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 .
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, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12-17, 19, 22, 26, 31-33, 37-38 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Muruganathan (US 20230291441) in view of Ramireddy (US 20220029676).
Regarding claim 1, Muruganathan discloses a method for reporting channel status information (CSI), performed by a terminal, comprising:
transmitting an uplink reference signal to a network device ([0065], UE transmits SRS in the UL for the gNB to estimate the angles and delays of different clusters),
receiving beamformed downlink pilot signals transmitted by the network device at T consecutive time points (step 2, [0066], the gNB selects dominant clusters according to the estimated angle-delay power spectrum profile, and transmits to the UE, one CSI-RS port per polarization according to the obtained angle and/or delay estimation. Here, T=1);
estimating downlink effective channel information corresponding to the T consecutive time points according to the beamformed downlink pilot signals of the T consecutive time points; determining CSI corresponding to the T consecutive time points according to the downlink effective channel information corresponding to the T consecutive time points; and reporting the CSI to the network device (fig. 4, step 3, UE measures the received CSI-RS ports and then determines a type II CSI including RI, PMI for each layer and CQI.; feedback to gNB, together with components oof CSI report, here T can be 1);
wherein, a beam used by the beamformed downlink pilot signals is determined based on uplink channel information estimated according to the uplink reference signal (fig. 4, step 1, while gNB estimates delay and angle for each cluster using the uplink reference signal; step 2, [0066], the gNB selects dominant clusters according to the estimated angle-delay power spectrum profile, and transmits to the UE, one CSI-RS port per polarization), and
the CSI is used by the network device to determine a precoding matrix for downlink data transmission at a time point t, wherein the time point t is after the T consecutive time points, and T is a positive integer (fig. 4, step 4, the gNB computes precoding matrix based on the CSI report, and then performs PDSCH transmission at the t which is after the T consecutive time points).
Muruganathan only implicitly discloses signals transmitted by the network device at T consecutive time points (with T=1), to further support this feature, Ramireddy discloses signals transmitted by the network device at T consecutive time points (Ramireddy, [0207-211], a parameter, e.g., referred to as CSI-RS BurstDuration, indicating a time-domain-repetition of the downlink reference signals, e.g., in terms of a number of consecutive slots the downlink reference signals are repeated in).
It would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing to combine the teachings as given by Muruganathan with the teachings given by Ramireddy. The motivation for doing so would have been to improve user data rates, link reliability and network capacity (Ramireddy, [0007]).
Claims 19, 37, 38 are rejected similarly as claim 1 noting that Muruganathan discloses a terminal comprising a processor, transceiver and memory (fig. 14).
Regarding claim 2, 22, Muruganathan discloses the method according to claim 1, wherein the CSI comprises at least one of:
port selection indication information;
frequency domain basis vector indication information ([0045-53]);
time domain Doppler component indication information; or
combination coefficient indication information ([0054-60]);
wherein, the port selection indication information is used to indicate L reference signal ports selected by the terminal, the frequency domain basis vector indication information is used to indicate M frequency domain basis vectors selected by the terminal ([0045-53], the number of selected FD basis vectors, which depends on the rank indicator v and the RRC configured parameter pv. Supported values of pv can be found in Table 1), the time domain Doppler component indication information is used to indicate K time domain Doppler components selected by the terminal, and the combination coefficient indication information is used to indicate a combination coefficient determined by the terminal ([0054-60], linear combination coefficient matrix), wherein the parameter L, the parameter M and the parameter K are positive integers.
It is noted that the applicant uses selective language in this claim and the examiner is only showing one of the claimed options.
Claims 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 26, 31 are rejected same as claim 2 since the alternative related to the time-domain is not selected.
Regarding claim 14, Muruganathan and Ramireddy disclose the method according to claim 1, wherein the parameter T is determined in at least one of following ways: being configured by the network device; or being predefined through negotiation between the terminal device and the network device (Ramireddy, [0370], a CSI-RS resource configuration including a higher layer (e.g., RRC) parameter, e.g., referred to as CSI-RS-BurstDuration, indicating a time-domain-repetition of the downlink reference signals, e.g., in terms of a number of consecutive slots the downlink reference signals are repeated in. That is, the number T is configured by the network device).
Regarding claim 15, Muruganathan and Ramireddy disclose the method according to claim 2, wherein, in a case where the parameter T and/or the parameter K are configured by the network device, the parameter T and/or the parameter K are configured for the terminal by the network device through at least one of following signalings: a radio resource control (RRC) signaling; a medium access control-control unit (MAC-CE) signaling; or downlink control information (DCI) (Ramireddy, [0370], a CSI-RS resource configuration including a higher layer (e.g., RRC) parameter, e.g., referred to as CSI-RS-BurstDuration, indicating a time-domain-repetition of the downlink reference signals, e.g., in terms of a number of consecutive slots the downlink reference signals are repeated in. That is, the number T is configured by the network device).
Regarding claim 16, 32, Muruganathan discloses the method according to claim 2, wherein the reference signal port comprises at least one of: a channel status information-reference signal (CSI-RS) port ) (step 2, transmits to the UE, one CSI-RS port per polarization according to the obtained angle and/or delay estimation) or a demodulation reference signal (DMRS) port.
Regarding claim 17, 33, Muruganathan discloses the method according to claim 1, wherein the downlink pilot signal comprises at least one of: a channel status information-reference signal (CSI-RS) (step 2, transmits to the UE, one CSI-RS port per polarization according to the obtained angle and/or delay estimation); a demodulation reference signal (DMRS); or a combination of the CSI-RS and the DMRS.
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to ZHENSHENG ZHANG whose telephone number is (571)270-1985. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Thursday 8:00am-6:00pm.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Michael Thier can be reached at 571-272-2832. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/ZHENSHENG ZHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2474
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