BeamSurfer: simple in-band beam management for mobile mm-wave devices

Narrow millimeter wave transmit and receive beams need to be pointed at each other for a successful line-of-sight (LoS) communication link. As a user with a mm-wave mobile moves or rotates, constant readjustment, about tens times each second, is necessary to maintain aligned beams. Once communication is lost due to misalignment or blockage, the mobile can take up to 1.28 s in 5G New Radio to be reacquired. BeamSurfer is the first solution for beam management that does not require any additional sensors, position measurements, or prior mapping of the environment. It employs only Received Signal Strength (RSS) measurements to predict LoS beams ahead of time. To avoid communication loss due to sudden blockage, BeamSurfer successfully maintains a reserve backup reflected beam to coordinate recovery. For users moving at walking speeds within 10 m of a base station (BS), experimental evaluations show that the transmit and receive beams chosen by BeamSurfer are always within 3 dB of the optimal ones that an Oracle would choose. Experimental evaluation also shows that BeamSurfer is able to recover from blockages in indoor environments.