DETAILED ACTION
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority as a Continuation of European Application EP23207043.3 filed 10/31/2023 is acknowledged.
Preliminary Amendment filed 10/23/2024 is acknowledged.
Claim 14 has been cancelled.
Claims 1-13 and 15 have been amended and remain pending.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 11/22/2024 is in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statement is being considered by the examiner.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 101
35 U.S.C. 101 reads as follows:
Whoever invents or discovers any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof, may obtain a patent therefor, subject to the conditions and requirements of this title.
Claim 15 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 101 because the claimed invention is directed to non-statutory subject matter. The claim does not fall within at least one of the four categories of patent eligible subject matter because the claimed “computer readable medium” is open-endedly described (i.e. “such as” in paragraph 126) in such a way that could include transitory signals. Adding the express term “non-transitory” to the claim preamble would overcome this rejection.
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, 11, 12, and 15 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Tidestav et al. (US20230209385A1), hereafter Tidestav, in view of Kung et al. (US20230171788A1), hereafter Kung.
Regarding claims 1, 11, 12, and 15,
Tidestav discloses a network device (Fig. 1, gNB 100) comprising at least one processor and at least one memory/computer readable medium storing instructions (Fig. 3, controller/memory 120; paragraph 28, 35, 54) that, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the apparatus at least to perform a method comprising receiving, from a terminal device (Fig. 1, UE 10), feedback corresponding to a transmission from the apparatus to the terminal device (Fig. 1, SN10-SU16; paragraph 33; RSRP report fed back from UE to gNB based on triggered RSRP measurement from gNB to UE) and determining a spatial direction of the further apparatus based on the feedback (Fig. 1, SN18; paragraph 33; determine best/target reference beam).
Tidestav further discloses filtering a received reference signal based on the spatial direction of the further apparatus, to filter out a portion of the received reference signal that is not received from the spatial direction of the further apparatus (Fig. 1, SN20-26; paragraph 19, 33; determining new best narrow beam with a spatial angle smaller than the target reference beam after sweeping of narrow Rx beams corresponding to the best/target reference beam, thereby filtering out other narrow Rx beams within the best/target reference beam) and determining, based on the filtered received reference signal, estimated channel information about a channel from the further apparatus to the apparatus (Fig. 1, SN28; paragraph 33, 41; measuring/estimating the beam/channel based on the determined new best narrow beam).
Tidestav does not expressly disclose PMI feedback.
Kung discloses analogous art (Title: Beam Selection and Reporting ina Wireless Communication System) including CSI Reporting that includes PMI feedback associated with SSB measurement and spatial filtering (Fig. 18-23; paragraph 93).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the time of effective filing to modify Tidestav by providing PMI feedback for beam selection and reporting, as shown by Kung, thereby enabling preferred precoder matrix per reporting subband rather than the entire reporting band.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 2 and 13 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.
The prior art of record (i.e. Krishnamurthy; US20150030092) discloses PMI based on a channel covariance matrix based on PMI feedback () but fails to teach or fairly disclose projecting the covariance matrix into a set of spatial beams to obtain respective projection powers and selecting a subset of the spatial beams based on the respective projection powers, as put forth in claims 2 and 13.
Dependent claims 3-10 would be allowable based on dependence from claim 2.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
Krishnamurthy (US20150030092); Multi-Resolution Precoding Matrix Indicator Feedback.
Fujio et al. (US20150030006); Radio Base Station and Channel Estimation Method.
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/GREGORY B SEFCHECK/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2477
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