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 1-21 are pending in the instant application.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 12/22/2025 was filed before the mailing of a First Office Action on the Merits. The information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claim 9 is objected to because of the following informalities: The phrase “more columns that the number” should be “more columns than the number”. Appropriate correction is required.
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 non-obviousness.
Claims 1-21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Byun et al. [Byun] (US 2005/0286402 A1) in view of Li et al. [Li] (US 2024/0031093 A1), and in further of view of Yang et al. [Yang] (US 2021/0289500 A1).
Regarding claim 1,
Byun discloses a system, comprising: one or more circuits configured to perform operations comprising (Byun: ¶ 0046, Referring to FIG. 3, a transmitter 100 includes a channel encoder 110 for encoding information data bits of uplink ACK, a non-coherent modulator 120 for modulating the information data bits using a non-coherent modulation scheme, and an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) block 130 for performing IFFT on a transmission signal before transmission):
mapping a plurality of data symbols to a magnitude and a phase to generate a plurality of symbols (Byun: ¶ 0072, Referring to FIG. 6, the orthogonal vectors P0, P1, P2, and P3 are QPSK modulation symbols, and can be calculated by Equation (2) below. Because the orthogonal vectors are used even in CQI, the CQI modulation pattern can be reused.
P
0
=
e
x
p
j
*
π
4
,
P
1
=
e
x
p
j
*
3
π
4
,
P
1
=
e
x
p
-
j
*
3
π
4
,
P
2
=
e
x
p
-
j
*
3
π
4
,
P
3
=
e
x
p
-
j
*
π
4
. ¶ 0045, In addition, the proposed method and apparatus uses Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) symbols for transmission symbols; [Examiner’s Note: QPSK (Quadrature Phase-Shift Keying) inherently maps each data symbol to a constellation point define by a magnitude and a phase. Each of these values has a magnitude of 1 and a distinct phase angle (
π
4
,
3
π
4
,
-
3
π
4
,
-
π
4
), i.e., one of four angles, 45°, 135°, 225°, 315°]);
generating a time-domain signal based on the first plurality of shifted symbols and the second plurality of shifted symbols (Byun: ¶ 0077, In step 705, the transmitter maps the selected transmission symbols to each of allocated subcarrier clusters, i.e., each of the three 3x3 subcarrier clusters. In step 707, the transmitter performs IFFT on the subcarrier clusters to each of which the transmission symbols are mapped. ¶ 0049, The IFFT block 130 performs IFFT on the transmission symbol output from the non-coherent modulator 120, and transmits the IFFT-processed transmission symbol; [Examiner’s Note: IFFT block 130 converts the frequency-domain symbols mapped across all of the subcarrier clusters into a single time-domain transmission signal. The IFFT is performed on the aggregate of the symbols mapped to every cluster, and therefore generates the time-domain signal based on the symbols of both the first and second cluster]);
and transmitting the time-domain signal (Byun: ¶ 0049, The IFFT block 130 performs IFFT on the transmission symbol output from the non-coherent modulator 120, and transmits the IFFT-processed transmission symbol. ¶ 0051, Upon receiving a received signal from the transmitter 100, the FFT block 230 performs FFT on the received signal and outputs a received symbol to the non-coherent demodulator 220; [Examiner’s Note: Byun transmits the IFFT-processed signal over the uplink ACK channel to receiver 200, which performs FFT on the received signal at FFT block 230]).
Byun does not explicitly disclose applying a first set of respective phase shifts to the plurality of symbols to generate a first plurality of shifted symbols; applying a second set of respective phase shifts to the plurality of symbols to generate a second plurality of shifted symbols; and wherein the first plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a first plurality of subcarriers from a first resource unit and the second plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a second plurality of subcarriers from a second resource unit.
However, Li teaches applying a first set of respective phase shifts to the plurality of symbols to generate a first plurality of shifted symbols; applying a second set of respective phase shifts to the plurality of symbols to generate a second plurality of shifted symbols (Li: ¶ 0120, For security, randomized phase rotations may be applied to the PSK symbols on the subcarriers, respectively. The randomized phase rotation is unknown to the attacker but known to the intended receiver. The rotated phases may be determined part of the encryption bits. ¶ 0087, The sounding signal consists of the reference signal and its (cyclically) shifted copies that may have different polarities or phases or/and magnitudes as illustrated in FIG. 5C. Namely, the time limited pulse in FIG. 5B may be replaced by the reference signal in FIG. 5C. The polarity or phase or magnitude of the shifted signals may be determined by the output bits of a cypher. ¶ 0121, To further increase the sounding signal entropy, the phase of each subcarrier may be jointly determined by all or a large portion of the encryption bits...The symbol vector in Equation (1) and the QAM symbols in FIGS. 5G-6C can be replaced by angle vector or angles; [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches applying randomized phase rotations to the symbols carried on the subcarriers on a per-subcarrier, respective basis, and further generates a transmission from one base reference signal with copies of that same reference signal bearing different phases, i.e., two or more sets of respective phase shifts applied to a single plurality of symbols])
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 teachings of Byun by further including, applying a first set of respective phase shifts to the plurality of symbols to generate a first plurality of shifted symbols; applying a second set of respective phase shifts to the plurality of symbols to generate a second plurality of shifted symbols, as taught by Li, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of increasing the randomness of the transmitted pattern across every subcarrier rather than across clusters only, thereby achieving to a greater degree the robustness against regular-pattern interference.
Byun in view Li do not explicitly disclose wherein the first plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a first plurality of subcarriers from a first resource unit and the second plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a second plurality of subcarriers from a second resource unit.
However, Yang teaches wherein the first plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a first plurality of subcarriers from a first resource unit and the second plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a second plurality of subcarriers from a second resource unit (Yang: ¶ 0082, In MU-OFDMA schemes, the available frequency spectrum of the wireless channel may be divided into multiple resource units (RUs) each including a number of different frequency subcarriers ("tones"). Different RUs may be allocated or assigned by an AP 102 to different STAs 104 at particular times... the smallest RU may include 26 tones consisting of 24 data tones and 2 pilot tones. ¶ 0111, The RU duplication 910 may include a first duplicated resource unit (RU1), a second duplicated resource unit (RU2), and a third duplicated resource unit (RU3). The first duplicated resource unit RU1 may be based on duplicating a 26-tone RU (RU26) two times such that the resulting duplicated resource unit RU1 spans three adjacent RU26s. See claim 23, wherein the PPDU is transmitted over each RU of the allocated set of RUs; [Examiner’s Note: Yang teaches dividing the channel into RUs, each comprising its own plurality of subcarriers, and transmits the same content over a set of duplicated RUs so that a first duplicated RU and a second duplicated RU each carry the transmission]).
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 teachings of Byun and Li by further including, wherein the first plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a first plurality of subcarriers from a first resource unit and the second plurality of shifted symbols is assigned to a second plurality of subcarriers from a second resource unit, as taught by Yang, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of improving the signal quality of wireless transmission and increase the wireless range of the wireless communication device.
Regarding claim 2, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 1.
Byun does not explicitly disclose the operations further comprising: forming a symbol matrix comprising a first column comprising the plurality of symbols and a second column comprising the plurality of symbols; and generating a matrix stack comprising a matrix arranged in a partitioned columnar form, wherein a number of columns of the symbol matrix equals a number of resource units used to send duplicate symbol transmissions of the plurality of symbols, wherein an element of the symbol matrix comprises a respective symbol of the plurality of symbols, the element defined by a column related to a resource unit and a row related to a subcarrier of the resource unit, and wherein the first set of respective phase shifts and the second set of respective phase shifts are applied by performing an element-wise multiplication of the symbol matrix by the matrix stack.
However, Li teaches the operations further comprising: forming a symbol matrix comprising a first column comprising the plurality of symbols and a second column comprising the plurality of symbols (Li: ¶ 0104, For a simple implementation of the permutation, block interleavers may be used. A block interleaver may read in data symbols sequentially and fill out the rows of the interleaver row by row. When the data is read out, the data are read out column by column such that the symbol order is different from the one when the symbols are read in. The rows or columns do not need to be fully filled. ¶ 0087, The sounding signal consists of the reference signal and its (cyclically) shifted copies that may have different polarities or phases or/and magnitudes as illustrated in FIG. 5C; [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches arranging the symbols to be transmitted into a two-dimensional array filled by row and read by column, and separately retains a base reference signal alongside copies of that same signal so that each column of the array holds the same plurality of symbols.]);
and generating a matrix stack comprising a matrix arranged in a partitioned columnar form (Li: ¶ 0105, A parser may be added before the interleavers. The parser distributes input bits to different interleavers and then each interleaver permutes the bits distributed to the interleaver. The interleaved bits at the output of the interleavers are finally concatenated as the interleaved bits of the overall interleaving process. This idea can be reused here. ¶ 0106, In the top portion FIG. 6B, two interleavers are serially concatenated. The total number of permutations is then multiplied e.g. close to NxN…The parsed elements are distributed to multiple interleavers, respectively. The elements distributed to each interleaver are interleaved and the interleaved elements from the interleavers are concatenated for the next step. ¶ 0107, The permutation operation can be included in the matrix multiplication of Equation (1) above by permuting the rows of M; [Examiner’s Note: Li partitions the symbol stream across multiple instances of the same transformation block and concatenates the outputs into a single composite structure. Further, Li includes that this partitioned permutation structure is equivalently expressed as the matrix M of equation (1), i.e., a matrix stack]),
wherein an element of the symbol matrix comprises a respective symbol of the plurality of symbols, the element defined by…a row related to a subcarrier of the resource unit (Li: ¶ 0102, The matrix M in FIGS. 5G and 6A is of N by P, where N is the number of subcarriers (or active subcarriers) and P is the number of QAM symbols to be mixed together. Note that, P is not necessarily to be equal to N for reducing the complexity. ¶ 0111, For the ease of implementation, the number of the rows of matrix M may be a power of 2 (e.g., 128 and 1024). Some subcarriers may be reserved for DC, edges, and/or pilots.; [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches indexing the transformation matrix by subcarrier along the row dimension and by symbol along the other dimension, each element holding one respective symbol]),
and wherein the first set of respective phase shifts and the second set of respective phase shifts are applied by performing an element-wise multiplication of the symbol matrix by the matrix stack (Li: ¶ 0110, In FIG. 6C, encryption bits generate two sets of the symbols. One is the QAM symbols to be mixed by the matrix M. The other is the sequence of masking symbols, which are multiplied with the mixed symbols in vector x of (1), respectively. For simplicity, the masking symbols may be of BPSK or QPSK e.g. {+1, -1} or {1, -1, j, -j}, or {1+j, 1-j, -1+j, -1-j} such that the masking operation only involves sign (and addition) operation. ¶ 0120, For security, randomized phase rotations may be applied to the PSK symbols on the subcarriers, respectively; [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches applying its phase values by multiplying a sequence of rotation symbols against the symbol vector on a one-for-one, element-by-element basis]).
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 teachings of Byun by further including, operations further comprising: forming a symbol matrix comprising a first column comprising the plurality of symbols and a second column comprising the plurality of symbols; and generating a matrix stack comprising a matrix arranged in a partitioned columnar form, wherein an element of the symbol matrix comprises a respective symbol of the plurality of symbols, the element defined by…a row related to a subcarrier of the resource unit, and wherein the first set of respective phase shifts and the second set of respective phase shifts are applied by performing an element-wise multiplication of the symbol matrix by the matrix stack, as taught by Li, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of improving signal transmission efficiency and reducing computational complexity by efficiently applying systematic phase rotations across subcarriers.
Byun in view Li do not explicitly disclose wherein a number of columns of the symbol matrix equals a number of resource units used to send duplicate symbol transmissions of the plurality of symbols [and] the element defined by a column related to a resource unit.
However, Yang teaches wherein a number of columns of the symbol matrix equals a number of resource units used to send duplicate symbol transmissions of the plurality of symbols, [and] the element defined by a column related to a resource unit (Yang: ¶ 0111, The RU duplication 910 may include a first duplicated resource unit (RU1), a second duplicated resource unit (RU2), and a third duplicated resource unit (RU3). The first duplicated resource unit RU1 may be based on duplicating a 26-tone RU (RU26) two times such that the resulting duplicated resource unit RU1 spans three adjacent RU26s. See claim 22, wherein the set of duplicated RUs is based on duplication of a RU a number N of times, wherein N is an integer greater than 1. See claim 23, wherein the PPDU is transmitted over each RU of the allocated set of RUs; [Examiner’s Note: Yang teaches allocating a set of duplicated resource units and transmits the same content on each resource unit of that set, so that the count of duplicated resource units fixes the count of duplicate transmissions of the symbol set. Specifically, the symbol matrix is structured such that each distinct column maps directly to a corresponding allocated resource unit (e.g., RU1, RU2, or RU3), and individual elements within each column define the specific symbol data mapped and scaled for transmission over that related resource unit index]).
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 teachings of Byun and Li by further including, wherein a number of columns of the symbol matrix equals a number of resource units used to send duplicate symbol transmissions of the plurality of symbols [and] the element defined by a column related to a resource unit, as taught by Yang, in order to predictably scale transmission redundancy and improve signal reliability across an allocated set of resource units.
Regarding claim 3, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 2.
Byun does not explicitly disclose wherein elements of the matrix have a magnitude of one.
However, Li teaches wherein elements of the matrix have a magnitude of one (Li: ¶ 0102, For example, the binary matrix with 1s and -1s only involve sign and addition operations. For another example, QPSK matrix with {1, -1, j, -j} or {±1±j} also only involve sign and addition operations. ¶ 0091, The PSK constellation has the same magnitude that sounds each active subcarrier with the same power. This makes the consistency check across the repeated soundings more stable than using a constellation with multiple magnitudes like 16QAM; [Examiner’s Note: Each element of Li’s binary matrix {1, -1} and QPSK matrix {1, -1, j, -j} has a magnitude of one.]).
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 teachings of Byun by further including, elements of the matrix have a magnitude of one, as taught by Li, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of enhancing signal stability and simplifying hardware processing through uniform subcarrier power distribution.
Regarding claim 4, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 3.
Byun does not explicitly disclose wherein rows of the matrix are orthogonal vectors.
However, Li teaches wherein rows of the matrix are orthogonal vectors (Li: ¶ 0098, For even power distribution, M may be a unitary matrix, whose columns (or rows) are orthogonal with each other. In addition, the norms of the columns (or rows) of M may be the same).
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 teachings of Byun by further including, rows of the matrix are orthogonal vectors, as taught by Li, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of having even power distribution across the transmitted signal.
Regarding claim 5, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 4.
Byun does not explicitly disclose wherein the matrix is a circulant Hadamard matrix.
However, Li teaches wherein the matrix is a circulant Hadamard matrix (Li: ¶ 0098, For a low complexity, special matrixes with structures may be used as the matrix M e.g. binary matrix, FFT (or IFFT) matrix, and Hadamard matrix such that the complexity of the matrix multiplication is low. ¶ 0113, input symbols to the filters may be treated in a circular or wrap around fashion. For example, the beginning and the end of the input symbols are connected with each other such
that the input symbols form a loop. ¶ 0114, transformation matrix 640 (M) for linear filters may have a Toeplitz structure.).
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 teachings of Byun by further including, the matrix is a circulant Hadamard matrix, as taught by Li, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of having the benefit of low matrix-multiplication complexity.
Regarding claim 6, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 2.
Byun does not explicitly disclose wherein an element of the matrix stack that multiplies a respective element of the symbol matrix corresponding to a pilot subcarrier is made one.
However, Li teaches wherein an element of the matrix stack that multiplies a respective element of the symbol matrix corresponding to a pilot subcarrier is made one (Li: ¶ 0111, Some subcarriers may be reserved for DC, edges, and/or pilots. Therefore, if the number of the permuted or masked symbols (e.g., 128) is greater than that of the subcarriers available for carrying the secure sounding signal (e.g., 118), some permuted or masked symbols may not be used (i.e., not mapped to the subcarriers); [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches reserving pilot subcarriers and excluding them from the transformation, i.e., a multiplier of one is the mathematical expression of leaving the pilot unmodified.]).
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 teachings of Byun by further including, an element of the matrix stack that multiplies a respective element of the symbol matrix corresponding to a pilot subcarrier is made one, as taught by Li, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of preserving unmodified pilot references.
Regarding claim 7, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 2.
Byun further teaches wherein a complex conjugate of the first column of the matrix stack multiplying is used to perform the element-wise multiplication on each column of the matrix stack (Byun: ¶¶ 0061-64, In Equation (1), transmission symbol values for each pattern are phase-shifted by
exp
j
*
2
π
3
=
e
x
p
(
j
120
°
)
for k=9 to 17 and by
exp
j
*
4
π
3
=
e
x
p
(
j
240
°
)
for k=18 to 26, making a 2nd subcarrier cluster and a 3rd subcarrier cluster, respectively. Optionally, the phase shifts exp
j
*
2
π
3
and exp
j
*
4
π
3
can be omitted; [Examiner’s Note: Byun’s mathematical operations perform the required element-wise matrix multiplication by applying the disclosed phase-shifting values to the subcarrier clusters in Equation (1), executing an element-wise multiplication across the columns of the underlying transmission symbol matrix stack]).
Regarding claim 8, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 2.
Byun does not explicitly disclose wherein a number of subcarriers in each of the resource units represented by a respective element of the symbol matrix is not divisible by a number of rows of the matrix, the matrix is repeated to form the matrix stack with a number of stacked rows greater than the number of subcarriers in each of the resource units, and a number of last rows of the matrix stack are removed from the matrix stack.
However, Li teaches wherein: a number of subcarriers in each of the resource units represented by a respective element of the symbol matrix is not divisible by a number of rows of the matrix (Li: ¶ 0111, For the ease of implementation, the number of the rows of matrix M may be a power of 2 (e.g., 128 and 1024). Some subcarriers may be reserved for DC, edges, and/or pilots. Therefore, if the number of the permuted or masked symbols (e.g., 128) is greater than that of the subcarriers available for carrying the secure sounding signal (e.g., 118), some permuted or masked symbols may not be used (i.e., not mapped to the subcarriers). ¶ 0104, The rows or columns do not need to be fully filled; [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches the exact match recited: a matrix row count of 128 against 118 available subcarriers, which is a non-divisible relationship. Also, the structure tolerates rows that are not fully filled.]),
the matrix is repeated to form the matrix stack with a number of stacked rows greater than the number of subcarriers in each of the resource units (Li: ¶ 0106, To increase the number of permutations, multiple block interleavers may be used. In the top portion FIG. 6B, two interleavers are serially concatenated…For high security, more than two block interleavers can be used. ¶ 0105, The parser distributes input bits to different interleavers and then each interleaver permutes the bits distributed to the interleaver. The interleaved bits at the output of the interleavers are finally concatenated as the interleaved bits of the overall interleaving process. ¶ 0111, if the number of the permuted or masked symbols (e.g., 128) is greater than that of the subcarriers available for carrying the secure sounding signal (e.g., 118); [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches repeating the same block plural times and concatenating the replicas into one structure. The resulting structure is greater in extent than the subcarriers available.]),
and a number of last rows of the matrix stack are removed from the matrix stack (Li: ¶ 0111, For the ease of implementation, the number of the rows of matrix M may be a power of 2 (e.g., 128 and 1024). Some subcarriers may be reserved for DC, edges, and/or pilots. Therefore, if the number of the permuted or masked symbols (e.g., 128) is greater than that of the subcarriers available for carrying the secure sounding signal (e.g., 118), some permuted or masked symbols may not be used (i.e., not mapped to the subcarriers); [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches an (N x P) mixing matrix where column dimensions are adjusted and trailing columns are removed to resolve mismatches with available subcarriers, i.e., If the number of permuted symbols is greater than the available subcarriers, the extra columns at the end are removed]).]).
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 teachings of Byun by further including, a number of subcarriers in each of the resource units represented by a respective element of the symbol matrix is not divisible by a number of rows of the matrix, the matrix is repeated to form the matrix stack with a number of stacked rows greater than the number of subcarriers in each of the resource units, and a number of last rows of the matrix stack are removed from the matrix stack, as taught by Li, in order to reliably conform the resource mapping dimensions to arbitrary system standards without disrupting data integrity.
Regarding claim 9, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 2.
Byun does not explicitly disclose wherein: the matrix has more columns that the number of columns of the symbol matrix, and a number of last columns of the matrix stack are removed from the matrix stack.
However, Li teaches wherein: the matrix has more columns that the number of columns of the symbol matrix, and a number of last columns of the matrix stack are removed from the matrix stack (Li: ¶ 0102, The matrix M in FIGS. 5G and 6A is of N by P, where N is the number of subcarriers (or active subcarriers) and P is the number of QAM symbols to be mixed together. Note that, P is not necessarily to be equal to N for reducing the complexity. ¶ 0111, Some subcarriers may be reserved for DC, edges, and/or pilots. Therefore, if the number of the permuted or masked symbols (e.g., 128) is greater than that of the subcarriers available for carrying the secure sounding signal (e.g., 118), some permuted or masked symbols may not be used (i.e., not mapped to the subcarriers); [Examiner’s Note: Li teaches an (N x P) mixing matrix where column dimensions are adjusted and trailing columns are removed to resolve mismatches with available subcarriers, i.e., If the number of permuted symbols is greater than the available subcarriers, the extra columns at the end are removed]).
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 teachings of Byun by further including, the matrix has more columns that the number of columns of the symbol matrix, and a number of last columns of the matrix stack are removed from the matrix stack, as taught by Li, since doing so would have achieved the predictable and desirable result of reduced computational complexity.
Regarding claim 10, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 1.
Byun further teaches wherein a phase shift is not applied to symbols assigned to a pilot subcarrier (Byun: ¶ 0073, The 8 subcarriers of a 3x3 subcarrier cluster including 9 subcarriers transmit the symbols illustrated in FIG. 6, and the remaining one subcarrier transmits a pilot symbol. The pilot symbol can be arbitrarily selected; [Examiner’s Note: Byun teaches that a pilot subcarrier transmits an arbitrarily selected pilot symbol without a phase shift applied to the assigned symbols]).
Regarding claim 11, Byun, Li and Yang teach the system of claim 1.
Byun in view Li do not explicitly disclose wherein: there are 52 subcarriers in the first resource unit and 52 subcarriers in the second resource unit, and the plurality of symbols are duplicated onto four resource units, or there are 26 subcarriers in the first resource unit and 26 subcarriers in the second resource unit, and the plurality of symbols are duplicated onto eight resource units.
However, Yang teaches wherein: there are 52 subcarriers in the first resource unit and 52 subcarriers in the second resource unit, and the plurality of symbols are duplicated onto four resource units, or there are 26 subcarriers in the first resource unit and 26 subcarriers in the second resource unit, and the plurality of symbols are duplicated onto eight resource units (Yang: ¶ 0084, Each 26-tone RU may include 24 data subcarriers and 2 pilot subcarriers, each 52-tone RU may include 48 data subcarriers and 4 pilot subcarriers. ¶ 0104, For another example, the selected bandwidth may be 20 MHz, duplicating the PPDU may generate eight PPDU duplicates, and the eight PPDU duplicates may be transmitted on different 20 MHz frequency sub bands of a contiguous 160 MHz wireless channel. See claim 22, wherein the set of duplicated RUs is based on duplication of a RU a number N of times, wherein N is an integer greater than 1; [Examiner’s Note: Yang expressly teaches duplicating a resource unit a number N greater than one (N > 1) times, specifically disclosing 26-tone resource units duplicated eight times and 52-tone resource units duplicated four times.]).
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 teachings of Byun and Li by further including, there are 52 subcarriers in the first resource unit and 52 subcarriers in the second resource unit, and the plurality of symbols are duplicated onto four resource units, or there are 26 subcarriers in the first resource unit and 26 subcarriers in the second resource unit, and the plurality of symbols are duplicated onto eight resource units, as taught by Yang, since doing so would have achieved the desirable result of increasing the spanned bandwidth, which raises the applicable PSD limit and thereby increases the allowed transmit power, signal quality, and range.
Features of claims 12-21 correspond to features of claims 1-11, and are therefore rejected using the same rationale(s) and same prior art(s) applied to claims 1-11, above.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Baldemair et al. (US 2020/0077424 A1); Baldemair et al. teaches ways for a wireless device to send uplink control information, such as acknowledgments, scheduling requests, or channel quality feedback, using a more flexible uplink control channel structure. The device takes control bits, turns them into modulation symbols, and then places those symbols onto allocated wireless resources. Instead of relying on a fixed legacy format, the invention lets the device use a resource configuration that identifies which physical resource blocks and which subcarriers inside those blocks may be used. The same framework can support different payload sizes by changing how many resources are assigned, the modulation order, or the coding rate. The disclosure also supports sending multiple users’ control information over the same allocated time-frequency resources by splitting them across subcarriers within a symbol. In some versions, the subcarriers are arranged contiguously; in others, they follow a comb pattern. The design can also frequency-hop across symbols to improve diversity and reduce interference. Another version uses spreading or block-spreading sequences to distribute the symbols. The network node receives the symbols using the same configured resource or spreading information and demodulates them back into control information. Overall, the approach aims to make uplink control signaling more flexible for new radio systems than older LTE-style predefined formats. See [¶¶ 0035-39, 41-51; Figs. 2, 6 and related text].
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to MAJDI ALSOMIRI whose telephone number is (571) 270-0427. The examiner can normally be reached 7AM-5PM. 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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/M.A./Examiner, Art Unit 2465
/AYMAN A ABAZA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2465
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