Beam Misalignment Detection for Wireless Communication System with Beamforming

A user equipment (UE), comprising:

• a transceiver that communicates with a base station to establish a connection with the base station over a dedicated beam;
• a beam monitor circuit that monitors the dedicated beam and determining a first beam quality, the beam monitor also monitors a reference beam and determining a second beam quality, wherein the reference beam is selected from a plurality of directional beams to be associated with the dedicated beam, and wherein each beam quality is associated with a signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) or a channel quality indicator (CQI) of the corresponding beam channel;
• and
• a beam misalignment detector circuit that determines a beam alignment status of the dedicated beam by comparing the first beam quality and the second beam quality, wherein the first beam quality is estimated by applying a first filtering window and the second beam quality is estimated by applying a second filtering window, wherein the first filtering window is equal or smaller than the second filtering window, and wherein the UE indicates to the base station by uplink signaling when the beam alignment status is not aligned.

A method, comprising:

• establishing a data connection with a user equipment (UE) by a base station over a dedicated beam;
• obtaining a first beam quality of the dedicated beam, wherein the first beam quality is associated with a signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) or a channel quality indicator (CQI) of the corresponding beam channel, and wherein the first beam quality is estimated by applying a first filtering window;
• obtaining a second beam quality of a reference beam, wherein the reference beam is selected from a plurality of directional beams to be associated with the dedicated beam;
• determining a beam alignment status of the dedicated beam by comparing the first beam quality and the second beam quality, wherein the second beam quality is estimated by applying a second filtering window, and wherein the first filtering window is equal or smaller than the second filtering window;
• and
• receiving an indication from the UE when the beam alignment status is not aligned.