On the Mobility Analysis of UE-Side Beamforming for Multi-Panel User Equipment in 5G-Advanced

TL;DR

This paper investigates UE-side beamforming with multiple antenna panels in 5G-Advanced to enhance link reliability and mobility, demonstrating significant reductions in radio link and handover failures through system-level simulations.

Contribution

It introduces three novel UE-side Rx-beamforming methods for multi-panel UEs, improving mobility performance in 5G FR2 networks.

Findings

RLFs reduced by 53%

HOFs reduced by 90%

Enhanced link stability in multi-beam FR2 networks

Abstract

Frequency range 2 (FR2) has become an integral part of 5G networks to fulfill the ever-increasing demand for data hungry-applications. However, radio signals in FR2 experience high path and diffraction loss, which also pronounces the problem of inter and intra-cell interference. As a result, both the serving and target links are affected, leading to radio link failures (RLFs) and handover failures (HOFs), respectively. To address this issue, multi-panel user equipment (MPUE) is proposed for 5G-Advanced whereby multiple spatially distinct antenna panels are integrated into the UE to leverage gains from antenna directivity. It also opens the possibility of using UE-side Rx-beamforming for each panel. In this paper, three different Rx-beamforming approaches are proposed to improve the serving link, the target link, and the handover process for an MPUE equipped with three directional panels. Thereafter, the mobility performance is analyzed in a system-level simulation for a multi-beam FR2 network. Results have shown that the proposed schemes can help reduce RLFs by 53\% and HOFs by 90\%.