Uplink transmit beam sweep
AssigneeApple Inc.
InventorsYakun Sun, Anatoliy S. Ioffe, Ehsan Haghani, Rohit U. Nabar
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Systems and methods related to partial beam correspondence may be used to address potential limitations of beamforming wireless networks. A user equipment electronic device and/or wireless network identifies a subset of available transmitter beams for the user equipment electronic device that are indicated as similar to a downlink reference signal received at the user equipment electronic device from a wireless network node. The user equipment electronic device sweeps the subset of available transmitter beams for communication with the wireless network node and uses a best beam from the sweep to communicate with the wireless network node.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- transmitting a downlink reference signal to a user equipment electronic device (UE) from a wireless network node;
- receiving, at the wireless network node and from the UE, transmissions using at least one beam of a subset of available transmitter beams corresponding to the downlink reference signal;
- selecting a selected beam of the subset of available transmitter beams via the wireless network node by transmitting an indication of the selection from the wireless network node to the UE;
- and
- receiving, at the wireless network node, a plurality of beams that includes the selected beam and additional beams between beams in the subset of available transmitter beams.
A system, comprising
- one or more antennas;
- and
- one or more transmitters coupled to the one or more antennas and that are configured to:
- transmit a reference signal to a user equipment electronic device (UE),
- based on the transmission of the reference signal, receive a coarse sweep of coarse transmitter beams from the UE, the coarse sweep including a pattern of the coarse transmitter beams that skips at least some transmitter beams,
- transmit a coarse selection signal selecting a coarse beam from the pattern,
- based on the coarse selection signal selecting the coarse beam, receive a refining sweep with interposing beams of the transmitter beams between the coarse transmitter beams,
- based on the refining sweep, transmitting a best beam signal to select a best beam from the interposing beams or the selected coarse beam, and
- communicate with the UE using the best beam.
An electronic device, comprising:
- a network interface of a wireless network node configured to communicate with a user equipment device (UE), the network interface being configured to
- transmit a transmitted downlink reference signal to the UE,
- based on the transmitted downlink reference signal, receive a pattern of possible transmitter beams from the UE, wherein the pattern comprises transmitter beams near a direction corresponding to the transmitted downlink reference signal,
- transmit a selection of at least one transmitter beam of the pattern to the UE, and
- use the at least one transmitter beam to communicate with the UE;
- and
- a processor that is coupled to the network interface and is configured to select the at least one transmitter beam of the pattern as the selection based at least in part on signal strength.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.