Minimizing Energy Consumption for 5G NR Beam Management for RedCap Devices

TL;DR

This paper proposes an optimization framework to reduce energy consumption in 5G NR beam management for battery-constrained RedCap IoT devices, ensuring QoS in factory scenarios.

Contribution

It introduces a formal optimization model for selecting beam management parameters tailored to RedCap devices in indoor factory environments.

Findings

Identifies feasible regions for beam management parameters based on user distribution and speed.

Provides design guidelines for energy-efficient beam management in 5G IoT applications.

Abstract

In 5G New Radio (NR), beam management entails periodic and continuous transmission and reception of control signals in the form of synchronization signal blocks (SSBs), used to perform initial access and/or channel estimation. However, this procedure demands continuous energy consumption, which is particularly challenging to handle for low-cost, low-complexity, and battery-constrained devices, such as RedCap devices to support mid-market Internet of Things (IoT) use cases. In this context, this work aims at reducing the energy consumption during beam management for RedCap devices, while ensuring that the desired Quality of Service (QoS) requirements are met. To do so, we formalize an optimization problem in an Indoor Factory (InF) scenario to select the best beam management parameters, including the beam update periodicity and the beamwidth, to minimize energy consumption based on users' distribution and their speed. The analysis yields the regions of feasibility, i.e., the upper limit(s) on the beam management parameters for RedCap devices, that we use to provide design guidelines accordingly.