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
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.
1. Claims 37-55 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Gao (US 2024/0357584) in view of Gao (US 20230189254).
2. As per claim 36, Gao teaches a method for a user equipment (UE) configured for simultaneous multi-panel transmission (STxMP), the method comprising: receiving, from a radio access network (RAN) node, downlink control information (DCI) scheduling physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) (Gao, ¶0005 “… DCI … PUSCH …”) transmission of a first number of layers (L1) associated with a first sounding reference signal (SRS) resource set and of a second number of layers (L2) associated with a second SRS resource set (Gao, ¶0061 “… first SRS …. second SRS …”), wherein: one or more layer fields in the DCI indicate the first number of layers (L1) and the second number of layers (L2), a rank of the PUSCH transmission is equal to a sum (L1+L2) of the first number of layers (L1) and the second number of layers (L2) (Gao, ¶0005 “ … sum of first number and second number.” Furthermore, it’s well-known in the art at the time of the invention a rank of the PUSCH transmission is equal to a sum of the layers -see Gao 2023/0189254 (Gao254’) for example ¶0302), a value in a ports field in the DCI indicates the following: L1 demodulation reference signal (DMRS) ports of a first subset of DMRS ports associated with the first SRS resource set (Gao, ¶0092 “… first… ports ..… DMRS …”); and L2 DMRS ports of a second subset of DMRS ports associated with the second SRS resource set (Gao, ¶0092 “… second… ports … DMRS …”); and the first and second subsets of DMRS ports are non-overlapping and are independent of a distribution of the rank between the first number of layers (L1) and the second number of layers (L2) (Gao, ¶0123); and transmitting PUSCH and DMRS according to the received DCI (Gao, ¶0005). Therefore, taking the combined teaching of Gao and Gao254’ as a whole, it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to implement the instant limitation for the benefit of improving and increasing transmission rate per user.
3. Claim 54 is similarly analyzed as claim 36 for obvious reason above.
4. As per claim 37, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 36, wherein: the value of the ports field in the DCI indicates DMRS ports based on a table mapping the value to DMRS ports (Gao, ¶0111); and the table is selected based on the rank of the PUSCH transmission (Gao, ¶0112).
5. Claim 46 is similarly analyzed as claim 37 for obvious reason above.
6. As per claim 38, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 36, wherein: the UE is configured for simultaneous transmission of the first and second SRS resource sets via respective first and second antenna panels, the first subset of DMRS ports comprises DMRS port 0 and DMRS port 1, and the second subset of DMRS ports comprises DMRS port 2 and DMRS port 3 (Gao, ¶0112).
7. Claim 47 is similarly analyzed as claim 38 for obvious reason above.
8. As per claim 39, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 37, wherein: the rank of the PUSCH transmission is equal to 3 (Gao, Claim 29); a first value of the ports field in the DCI corresponds to the first number of layers (L1) equal to 2 and the second number of layers (L2) equal to 1 (Gao, ¶0112); the first value of the ports field indicates a first entry in the selected table (Gao, ¶0112); the first entry is mapped to DMRS ports 0 and 1 for the transmission on the L1=2 layers and to DMRS port 2 for the transmission on the L2=1 layer (Gao, ¶0067-0069); a second value of the ports field in the DCI corresponds to the first number of layers (L1) equal to 1 and the second number of layers (L2) equal to 2 (Gao, ¶0112); the second value of the ports field indicates a second entry in the selected table (Gao, ¶0110-0111); and the second entry is mapped to DMRS port 0 for the transmission on the L1=1 layer and to DMRS ports 2 and 3 for the transmission on the L2=2 layers (Gao, ¶0110-0111).
9. Claim 48 is similarly analyzed as claim 39 for obvious reason above.
10. As per claim 40, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 36, wherein: the first subset of DMRS ports is mapped to resource elements of a first code division multiplexing (CDM) group; and the second subset of DMRS ports is mapped to resource elements of a second CDM group (Gao, ¶0103).
11. Claim 49 is similarly analyzed as claim 40 for obvious reason above.
12. As per claim 41, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 36, wherein the one or more layer fields are one of the following: one or more precoding information and number of layers fields, or one or more SRS resource indicator fields (Gao, ¶0091).
13. Claim 50 is similarly analyzed as claim 41 for obvious reason above.
14. As per claim 42, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 36, further comprising receiving, from the RAN node, an SRS configuration configuring the first and second SRS resource sets, wherein each SRS resource set includes one or more SRS resources, and each SRS resource is associated with one or more SRS ports (Gao, ¶0066).
15. Claim 51 is similarly analyzed as claim 42 for obvious reason above.
16. As per claim 43, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 42, further comprising transmitting SRS resources of the first and second SRS resource sets via respective first and second UE antenna panels, in accordance with the SRS configuration (Gao, ¶0137).
17. Claim 52 is similarly analyzed as claim 43 for obvious reason above.
18. As per claim 44, Gao in view of Gao254’ teaches the method of claim 36, wherein: the PUSCH and DMRS are transmitted simultaneously via two UE antenna panels (Gao, ¶0066); the L1 DMRS ports are associated with a first transmission reception point (TRP) of the RAN node (Gao, ¶0090); the L2 DMRS ports are associated with a second TRP of the RAN node (Gao, ¶0090); and each TRP is a destination for PUSCH and DMRS transmitted via a corresponding one of the two UE antenna panels (Gao, ¶0092).
19. Claim 53 is similarly analyzed as claim 44 for obvious reason above.
20. As per claim 45, Gao teaches a method for a radio access network (RAN) node configured to receive transmissions from a user equipment (UE) arranged for simultaneous multi-panel transmission (STxMP), the method comprising: transmitting, to the UE, downlink control information (DCI) scheduling physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH) (Gao, ¶0005 “… DCI … PUSCH …”) transmission of a first number of layers (L1) associated with a first sounding reference signal (SRS) resource set and of a second number of layers (L2) associated with a second SRS resource set (Gao, ¶0061 “… first SRS …. second SRS …”), wherein: one or more layer fields in the DCI indicate the first number of layers (L1) and the second number of layers (L2), a rank of the PUSCH transmission is equal to a sum (L1+L2) of the first number of layers (L1) and the second number of layers (L2) (Gao, ¶0005 “ … sum of first number and second number.” Furthermore, it’s well-known in the art at the time of the invention a rank of the PUSCH transmission is equal to a sum of the layers -see Gao 2023/0189254 (Gao254’) for example ¶0302), a value in a ports field in the DCI indicates the following: L1 demodulation reference signal (DMRS) ports of a first subset of DMRS ports associated with the first SRS resource set (Gao, ¶0092 “… first… ports ..… DMRS …”), and L2 DMRS ports of a second subset of DMRS ports associated with the second SRS resource set (Gao, ¶0092 “… second… ports … DMRS …”); and the first and second subsets of DMRS ports are non-overlapping and independent of a distribution of the rank between the first number of layers (L1) and the second number of layers (L2) (Gao, ¶0123); and receiving PUSCH and DMRS from the UE according to the transmitted DCI (Gao, ¶0005).
22. Claim 55 is similarly analyzed as claim 45 for obvious reason above.
Conclusion
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ZEWDU A. KASSA
Examiner
Art Unit 2637
/ZEWDU A KASSA/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2635
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