0368393) in view of Park et al. (US Publication 2021/0050892).
With respect to claims 13 and 17, Lee teaches A device comprising: at least one processor; and a computer-readable medium having stored thereon, computer executable instructions, that when executed by the at least one processor, (processor, figure 2) cause the device to perform operations including:
determining, by a base station, beam parameters for at least one of a transmit beam or a receive beam based on a probability function of a beamforming angle; (the beam controller 184 may obtain at least one of a probability distribution and a value function, may select a candidate beam from among the plurality of reception beams 10 based on at least one of the probability distribution and the value function, may perform a present training operation based on the candidate beam and a beam selected by at least one previous training operation, and may select a present beam corresponding to the best beam based on a result of the present training operation, Paragraph 51)
determining, by the base station, a modified probability function of the beamforming angle based in part on measurements of the reference signals. (For example, a channel (e.g., wireless channel) between the user equipment 100 and the base station 200 may be estimated, the reinforcement learning-based beam training operation described with reference to FIG. 1 may be performed based on the estimated channel, the optimal reception beam selected and/or updated based on the beam training operation may be used for wireless communication, and thus the optimal reception beam providing relatively high efficiency (e.g., beamforming gain) may be used for wireless communication, Paragraph 45)
Lee doesn’t teach transmitting, by the base station, beam parameter information based on beam parameters to at least one user equipment (UE) for use in transmitting reference signals on at least one transmit beam; receiving, by the base station, the reference signals on at least one receive beam based in part on the beam parameters; measuring, by the base station, the reference signals on the at least one receive beam based on the beam parameters.
Park teaches transmitting, by the base station, beam parameter information based on beam parameters to at least one user equipment (UE) for use in transmitting reference signals on at least one transmit beam; (the base stations 105 or the UEs 115 may receive, from the one or more of the base stations 105 or the UEs 115 over the plurality of cycles, a plurality of reports, each report of the plurality of reports indicating a plurality of combinations of analog beamforming parameters selected for the analog beamforming parameters at the second device, Paragraph 86)
receiving, by the base station, the reference signals on at least one receive beam based in part on the beam parameters; (one or more of the base stations 105 or the UEs 115 may measure a channel quality of a plurality of reference signals that are transmitted by one or more of the base stations 105 or the UEs 115 using a plurality of combinations of analog beamforming parameters over a plurality of cycles, Paragraph 87)
measuring, by the base station, the reference signals on the at least one receive beam based on the beam parameters; (one or more of the base stations 105 or the UEs 115 may measure a channel quality of a plurality of reference signals that are transmitted by one or more of the base stations 105 or the UEs 115 using a plurality of combinations of analog beamforming parameters over a plurality of cycles, Paragraph 87)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Lee with measuring, by the base station, the reference signals on the at least one receive beam based on the beam parameters as taught by Park. The motivation for combining Lee and Park is to be able to mitigate pathloss and blockages with respect to the spatial path.
Claims 14 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lee et al. (US Publication 2022/0368393) in view of Park et al. (US Publication 2021/0050892) further in view of Sun et al. (US Publication 2021/0160964).
With respect to claims 14 and 18, Lee in view of Park doesn’t teach wherein the beam parameter information indicates at least one of: an identification of the transmit beam to be used at the base station for a particular time slot; or a number of training time slots.
Sun teaches wherein the beam parameter information indicates at least one of: an identification of the transmit beam to be used at the base station for a particular time slot; or a number of training time slots. (UE 906 may assign a logical antenna panel ID to the determined antenna panel and transmit beam report 912 to gNB 904. The beam report 912 may include the logical antenna panel ID. Upon receipt of the beam report 912, gNB 904 may configure a beam and transmit beam indication 914 to UE 906. The beam indication 914 may include the logical antenna panel ID to use for communications, paragraph 108)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Lee in view of Park with the beam parameter information indicates at least one of: an identification of the transmit beam to be used at the base station for a particular time slot; or a number of training time slots as taught by Sun. The motivation for combining Lee, Park and Sun is to be able to optimize for efficient panel management
Claims 15 and 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lee et al. (US Publication 2022/0368393) in view of Park et al. (US Publication 2021/0050892) further in view of Islam et al. (US Publication 2020/0267733).
With respect to claims 15 and 19, Lee in view of Park doesn’t teach further comprising: receiving at least one of confirmation information or modification information from the base station pertaining to the beam parameter information transmitted by the UE.
Islam teaches further comprising: receiving at least one of confirmation information or modification information from the base station pertaining to the beam parameter information transmitted by the UE. (when the UE informs the base station about the change, the base station may determine not to change the current beam to the second beam if the change from the current beam to the second beam is not appropriate (e.g., if the second beam interferes with a neighboring base station). When the base station determines that the change from the current beam to the second beam is appropriate (e.g., does not interfere with a neighboring base station), the base station sends a beam change instruction to the UE (e.g., via a PDCCH) to indicate that the base station will change the beam, paragraph 81)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Lee and Park with receiving at least one of confirmation information or modification information from the base station pertaining to the beam parameter information transmitted by the UE as taught by Islam. The motivation for combining Lee, Park and Islam is to be able to improve spectral efficiency, lowered costs, and improved services.
Claims 16 and 20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) as being unpatentable over Lee et al. (US Publication 2022/0368393) in view of Park et al. (US Publication 2021/0050892) further in view of Guo et al. (US Publication 2018/0302889).
With respect to claims 16 and 20, Lee in view of Park doesn’t teach further comprising: receiving, by the UE, beam failure recovery information.
Guo teaches further comprising: receiving, by the UE, beam failure recovery information. (the UE can be configured to continue monitoring the beam failure detection RS to assess if a beam failure trigger condition is met or not when the UE sends beam recovery request and monitors beam recovery response as shown in FIG. 13B, paragraph 139)
Thus it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement system of Lee and Park with receiving, by the UE, beam failure recovery information bas taught by Guo. The motivation for combining Lee, Park and Guo is to be able to achieve better tradeoff between time resource overhead and beam recovery request transmission efficiency.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure. Lindmark et al. (US Publication 2024/0183926) discloses transmitting, to a second network node, a message comprising search window information. The search window information includes information associated with an expected angle and information associated with an uncertainty level of the expected angle. The first network node receives a response message from the second network node, wherein the response message comprises feedback associated.
Chavva et al. (US publication 2022/0255611) discloses identifying a subset of Tx and Rx beam pairs from the plurality of Tx and Rx beam pairs with the beam selection metric above a second threshold. The method includes prioritizing scanning of the identified subset of Tx and Rx beam pairs to select a Tx and Rx beam pair for communication.
Any inquiry concerning this communication from the examiner should be directed to ABDULLAHI AHMED whose telephone number is (571) 270-3652. The examiner can normally be reached on M-F 8:00AM-4:30PM.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Khalid Kassim can be reached on 571-270-3370. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ABDULLAHI AHMED/Examiner, Art Unit 2475
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