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 .
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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.
Claim(s) 1, 22 and 40-41 rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu et al. (US 2023/0179372, “Liu”) in view of Zhang et al. (US 2021/0135823, “Zhang”).
Examiner’s note: in what follows, references are drawn to Liu unless otherwise mentioned.
Liu comprises the following features:
With respect to independent claims:
Regarding claim 1, a method for sending a sounding reference signal (SRS), performed by a terminal, comprising:
receiving configuration information of an SRS resource, wherein the SRS resource comprises 8 antenna ports ([0125] “a group DCI is used to convey the SRS configuration, the indication of the layers or ports assigned for a UE within the pre-defined SRS port resources is possible. As an example, for each cell (e.g., sector, transmission point, etc.), a predefined number of SRS port resources is assigned, such as, 8 or 12 ports, for example.”); and
mapping the SRS resource onto a physical resource corresponding to a configured transmission comb ([0124] “The number of bits, which are indicated in the DCI as defined by the group arrangements, indicates the ports of transmission which are tied to physical resources such as cyclic shift, comb, OFDM symbols, offset, etc.”, and [0106] “access nodes preschedules UEs and indicates to the prescheduled UEs through the signaling of parameters, including which portion of the SRS transmission bandwidth, which SRS resources or ports from the different SRS resources or ports arrangements, transmission comb”).
It is noted that while disclosing SRS configuration, Liu does not specifically teach about OCC being applied to port sequences. It, however, had been known in the art before the effective date of the instant application as shown by Zhang as follows;
generating and sending SRSs of the 8 antenna ports by respectively applying an orthogonal cover code (OCC) to different SRS basic port sequences ([Zhang, 0109] “a UE can be configured to transmit SRS using 8 ports using 2 out of 4 transmission combs 1512a and 1512b and 2 cyclic shifts 1522 and 1524 (e.g., cyclic shifts 0 and 6). On each comb, SRS using 4 ports are multiplexed using 2 different cyclic shifts 1522, 1524 and a size-2 TD-OCC 1542.”, and [Zhang, claim 3] “transmitting the first SRS comprises transmitting a first SRS for each antenna port, of the first set of the antenna ports, using a different cyclic shift from a first set of cyclic shifts of a sequence; and transmitting the second SRS comprises transmitting a second SRS for each antenna port, of the second set of the antenna ports, using a different cyclic shift from a second set of cyclic shifts of the sequence, wherein the second set of cyclic shifts is different from the first set of cyclic shifts.”).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of instant application to modify Liu by using the features of Zhang in order to efficiently multiplex SRS ports such that “a technique to use in transmitting sounding reference signals (SRS) via five or more antenna ports in one slot” [Zhang, Abstract].
Regarding claim 22, it is a method claim at a network device corresponding to the method claim 1 in a reciprocal way, except limitations, “simultaneously receiving SRSs” ([Zhang, 0094] “at block 1102, with the UE obtaining an indication of a technique to use in transmitting sounding reference signals (SRS) via five or more antenna ports in one slot.”, and other support from [Zhang, Fig. 15 and 0109].), and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
Regarding claim 40, it is a terminal claim corresponding to the method claim 1, except the limitations, “one or more processors; and one or more transceivers connected with the one or more processors” (See Fig. 22A for 2200 “Processing Unit” and 2202 “Transceiver”), and is therefore rejected for the similar reasons set forth in the rejection of claim 1.
With respect to dependent claims:
Regarding claim 41, a network device, comprising: one or more processors; and one or more transceivers connected with the one or more processors (See Fig. 22B); wherein the one or more processors are configured to load and execute executable instructions to implement the method for receiving the SRS according to claim 22 ([claim 13] “. An access node, comprising: one or more processors; and a non-transitory memory storage storing instructions that, when executed by the one or more processors”).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claim(s) 2-14 and 17-19 objected to as being dependent upon a rejected base claim, but be allowable if rewritten in independent form including all of the limitations of the base claim and any intervening claims.
Claims 2 and 7 contain the following underlined features which, when combined with other features of the claim, prior art of record failed to anticipate or render obvious before the effective filing date of the instant application was filed:
2. The method according to claim 1,
wherein mapping the SRS resource onto the physical resource corresponding to the configured transmission comb comprises:
mapping the SRS resource onto a physical resource corresponding to a same transmission comb ([Wang, 0074] “a scheduled entity may code division multiplex three (3), six (6), or eight (8) antenna port signals on at least one SRS transmission comb resource” See [436, 0072]); and
generating and sending the SRSs of the 8 antenna ports by respectively applying the OCC to the different SRS basic port sequences comprises:
performing expansion by applying the OCC to basic port sequences corresponding to M antenna ports respectively, and generating and sending MxK=8 orthogonal sequences of the antenna ports;
wherein M is a positive integer not greater than 8, K is a sequence length of the OCC, and a value of K is 2, or 4, or 8.
7. The method according to claim 1,
wherein the 8 antenna ports are divided into N antenna port groups, each antenna port group comprises 8/N antenna ports, and N is 2 or 4;
mapping the SRS resource onto the physical resource corresponding to the configured transmission comb comprises:
mapping the SRS resources of the N antenna port groups onto physical resources corresponding to N transmission combs; and
generating and sending the SRSs of the 8 antenna ports by respectively applying the OCC to the different SRS basic port sequences comprises:
performing expansion by applying the OCC to each of the different SRS basic port sequences corresponding to D antenna ports in the jth antenna port group respectively, and generating and sending DxK=8/N orthogonal sequences of the antenna ports; wherein D is an even number not greater than 8/N, K is a sequence length of the OCC, a value of K is 2 or 4, and j is a positive integer not greater than N.
Regarding claims 3-6, 8-14 and 17-19, these claims depend from one of claims 2 and 7, and thus are objected.
Conclusion
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/HARRY H KIM/ Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2411
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