Beam and Beam Management ( Beam Control ) in 5G NR

Beam is very important characteristics or you can say it is a must kind of thing required to operate
the 5G especially in mmWave frequencies.

What is Beam:
For gNB and UE…Beam and its management in simple words is as:
1. Formation of signal in the form of beam,
2. Radiation of beams,
3. Radiation in correct direction (for Tx),
4. Aligning itself for best beam (for Rx),
5. Reporting on the best beam and
6. Taking corrective actions in case of beam failure (that is Beam failure recovery)
(Very good example is…Sending Torch light from one place to another and in response getting
torch light towards you from the other end as well)
Suggest you to make clear picture in mind for above few lines and I am sure then you will clearly
able to make out what 3GPP is saying below.

As per 3GPP Release 14 below are the steps in Beam Management.

Beam management: a set of L1/L2 procedures to acquire and maintain a set of TRP(s) and/or UE
beams that can be used for DL and UL transmission/reception, which include at least following
aspects:

Beam determination: for TRP(s) or UE to select of its own Tx/Rx beam(s).

Beam measurement: for TRP(s) or UE to measure characteristics of received beamformed signals

Beam reporting: for UE to report information of beamformed signal(s) based on beam measurement

Beam sweeping: operation of covering a spatial area, with beams transmitted and/or received during
a time interval in a predetermined way.

In broad way there are 3 procedure categories in which beam management is divided:-

At least network triggered aperiodic beam reporting is supported under P-1, P-2, and P-3 related operations.