Solutions for UAV Communications in a Network with Receiver-Only mmWave 5G BS Antennas and in Other Networks

An apparatus, comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory including compute program code,
• the at least one memory and the computer program code configured, with the at least one processor, to cause the apparatus to perform operations comprising:
• determining spatial and antenna information of an unmanned aerial vehicle;
• determining, using at least the spatial and antenna information of the unmanned aerial vehicle, a set of candidate transmission-reception beam pairs, each p air between one of a set of one or more antenna panels in the unmanned aerial vehicle and one of a plurality of transmission-reception points, wherein at least one of the plurality of transmission-reception points comprises a receiver-only antenna panel that is oriented upward;
• configuring beam sweeping to be performed for the set of candidate transmission- reception beam pairs;
• and
• determining, based on results of the beam sweeping, a transmission-reception beam pair of the set of candidate transmission-reception beam pairs to be used for one or more uplink communications from the unmanned aerial vehicle to a determined transmission-reception point in the determined best transmission-reception beam pair.

An apparatus, comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory including compute program code, the at least one memory and the computer program code configured, with the at least one processor, to cause the apparatus to perform operations comprising:
• sending, by an unmanned aerial vehicle, spatial and antenna information toward a wireless communication network comprising a plurality of transmission-reception points;
• receiving configuration information to configure beam sweeping to be performed for a set of candidate transmission-reception beam pairs, each pair between one of a set of one or more antenna panels in the unmanned aerial vehicle and one of a set of antenna panels in the plurality of transmission-reception points;
• and
• performing the beam sweeping based on the received configuration information.