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 is a Non-final action for application number 18/818,788 in response to an original application filed on 08/29/2024.
Claims 1-20 currently pending and have been considered below.
Claims 1, 14 and 20 are independent claims.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS), submitted on 02/27/2026 are 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)(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.
Claims 1-9 and 14-20 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(1) as being anticipated by Lei et al. (US 2024/0187142 A1).
Regarding claims 1 and 14, a user equipment (UE) for wireless communication, [Figure 6, Ref # 101], comprising: one or more memories, [Figure 6, Ref # 601] and
one or more processors, [Figure 6, Ref # 606], coupled to the one or more memories, configured to cause the UE to:
receive configuration information to configure the UE to transmit acknowledgment (ACK)-only feedback, [the BS may transmit RRC signaling to a member UE to configure a HARQ-ACK feedback timing value for transmitting the ACK-only based feedback in response to the activation DCI, (Lei et al., Paragraph 55)],
and transmit feedback for a communication in accordance with the configuration information, [ACK-only based HARQ-ACK feedback may be employed. That is, in response to the group-common SPS PDSCH being successfully received by a UE, the UE may transmit an ACK for the SPS PDSCH, (Lei et al., Paragraph 73)].
Regarding claims 2 and 15, the UE wherein the UE is included in a group of interconnected UEs forming a virtual UE with distributed antennas, [one or more UEs (e.g., UE 101a and UE 101b) may be grouped as an MBS group to receive MBSs (e.g., an MBS PDSCH) from a BS (e.g., BS 102), (Lei et al., Paragraph 27)].
Regarding claims 3 and 16, the UE wherein each UE included in the group of interconnected UEs performs baseband processing independently of other UEs included in the group of interconnected UEs, [Lei et al., Figure 1, Ref # 101a and 101b].
Regarding claims 4 and 17, the UE wherein a same physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource for transmitting the ACK-only feedback is assigned to the group of interconnected UEs, [determining, based on the configuration information, a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource and a second slot for transmitting hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) feedback for the first DCI format, (Lei et al., Paragraph 6)].
Regarding claims 6 and 19, the UE wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to:
establish a set of connections with a group of UEs to form a virtual UE, wherein the configuration information configures the virtual UE to transmit the ACK-only feedback, [ACK-only based HARQ-ACK feedback may be employed. That is, in response to the group-common SPS PDSCH being successfully received by a UE, the UE may transmit an ACK for the SPS PDSCH, (Lei et al., Paragraph 73)],
receive a communication transmitted to the virtual UE, [the BS may transmit RRC signaling to a member UE to configure a HARQ-ACK feedback timing value for transmitting the ACK-only based feedback in response to the activation DCI, (Lei et al., Paragraph 55)],
and transmit ACK feedback when the UE successfully decodes the communication, wherein negative acknowledgment (NACK) feedback is not transmitted when the communication is not successfully decoded by the UE, [if a member UE does not receive any activation DCI, the UE may transmit nothing on the configured UE-specific PUCCH resource, (Lei et al., Paragraph 50)].
Regarding claim 7, the UE of claim 6, wherein a transmit power associated with the virtual UE transmitting the ACK feedback varies based at least in part on a number of UEs, of the group of UEs, transmitting the ACK feedback, [determining, based on the configuration information, a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource and a second slot for transmitting hybrid automatic repeat request acknowledgement (HARQ-ACK) feedback for the first DCI format; and transmitting, in the second slot, the HARQ-ACK feedback for the first DCI format on the first PUCCH resource, (Lei et al., Paragraph 6)].
Regarding claim 8, the UE of claim 1, wherein the configuration information indicates a group radio network temporary identifier (RNTI) associated with a group of UEs, wherein the group of UEs includes the UE, [the retransmitted group-common SPS PDSCH may be scheduled by a DCI format with a CRC scrambled by a UE-specific RNTI, e.g., C-RNTI, (Lei et al., Paragraph 77)], wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to:
receive downlink control information (DCI) scheduling a same physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) resource for the group of UEs, [in dynamic scheduling, a BS may transmit, to a UE, a DCI format scheduling a PDSCH, (Lei et al., Paragraph 33)],
wherein the DCI is associated with a cyclic redundancy check (CRC) scrambled by the group RNTI, [the CRCs of the initial activation DCI and the retransmitted activation DCI may be scrambled by the same group-common RNTI, e.g., G-RNTI, (Lei et al., Paragraph 53)].
Regarding claim 9, the UE of claim 1, wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to:
receive a first physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resource configuration associated with transmitting the ACK-only feedback, [for each UE in the group, the BS may configure a single PUCCH resource for the corresponding UE to transmit an ACK for confirming the reception of the activation DCI for activating a group-common SPS PDSCH configuration, (Lei et al., Paragraph 74)],
and receive a second PUCCH resource configuration associated with transmitting feedback for communications not associated with transmitting the ACK-only feedback, [The RRC signaling may be the one configures the SPS PDSCH configuration and the UE-specific PUCCH resource, (Lei et al., Paragraph 57)].
Regarding claim 20, a network node for wireless communication, [Figure 1, Ref # 102], comprising:
one or more memories, [Figure 6, Ref # 601], and
one or more processors, [Figure 6, Ref # 606], coupled to the one or more memories, configured to cause the network node to:
transmit configuration information to configure each user equipment (UE) in a group of UEs to transmit acknowledgment (ACK)-only feedback, [the BS may transmit RRC signaling to a member UE to configure a HARQ-ACK feedback timing value for transmitting the ACK-only based feedback in response to the activation DCI, (Lei et al., Paragraph 55)],
and selectively retransmit a communication to the group of UEs based at least in part on whether the ACK-only feedback is received from any UE included in the group of UEs, [UEs which have successfully received the (initial) activation DCI and reported an ACK on the respective PUCCH resources may also receive the retransmitted activation DCI for the same group-common SPS PDSCH configuration, (Lei et al., Paragraph 53)], wherein the communication is not re-transmitted when the ACK-only feedback is received from at least one UE included in the group of UEs, [UEs which have successfully received the (initial) activation DCI and reported an ACK on the respective PUCCH resources may also receive the retransmitted activation DCI for the same group-common SPS PDSCH configuration, (Lei et al., Paragraph 53)].
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 5 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Lei et al. (US 2024/0187142 A1) in view of Lin et al. (WO 2021/083260 A1).
Regarding claims 5 and 18, Lei et al. teaches that a BS may transmit RRC signaling to a member UE to configure a HARQ-ACK feedback timing value for transmitting the ACK-only based feedback in response to the activation DCI, (Lei et al., Paragraph 55),
Lei et al. further teaches that the UE refrains from sending feedback associated with failing to successfully decode the communication, [if a member UE does not receive any activation DCI, the UE may transmit nothing on the configured UE-specific PUCCH resource, (Lei et al., Paragraph 50)],
Lei et al. fails to explicitly teach that the UE wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to: receive the communication from another UE via a sidelink communication channel,
Lin et al. teaches that the selection or determination of the format can be based on pre-configuration or network configuration for the resource pool in which the PSSCH TB (s) is received, direct indication from the Tx-UE, sidelink cast type, (Lin et al., Paragraph 53),
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention was made to modify Lei et al. by including that the UE wherein the one or more processors are further configured to cause the UE to: receive the communication from another UE via a sidelink communication channel, (Lin et al., Paragraph 53), in order torequire reduced number
of required sequences to represent ACK/NACK information, (Lin et al., Paragraph 8).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 10-13 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 Shukri Taha whose telephone number is 571-270-1921. The examiner can normally be reached on 8:30am-5pm Mon-Fri.
If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Joseph Avellino can be reached on 571-272-3905.
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/SHUKRI TAHA/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2478
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