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 .
Claims 1-20 are pending.
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.
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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claim(s) 1, 6, 8, 13, 15 and 19 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Venkatesh et al. US 20220255609 in view of Gao et al. US 20180254813.
Regarding claim 1, A base station (gNB, Figure 13, element 800) (BS) in a wireless communication system, the BS comprising: a transceiver (transmitter and receiver, elements 840, 850) configured to receive, from a user equipment (UE) (UE, Figure 14, element 900), feedback information including at least one subband (SB) level precoder (the UE calculates, based on a performance metric, a precoder matrix, for a number of antenna ports of the gNB and configured subbands, the precoder matrix being based on two codebooks and a set of combination coefficients, para. 0018, UE is operative to report a CSI feedback and/or a PMI and/or a PMI/RI, para. 0023, gNB receives from the UE a CSI feedback and/or a PMI and/or a PMI/RI, which is used to indicate the precoder matrix for the configured antenna ports and resource blocks, para. 0062) and a processor (Figure 8, element 810) operably coupled to the transceiver, the processor configured to: identify, based on the at least one SB level precoder, a mapping function to perform an up-sampling operation, perform, based on the mapping function, the up-sampling operation to the at least one SB level precoder and identify, based on the up-sampling operation, at least one resource block (RB) level precoder from the at least one SB level precoder (UE is configured to select the oversampling factor used for the configuration of the second codebook and signal to the gNB by higher layer (RRC or MAC-CE) or physical layer (L1) the oversampling factor, para. 0038, the second codebook comprises a oversampled DFT or oversampled DCT-codebook matrix containing the delay components represented by N.sub.3×1 DFT-/DCT-vectors of the precoder matrix, para. 0025, UE reports the delay indicator for the selected delay vectors from the second codebook, the DFT/DCT delay vectors in the codebook may be grouped where each DFT/DCT delay vector in a subgroup may be associated with an index, para. 0109).
Venkatesh does not explicitly disclose precoder gain. Gao discloses CSI subband reports containing CQI (Channel-Quality Information). Rank Indicator (RI), and Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI), para. 0030, the first CSI report includes a first sub-precoder, the second CSI report includes a second sub-precoder and a linear combination of the first and second sub-precoders, para. 0068, the first sub-precoder comprises a first orthogonal Discrete Fourier Transform, DFT, beam and the second sub-precoder comprises a second DFT beam, para. 0077. Gao discloses the DFT decoders are associated with maximum power gain, para. 0044. Before the filing of the invention it would have been obvious to modify Venkatesh to include Gao’s CSI report and precoding. One of ordinary skill in the art would be motivated to do so for efficient performance, para. 0032.
Regarding claim 6, The BS of Claim 1, wherein the at least one SB level precoder includes at least one coarse-resolution precoder or channel state information (CSI) (the UE calculates, based on a performance metric, a precoder matrix, for a number of antenna ports of the gNB and configured subbands, the precoder matrix being based on two codebooks and a set of combination coefficients, para. 0018, gNB receives from the UE a CSI feedback and/or a PMI and/or a PMI/RI, which is used to indicate the precoder matrix for the configured antenna ports and resource blocks, para. 0062).
Claims 8, 13, 15, 19 are rejected under the same rationale.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2-5, 7, 9-12, 14, 16-19, 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
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Zhang et al. US 20260172095 discloses a network device transmits a channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS) to each terminal equipment which terminal estimates a channel via the received CSI-RS to obtain CSI, the terminal equipment feeds back CSI in the form of recommending transmission parameters to the network device, the transmission parameters including a channel state information reference signal resource indicator (CQI), a precoding matrix indicator (PMI), the CSI report is includes a precoding matrix information of the first CSI generated by an artificial intelligence model.
Hindy et al. US 20250132804 discloses receiving a codebook configuration from a network corresponding to an enhanced UL codebook-based transmission, the codebook corresponds to a TPMI, the TPMI corresponds to uplink transmission, and the TPMI corresponds to at least one layer.
Liu et al. US 20250081023 discloses a UE sends a measurement subband configuration including a subband level channel quality indicator (CQI) and/or precoding matrix indicator (PMI) measurement for reporting, two candidate values of measurement subband size are predefined for each range of bandwidth of a quantity of physical resource blocks.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MELANIE JAGANNATHAN whose telephone number is (571)272-3163. The examiner can normally be reached M-F 9-5.
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/MELANIE JAGANNATHAN/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2468
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