Method and apparatus for beam management in the unlicensed spectrum

A base station (BS) in a wireless communication system, the BS comprising:

• a processor configured to:
• identify a transmit (Tx) beam from a user equipment (UE) based on configuration information for each PUCCH resource in a set of PUCCH resources;
• and
• a transceiver operably connected to the processor, the transceiver configured to:
• transmit, to a UE, the configuration information identifying the set of PUCCH resources, wherein each of the set of PUCCH resources is identified via an identifier (ID) and information associated with the Tx beam;
• transmit, to the UE, scheduling information including a DCI format to schedule the UE with a transmission over a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH);
• and
• receive, from the UE, data over the PUSCH based on the scheduling information using a receive (Rx) beam that corresponds to the Tx beam applied to a transmission over the PUSCH by the UE.

A method of a user equipment (UE) in a wireless communication system, the method comprising:

• receiving, from a base station (BS), configuration information identifying a set of physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) resources, wherein each of the set of PUCCH resources is identified via an identifier (ID) and information associated with a transmit (Tx) beam;
• receiving, from the BS, a downlink control information (DCI) format to schedule a transmission over a physical uplink shared channel (PUSCH);
• identifying scheduling information for the transmission over the PUSCH based on the DCI format;
• identifying a Tx beam for the PUSCH based on the configuration information for the set of PUCCH resources;
• and
• transmitting, to the BS, data over the PUSCH based on the scheduling information using the Tx beam.