DETAILED ACTION
Status of Case
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 claims filed on 7/11/2024.
Claims 1-20 are pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) filed on 7/11/2024 has been considered by Examiner.
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.
Claims 1-2, 12, and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Marinier (USPAN 2019/0007181) in view of Bashar (USPAN 2014/0302887).
Consider claims 1 and 18. Marinier discloses a user equipment, comprising: a processor; and a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor (see figure 1B, wherein disclosed is a WTRU comprising said processor 118 and said memory 130,132), and a corresponding non-transitory machine-readable medium, comprising executable instructions that, when executed by a processor, facilitate performance of operations (see figure 1B, wherein disclosed is said non-transitory machine-readable medium 130,132), comprising:
determining channel state information relating to the data channel of the communication link based on the demodulation reference signal; based on an estimation of a physical downlink shared channel, determining the channel state information relating to the data channel (see paragraph 202: “A WTRU may receive a reference signal, measure the channel characteristics based on the reference signal, and receive data transmission based on the measurement of the channel quality. The channel or the channel quality may be estimated for demodulating the data transmission on the precoding set. The channel or the channel quality may be estimated for demodulating a portion of the data transmission on the precoding set. The reference signal (e.g., DMRS) may be used for estimating the channel/channel quality and/or demodulation”);
decoding the physical downlink shared channel and a channel quality indicator in a same slot (see paragraph 199: “A receiver (e.g., a WTRU) of the reference signals, the control information, and data may assume that the channel is constant, or approximately constant, over a subset of the resources in time and/or frequency. A receiver may assume that the channel is constant, or approximately constant, over a subset of the resources for a given antenna port. A receiver may assume that the channel for a subset of resources over which a reference signal is transmitted is the same, or approximately the same, as the channel for a second subset of resources used for the transmission of information. The information may be data or control”; also, see paragraph 203); and
in response to the determining the channel state information, transmitting the channel state information to the network equipment (see paragraph 198: “A WTRU may receive reference signals and use them to estimate a quality of a channel. A reference signal may be a signal of known properties from a receiver's perspective. A receiver (e.g., a WTRU) may measure a channel and estimate a channel quality based on the measurement of the channel. The WTRU may be configured to transmit and/or receive various types of reference signals. The various types of the reference signals may be utilized for one or more of the following: demodulation of data, timing estimation, channel state information (CSI) measurements, sounding, radio resource management measurements, positioning measurements, and/or the like. For example, a reference signal may consist of a demodulation reference signal (DM-RS), CSI reference signal (CSI-RS), sounding reference signal (SRS), cell-specific reference signal (CRS), and/or a positioning reference signal (PRS). A reference signal may be transmitted in the downlink, uplink, and/or sidelink.”).
Marinier does not specifically disclose receiving, from a network equipment, an indication of whether or not to use a demodulation reference signal, utilized to facilitate channel estimation for a data channel of a communication link with the network equipment.
Bashar discloses receiving, from a network equipment, an indication of whether or not to use a demodulation reference signal, utilized to facilitate channel estimation for a data channel of a communication link with the network equipment (see paragraph 136 and claim 1: use a received indicator field to identify whether to use a DMRS signal).
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 invention of Marinier and combine it with the noted teachings of Bashar. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for using DMRS signals to determine the quality of downlink and uplink channels in a manner that does not consume significant amounts of bandwidth (see paragraph 2 of Bashar).
Consider claim 2, Marinier discloses that the transmitting the channel state information comprises transmitting wideband channel state information associated with a wideband configuration via radio resource control signaling (see paragraphs 24 and 155: wideband; see paragraph 241: RRC control signaling).
Consider claim 12, Marinier discloses a network node equipment, comprising: a processor; and a memory that stores executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, facilitate performance of operations (see elements 114a and 114b in figure 1A, wherein disclosed are base stations, which Examiner submits inherently comprise said processor and memory), comprising:
determining channel state information relating to the data channel based on the demodulation reference signal; receiving, from a user equipment, the channel state information (see paragraph 202: “A WTRU may receive a reference signal, measure the channel characteristics based on the reference signal, and receive data transmission based on the measurement of the channel quality. The channel or the channel quality may be estimated for demodulating the data transmission on the precoding set. The channel or the channel quality may be estimated for demodulating a portion of the data transmission on the precoding set. The reference signal (e.g., DMRS) may be used for estimating the channel/channel quality and/or demodulation”);
based on the channel state information, determining a parameter for a data channel transmission to the user equipment; and transmitting the parameter to the user equipment via a downlink control channel (see paragraph 198: “A WTRU may receive reference signals and use them to estimate a quality of a channel. A reference signal may be a signal of known properties from a receiver's perspective. A receiver (e.g., a WTRU) may measure a channel and estimate a channel quality based on the measurement of the channel. The WTRU may be configured to transmit and/or receive various types of reference signals. The various types of the reference signals may be utilized for one or more of the following: demodulation of data, timing estimation, channel state information (CSI) measurements, sounding, radio resource management measurements, positioning measurements, and/or the like. For example, a reference signal may consist of a demodulation reference signal (DM-RS), CSI reference signal (CSI-RS), sounding reference signal (SRS), cell-specific reference signal (CRS), and/or a positioning reference signal (PRS). A reference signal may be transmitted in the downlink, uplink, and/or sidelink.”).
Marinier does not specifically disclose transmitting an indication of whether or not to use a demodulation reference signal, utilized to facilitate channel estimation for a data channel of a communication link with a network equipment.
Bashar discloses transmitting an indication of whether or not to use a demodulation reference signal, utilized to facilitate channel estimation for a data channel of a communication link with a network equipment (see paragraph 136 and claim 1: use a received indicator field to identify whether to use a DMRS signal).
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 invention of Marinier and combine it with the noted teachings of Bashar. The motivation to combine these references is to provide a method for using DMRS signals to determine the quality of downlink and uplink channels in a manner that does not consume significant amounts of bandwidth (see paragraph 2 of Bashar).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 3-11, 13-17, and 19-20 are objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Jamal Javaid whose telephone number is 571-270-5137 and email address is Jamal.Javaid@uspto.gov.
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/JAMAL JAVAID/
Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2412
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