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 .
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.
Claim(s) 1-4, and 10 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Liu, (US 20190173607 A1), hereinafter Liu, in view of Wu et al., ("Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Wireless Communications: A Tutorial"), hereinafter Wu.
For claim 1,
Liu teaches a method comprising: transmitting configuration information related to at least one downlink reference signal (at least [FIG. 5] and [0185] terminal receives downlink configuration signaling from a network device);
transmitting the at least one downlink reference signal (at least [FIG. 5] and [0189] network device sends downlink reference signal to the terminal);
transmitting configuration information related to an uplink reference signal to at least one user equipment (UE) (at least [FIG. 4, #406] uplink scheduling signal used to indicate a resource index of at least one of the SRS resources, acting as configuration information for an uplink SRS, is sent to a terminal);
transmitting control information indicating a scheduling result for transmitting downlink data to the at least one UE (at least [0296], [0060], and [0301] scheduling grant including control information is transmitted to a terminal. The scheduling grant may be a downlink or uplink grant); and
transmitting the downlink data to the at least one UE according to the scheduling result (at least [FIG. 10], [0317-0323] and [0343-0344] the scheduling grant includes first and second level control scheduling. First level control information includes scheduling resource information and second level scheduling includes one of several transmission modes. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art that any downlink data would be transmitted based on the scheduling result of the scheduling grant, as that is the purpose of a scheduling grant.).
Liu does not explicitly teach, however Wu teaches receiving channel information from a reflecting intelligent surface (RIS) (at least [Page 46] and [FIG. 18(a)] intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) transmits channel state information (CSI) to a base station (BS));
wherein the channel information comprises channels values for a portion and a remainder of elements determined based on reception values of the uplink reference signal and the downlink reference signal measured using the portion of the elements included in the RIS (at least [Pages 46-47], [Equation 50], and [FIG. 18(a)] sensing devices are integrated into the IRS to give it sensing capabilities for channel estimation. The IRS estimates the CSI from the BS/users based on the uplink and downlink signals received by the sensors. CSI is exchanged between the IRS controller and a BS, at which point the active and passive beamforming coefficients are designed at the IRS controller or BS before they are sent to the other (BS or IRS controller). The channels from the BS/users to the IRS sensors are not identical to the channels from the BS/users to the IRS reflecting elements given by equation 50. For semi-passive IRS channel estimation, high-dimensional channels are constructed from estimated CSI on low-dimensional channels.).
Therefore, 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 method of Liu for transmitting configuration information and channel estimation with the method of Wu for receiving channel information from a reflecting intelligent surface and the channel information comprising channel values for elements based on the signals measured to reduce overhead and power consumption, increase the speed of channel acquisition, and increase efficiency in the system.
For claim 2, Liu and Wu teach claim 1.
Liu does not explicitly teach, however Wu further teaches wherein the channel information comprises channel information between the at least one UE and the RIS and channel information between a base station and the RIS (at least [FIG. 18 (a)] and [Page 44] received signals at MB-antenna BS from K users is expressed as the equation shown, where IRS-BS, user K-IRS, and K-BS direct channels are included in the equation. The uplink CSI includes each of those direct channels as shown by the equation on page 44.).
Therefore, 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 method of Liu for transmitting configuration information and channel estimation with the method of Wu for the channel information comprising channel information between at least one UE and the IRS and channel information between a BS and the IRS to reduce overhead and power consumption, increase the speed of channel acquisition, and increase efficiency in the system.
For claim 3, Liu and Wu teach claim 1.
Liu does not explicitly teach, however Wu further teaches further comprising transmitting, to the RIS, information related to reflection coefficients of the elements of the RIS ([FIG. 18 (b)] a BS transmits reflection coefficients to the IRS).
Therefore, 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 method of Liu for transmitting configuration information and channel estimation with the method of Wu for the BS transmitting reflection coefficients to the IRS to reduce overhead and power consumption, increase the speed of channel acquisition, and increase efficiency in the system.
For claim 4, Liu and Wu teach claim 1.
Liu does not explicitly teach, however Wu further teaches wherein the portion of the elements comprise at least one active element, and wherein the remainer of the elements comprise passive elements (at least [Page 46] and [FIG. 18 (a)] active and passive beamforming coefficients are designed at the IRS controllers or BS. Semi-passive IRS channel estimation includes passive and active elements. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art that the number of active elements could be one, with the remaining elements being passive.).
Therefore, 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 method of Liu for transmitting configuration information and channel estimation with the method of Wu for having at least one active element and the remaining elements being passive to the IRS to reduce overhead and power consumption, increase the speed of channel acquisition, and increase efficiency in the system.
For claim 10, it is rejected on the same basis as claim 1.
Claim(s) 5-9 is/are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Wu et al., ("Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Wireless Communications: A Tutorial"), hereinafter Wu.
For claim 5,
Wu teaches a method comprising: receiving reference signals from a base station and at least one user equipment (UE) using a portion of elements (at least [Pages 45-46] and [FIG. 18(a)] IRS receives pilot signals from a BS via sensors);
performing measurement on the reference signals (at least [Pages 45-46] and [FIG. 18(a)] estimating CSI from BS/users based on the pilot signals received by the sensors);
estimating a first partial channel related to a portion of channels for elements included in a reflecting intelligent surface (RIS) based on a result of the measurement (at least [Pages 44 and 46] and [Equation 50] channels from the BS/users to the IRS sensors are not identical to the channels from the BS/users to the IRS reflecting elements given by the equation shown. While the channels are correlated, the high dimensional channels represented by portions of equation 50 as shown are constructed from estimated CSI on low dimensional channels represented by the equation shown. Therefore, a first channel is estimated based on the estimated CSI which is determined by the received signals being measured.);
estimating a second partial channel related to a remainder of elements excluding the portion of elements based on the first partial channel (at least [Pages 44 and 46] and [Equation 50] channels from the BS/users to the IRS sensors are not identical to the channels from the BS/users to the IRS reflecting elements given by the equation shown. While the channels are correlated, the high dimensional channels represented by portions of equation 50 as shown are constructed from estimated CSI on low dimensional channels represented by the equation shown).
Therefore, it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to estimate a second partial channel based on the remaining elements after a first partial channel is estimated based on the estimated CSI which is determined by the received signals being measured; and
transmitting information related to a channel including the first partial channel and the second partial channel to the base station (at least [Page 46] and [FIG. 18(a)] the estimated CSI is exchanged between an IRS controller and BS).
For claim 6, Wu teaches claim 5.
Wu further teaches wherein the portion of the elements comprise at least one active element, and wherein the remainder of elements comprise passive elements. (at least [Page 46] and [FIG. 18 (a)] active and passive beamforming coefficients are designed at the IRS controllers or BS. Semi-passive IRS channel estimation includes passive and active elements. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art that the number of active elements could be one, with the remaining elements being passive.)
For claim 7, Wu teaches claim 6.
Wu further teaches wherein the estimating the second partial channel comprises: determining the at least one active element based on a correlation between a target passive element and the at least one active elements (at least [Pages 44-46] and [Equation 50] channels from the BS/users to the IRS sensors are not identical to the channels from the BS/users to the IRS reflecting elements given by the equation shown. The channels are spatially correlated, and the high dimensional channels represented by portions of equation 50 as shown are constructed from estimated CSI on low dimensional channels represented by the equation shown. It is well known in the art that elements in an IRS may share channel paths due to their close physical proximity.; and
determining a channel value related to the target passive element by weighted linear combination of a channel value related to the determined at least one active element (the use of weighted linear combination or similar mathematical functions such as Linear Minimum Mean Square Error (LMMSE) to determine passive values related to active values is well known in the art and would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art as a means for determining a channel value related to the target passive element as claimed in the limitation.).
For claim 8, Wu teaches claim 7.
Wu further teaches wherein the at least one active element is determined based on a spatial correlation matrix between the base station and the RIS or between the at least one UE and the RIS (at least [Pages 46-47 and 49-50] advanced signal processing tools can be used to construct the CSI of the BS/users to IRS links from estimated CSI via the IRS sensors by exploiting their inherent spatial correlation. It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use a spatial correlation matrix as a means advanced signal processing to determine the at least one active element.).
For claim 9, Wu teaches claim 5.
Wu further teaches wherein at least one reference signal from the base station and information transmitted to the base station are transmitted through different links (at least [Pages 46 and 14] and [FIG. 18(a)] the BS/users transmit pilot signal which are received by the IRS. CSI is exchanged between the IRS controller and the BS. The IRS controller communicates with other network components through separate wired/wireless links.).
Conclusion
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to Benjamin T. Ranew whose telephone number is (571)272-2746. The examiner can normally be reached Monday - Friday 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST. Examiner interviews are available via telephone, in-person, and video conferencing using a USPTO supplied web-based collaboration tool. To schedule an interview, applicant is encouraged to use the USPTO Automated Interview Request (AIR) at http://www.uspto.gov/interviewpractice. If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Ayman Abaza can be reached at (571) 270-0422. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/BENJAMIN T. RANEW/Examiner, Art Unit 2465
/AYMAN A ABAZA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2465
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