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 .
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 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.
This action is in response to communications filed on 1/8/2025.
Claims 1-8 & 11-19 have been examined and are rejected. Claims 9-10 & 20 have been examined and are objected to.
Priority
This application is a continuation of application 17/630,888 now patent 12,245,220, which is a 371 of PCT/CN2020/105384 and claims priority to provisional application 62/883,422 filed 8/6/2019.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statements (IDS) submitted on 1/8/2025, 3/6/2025, and 10/10/2025 are in compliance with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.97. Accordingly, the information disclosure statements are being considered by the examiner.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 9-10 & 20 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.
Claim Rejections – 35 USC § 102
The following is a quotation of the appropriate paragraphs of 35 U.S.C. 102 that form the basis for the rejections under this section made in this Office action:
A person shall be entitled to a patent unless –
(a)(1) the claimed invention was patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale or otherwise available to the public before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
(a)(2) the claimed invention was described in a patent issued under section 151, or in an application for patent published or deemed published under section 122(b), in which the patent or application, as the case may be, names another inventor and was effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention.
Claims 1-2, 4, 6, 8, 12-13, 15, 17, & 19 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) as being anticipated by Deng et al. (US 2022/0159674 A1).
With regard to Claim 1, Deng teaches:
A method for transmission of scheduling and control information for sidelink communications, the method comprising steps performed at a mobile device of:
transmitting a first stage sidelink control information (SCI) carrying scheduling information, and transmitting a second stage SCI indicated by the first stage SCI; (in a two-stage SCI transmission, A WTRU may transmit an SCI containing WTRU-common information and intended for all SL WTRUs in PSCCH_1, and transmit an SCI containing WTRU-specific information in PSCCH_2 [Deng: 0124; 0166], wherein the first SCI may include a first part of the PSSCH scheduling information and may may indicate the presence of the second SCI [Deng: 0114]).
With regard to Claim 2, Deng teaches:
A method according to claim 1, wherein an indication of a coding rate of the second stage SCI is transmitted as part of the first stage SCI; (the MCS or coding rate of PSCCH_2 SCI may be explicitly indicated in PSCCH_1 SCI [Deng: 0154]).
With regard to Claim 4, Deng teaches:
A method according to claim 3, wherein the first stage SCI indicates which format a sidelink receiver user equipment (UE) expects in the second stage SCI; (a WTRU may be configured or preconfigured with a set of SCI formats, types, or sizes for PSCCH_2 [Deng: 0130], wherein the WTRU may select and decode a PSCCH_2 SCI format, type, or size from the configured or preconfigured set based on the information decoded from the PSCCH_1 SCI [Deng: 0137]).
With regard to Claim 6, Deng teaches:
A method according to claim 1, wherein the second stage SCI comprises at least one of the following: modulation and coding scheme (MCS), hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) identifier (ID), redundancy version (RV), new data indicator (NDI), and/or channel state information (CSI) indication or request; (A PSCCH_2 SCI format, type, or size may be configured or preconfigured to apply for one or multiple characteristics, and may include a bit field in the SCI that may be used to convey an MCS value, may include bit fields for HARQ process ID, RV or NDI, and may include a new bit field to indicate the presence of coded CSI bits in the PSSCH resource [Deng: 0130-32]).
With regard to Claim 8, Deng teaches:
A method according to claim 1,wherein the first stage SCI indicates a modulation and coding scheme (MCS) of the second stage SCI; (a WTRU may determine the MCS or coding rate of PSCCH_2 SCI based on a DMRS configuration indicated in PSCCH_1 SCI [Deng: 0152]).
With regard to Claims 12-13, 15, 17, & 19, they appear substantially similar to the limitations recited by claims 1-2, 4, 6, & 8 and consequently do not appear to teach or further define over the citations provided for said claims. Accordingly, claims 12-13, 15, 17, & 19 are rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claims 1-2, 4, 6, & 8.
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 of this title, 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.
This application currently names joint inventors. In considering patentability of the claims the examiner presumes that the subject matter of the various claims was commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the claimed invention(s) absent any evidence to the contrary. Applicant is advised of the obligation under 37 CFR 1.56 to point out the inventor and effective filing dates of each claim that was not commonly owned as of the effective filing date of the later invention in order for the examiner to consider the applicability of 35 U.S.C. 102(b)(2)(C) for any potential 35 U.S.C. 102(a)(2) prior art against the later invention.
Claims 3 & 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deng et al. (US 2022/0159674 A1) in view of Chen et al. (US 2022/0061041 A1).
With regard to Claim 3, Deng teaches:
A method according to claim 1, wherein sizes of the second stage SCI are predetermined by configuration; (a WTRU may be configured or preconfigured with a PSCCH_2 SCI format, type, or size [Deng: 0130; 0135; 0151]).
However, Deng does not teach (where underlining indicates the portion of each limitation not taught):
wherein sizes of first stage SCI are predetermined by configuration.
In a similar field of endeavor involving two-stage sidelink control information (SCI), Chen discloses:
wherein sizes of first stage SCI and the second stage SCI are predetermined by configuration; (the 1st-stage SCI can have a fixed size (fixed number of bits) for unicast, groupcast, or broadcast, and the 2nd-stage SCI can similarly have a fixed size [Chen: 0044-45]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Deng in view of Chen in order to utilize a first stage SCI with a predetermined size in the system of Deng.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Deng with Chen as doing so would allow a sensing UE or a receiving UE to decode the 1st-stage SCI without blind detection for the decoding [Chen: 0044].
With regard to Claim 14, it appears substantially similar to the limitations recited by claim 3 and consequently does not appear to teach or further define over the citations provided for said claim. Accordingly, claim 14 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 3.
Claims 5 & 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deng et al. (US 2022/0159674 A1) in view of InterDigital et al. "On Physical Layer Structure for NR V2X Sidelink", 3GPP Draft R1-1905400.
With regard to Claim 5, Deng teaches a method according to claim 1, but does not teach:
wherein a mapping of the second stage SCI is started from a front-loaded demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) over the unused resource elements.
In a similar field of endeavor involving 2-stage SCIs, InterDigital discloses:
wherein a mapping of the second stage SCI is started from a front-loaded demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) over the unused resource elements; (SCI part 2 is delivered on the first symbol after PSCCH, wherein the symbol has PSSCH DM-RS, following type-1 DM-RS configuration [InterDigital: p7]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Deng in view of InterDigital in order to start the mapping of the second stage SCI from a front-loaded DMRS symbol in the system of Deng.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Deng with InterDigital as doing so would allow blind detection of the 2nd-stage SCI to be avoided.
With regard to Claim 16, it appears substantially similar to the limitations recited by claim 5 and consequently does not appear to teach or further define over the citations provided for said claim. Accordingly, claim 16 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 5.
Claims 7 & 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deng et al. (US 2022/0159674 A1) in view of Huawei et al. "Design and contents of PSCCH and PSFCH", 3GPP Draft R1-1906596.
With regard to Claim 7, Deng teaches:
A method according to claim 1,
wherein coded bits of the second stage SCI are mapped from a lowest physical resource block (PRB) locations; (a set of PRBs with the lowest indices in the resource pool may be configured or preconfigured for low-latency transport block (TB) transmission that may require a WTRU to detect such transmission as early as possible [Deng: 0205]).
However, Deng does not teach (where underlining indicates the portion of each limitation not taught):
wherein the second stage SCI uses lower order modulation including Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK);
wherein coded bits of the second stage SCI are mapped from a lowest physical resource block (PRB) locations in the scheduled resource for Physical Sidelink Shared Channel (PSSCH).
In a similar field of endeavor involving 2-stage SCIs, Huawei discloses:
wherein the second stage SCI uses lower order modulation including Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK); (the 2nd stage SCI contains information dedicated to the UEs it targets (i.e. specific recipient UEs) [Huawei: p4 §2.2.2], wherein QPSK is utilized for PSCCH which carries the 2-stage SCI [Huawei: p2 §2]);
wherein coded bits of the second stage SCI are mapped from a lowest physical resource block (PRB) locations in the scheduled resource for Physical Sidelink Shared Channel (PSSCH); (in frequency domain, PSCCH should be located at the edge of the sub-channel and started from the lowest RB index of the sub-channel [Huawei: p2 §2.1]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Deng in view of Huawei in order to decode the QPSK encoded second stage at an intended receiver, and map the coded bits from the lowest PRB in the PSSCH in the system of Deng.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Deng with Huawei as doing so would increase spectral efficiency while improving decoding performance, and would enable the PSSCH allocation to be indicated by the SCI through the frequency resource assignment and time resource assignment fields.
With regard to Claim 18, it appears substantially similar to the limitations recited by claim 7 and consequently does not appear to teach or further define over the citations provided for said claim. Accordingly, claim 18 is rejected for the same reasons as set forth in claim 7.
Claim 11 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Deng et al. (US 2022/0159674 A1) in view of Nokia et al. "Discussion of physical layer structure for sidelink" 3GPP Draft R1-1906074.
With regard to Claim 11, Deng teaches a method according to claim 1, but does not teach:
wherein the scheduling information in the first stage SCI identifies an intended receiver of the second stage SCI.
In a similar field of endeavor involving 2-stage SCIs, Nokia discloses:
wherein the scheduling information in the first stage SCI identifies an intended receiver of the second stage SCI; (UEs generally only need to decode the 1st-stage PSCCH to get the information for sidelink channel sensing and resource selection and the 2nd-stage SCI/PSCCH shall be decoded only if they are identified as the target receivers from the 1st-stage SCI/PSCCH [Nokia: p6 §2.2]).
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to modify Deng in view of Nokia in order to utilize scheduling information in the first stage SCI to identify if the mobile device is the intended receiver of the second stage SCI in the system of Deng.
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to combine Deng with Nokia as doing so would reduce the overall amount of necessary network decoding.
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure:
Hwang et al. (US 2020/0351136 A1) which teaches in a resource pool, a payload size of the first SCI may be identical for unicast, groupcast, and broadcast, wherein after decoding the first SCI, the receiving UE does not have to perform blind decoding of the second SCI [Hwang: 0153].
In the case of amendments, Applicant is respectfully requested to indicate the portion(s) of the specification which dictate(s) the structure relied on for proper interpretation and support, for ascertaining the metes and bounds of the claimed invention.
Any inquiry concerning this communication or earlier communications from the examiner should be directed to AUSTIN J MOREAU whose telephone number is (571) 272-5179. The examiner can normally be reached Monday-Friday 9:00 - 6:00 ET.
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If attempts to reach the examiner by telephone are unsuccessful, the examiner’s supervisor, Rebecca Song can be reached on 571-270-3667. The fax phone number for the organization where this application or proceeding is assigned is 571-273-8300.
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/AUSTIN J MOREAU/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2417
