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.
Claim(s) 1-4, 9-10, 13, 15, 17-18, 20-25, 28-30 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Frenne (US 20230124582) in view of Zhang (US 20200119897).
Regarding claim 1, Frenne discloses a method of wireless communication by a user equipment (UE), comprising:
transmitting, to a plurality of transmission and reception points (TRPs), a layer parameter based on a maximum number of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uplink layers that are supported by the UE for uplink communication to the plurality of TRPs (figs. 8-9, steps 800, 900, indicates a capability (or a layer parameter) of the wireless device to support one or multiple active panels to a base station);
receiving, from at least one TRP of the plurality of TRPs, uplink scheduling information responsive to transmitting the layer parameter (figs. 8-9, 802, 902, 904, receives control information for scheduling a multi-TRP transmission, comprising an indication of a gap between each TRP transmission; [0142-43]; schedules a multi-TRP transmission by the UE based on the indication of the capability); and
transmitting, to each of the plurality of TRPs, a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) communication according to the uplink scheduling information (figs. 8-9, 804, transmits the data to a first TRP according to the control information).
Frenne does not explicitly disclose the UE capability (or a layer parameter) is based on a maximum number of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uplink layers that are supported by the UE for uplink communication to the plurality of TRPs.
Zhang discloses the UE capability (or a layer parameter) is based on a maximum number of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uplink layers that are supported by the UE for uplink communication to the plurality of TRPs (Zhang, [0067][0071], the UE may report the maximum number of MIMO layers it supports for each PDSCH separately or together with the overall maximum number of MIMO layers it supports; scheduled UL data transmission based on the transmission setting or UE capability or a maximum number of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uplink layers that are supported by the UE).
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 Frenne with the teachings given by Zhang. The motivation for doing so would have been to support a much wider range of use-case characteristics and provide a much more complex range of access requirements and flexibilities (Zhang, [0003]).
Claims 22, 23, 30 are rejected similarly with claim 1 noting that Frenne discloses processor, memory and transceiver (Frenne, fig. 11).
Regarding claims 2, 24, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising: generating the layer parameter based on the maximum number of MIMO uplink layers that are supported by the UE for uplink communication (Zhang, [0067][0071], the UE may report the maximum number of MIMO layers it supports for each PDSCH separately or together with the overall maximum number of MIMO layers it supports).
Regarding claim 3, 28, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the layer parameter is a legacy parameter for scheduling uplink communication with a single TRP, the legacy parameter being repurposed for scheduling uplink communication with the plurality of TRPs (Frenne, [0125], K=1 implicitly indicates a single TRP transmission. A sufficient signaling flexibility can be achieved to switch among the required number of TRPs for a transmission; Zhang, [0053][0055])..
Regarding claim 4, 25, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 3, further comprising: transmitting a legacy interpretation parameter specifying which interpretation operation to use in determining the maximum number of MIMO uplink layers based on the legacy parameter (Zhang, [0067][0071], the UE may report the maximum number of MIMO layers it supports for each PDSCH separately or together with the overall maximum number of MIMO layers it supports; scheduled UL data transmission based on the transmission setting or UE capability or a maximum number of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uplink layers that are supported by the UE).
Regarding claim 9, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 1, wherein the layer parameter is a non-legacy parameter for scheduling uplink communication with the plurality of TRPs (Zhang, [0067][0071], the UE may report the maximum number of MIMO layers it supports for each PDSCH separately or together with the overall maximum number of MIMO layers it supports; scheduled UL data transmission based on the transmission setting or UE capability or a maximum number of multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uplink layers that are supported by the UE).
Regarding claim 10, 29, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 9, wherein the non-legacy parameter is based on a per-TRP maximum number of MIMO uplink layers supported by the UE, the per-TRP maximum number of MIMO uplink layers being the same for each of the plurality of TRPs (Frenne, [0126][0133-134]; Zhang, [0053]).
Regarding claim 13, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 9, wherein the non-legacy parameter indicates a corresponding maximum number of MIMO uplink layers supported by the UE for each respective TRP of the plurality of TRPs (Frenne, [0126][0133-134]; Zhang, [0053]).
Regarding claim 15, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 9, wherein the non-legacy parameter indicates a total maximum number of MIMO uplink layers supported by the UE for all of the plurality of TRPs (Frenne, [0126][0133-134]; Zhang, [0053]).
Regarding claim 17, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 9: wherein the non-legacy parameter indicates a per-TRP maximum number of MIMO uplink layers supported by the UE for each of the plurality of TRPs, and wherein the non-legacy parameter further indicates a total maximum number of MIMO uplink layers supported by the UE for all of the plurality of TRPs (Frenne, [0126][0133-134]; Zhang, [0053]).
Regarding claim 18, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 9, further comprising: transmitting a non-legacy interpretation parameter specifying which interpretation operation to use in determining the maximum number of MIMO uplink layers based on the non-legacy parameter (Frenne, [0126][0133-134]; Zhang, [0053]).
Regarding claim 20, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 1, further comprising: transmitting an additional parameter indicating at least one of:
a type of PUSCH supported by the UE, the type of PUSCH including at least one of a codebook-based PUSCH or a non-codebook-based PUSCH (Frenne, [0017][0023]),
a configuration of a PUSCH supported by the UE, the configuration including at least one of a dynamic-granted (DG) PUSCH or a configured-granted (CG) PUSCH (Frenne, [0008-09]),
a number of sounding reference signal (SRS) resources per SRS resource set of the UE (Frenne, [0022]),
a total number of SRS resources for all SRS resource sets of the UE, or
a channel state information reference signal (CSI-RS) support indication indicative of whether each CSI-RS resource associated with a respective SRS resource set is supported by the UE.
Regarding claim 21, Frenne and Zhang disclose the method of claim 20, wherein the additional parameter further comprises at least one of:
a maximum number of periodic SRS resources associated with first and second CSI-RS resources per bandwidth part (BWP) (Frenne, [0047]),
a maximum number of semi-persistent SRS resources associated with the first and second CSI-RS resource per BWP, or
a maximum number of SRS resources associated with the first and second CSI-RS resources that the UE can process simultaneously in a component carrier (Frenne, [0023], by assigning a DL Channel State Information Reference Signal (CSI-RS) to the UE, it can measure and deduce suitable precoder weights for PUSCH transmission of up to four spatial layers. The candidate precoder weights are transmitted using up to four single-port SRS resources corresponding to the spatial layers).
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 5-8, 11-12, 14, 16, 19, 26, 27, 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 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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/ZHENSHENG ZHANG/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2474
