Orientation-assisted Beam Management for Beyond 5G Systems

Finding the optimal transmit and receive beam pair for reliable communication can be challenging, especially in highly dynamic environments. Side-information from on-board sensors at the user equipment (UE) can be used to aid the beam management (BM) process. In this work, we use the orientation information coming from inertial measurement unit (IMU) for effective BM. Specifically, we use particle filter (PF) to fuse the reference signal received power (RSRP) information with orientation information. We perform extensive simulations using realistic ray-tracing channels, practical beam patterns, and various UE movement and rotation speeds. Simulation results show the proposed strategy can greatly improve the beam prediction accuracy and reduce the power loss caused by sub-optimal beam-selection.