Device/UE-oriented beam recovery and maintenance mechanisms

A user equipment (UE) comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing programming for execution by the at least one processor, the programming including instructions to cause the UE to:
• determine a quality of one or more downlink signals from a base station;
• detect a beam failure event associated with one or more beams based on the quality of the one or more downlink signals;
• and
• transmit a media access control (MAC) control element (CE) transmission for beam failure recovery responsive to the beam failure event, wherein the MAC CE transmission includes an index associated with a resource that carries a signal indicating a new beam direction suitable for transmissions to the UE, the index being different from a beam index the index indicating a time-frequency resource that carries the signal.

A base station comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• a non-transitory computer readable storage medium storing programming for execution by the at least one processor, the programming including instructions to cause the base station to:
• transmit, a user equipment (UE), one or more downlink reference signals;
• and
• receive, from the UE, a media access control (MAC) control element (CE) transmission for beam failure recovery responsive to a beam failure event associated with one or more beams detected by the UE based on a quality of the one or more downlink signals, wherein the MAC CE transmission includes an index associated with a resource that carries a signal indicating a new beam direction suitable for transmissions to the UE, the index being different from a beam index the index indicating a time-frequency resource that carries the signal.