Methods and apparatuses for performing new radio cell selection/re-selection

A user equipment, UE, comprising:

• a radio transceiver;
• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor and the radio transceiver, and storing program code that when executed by the at least one processor causes the at least one processor to perform operations comprising:
• measuring quality of beams detected from each of the cells;
• for each of the cells, deriving cell quality based on the quality of the beams from the cell;
• for each of the cells, counting a number of good beams among the beams from the cell based on a cell quality threshold received via system information, wherein a detected beam is counted as a good beam among the beams of the cell responsive to determining at least one of:
• a first difference in quality between the detected beam and another beam having the highest quality in the same cell as the detected beam is smaller than a first relative threshold defined based on the cell quality threshold;
• a second difference in quality between the detected beam and another beam having the highest quality in a serving cell of the UE is smaller than a second relative threshold defined based on the cell quality threshold;
• and a third difference in quality between the detected beam and cell quality of a serving cell of the same cell as the detected beam is smaller than a third relative threshold defined based on the cell quality threshold;
• ranking the cells in a ranking list relative to each other based on the number of good beams associated with respective ones of the cells and the cell quality;
• and
• controlling, based on the ranking of the cells in the ranking list and based on conditions of the number of good beams and the cell quality, selection and/or re-selection of a cell among the cells that is to be used for radio communications by the UE, wherein the controlling comprises:
• responsive to identifying that a neighboring cell is better ranked than a serving cell of the UE while the UE is camped, initiating cell re-selection to the neighboring cell responsive to when the neighboring cell is determined to satisfy at least one defined cell re-selection condition within a defined configurable time window.