Apparatus and method for fast beam discovery

An apparatus, comprising circuitry configured to:

• receive reference signals at a user equipment (UE) from a plurality of multi-armed beams of a base station (BS), each multi-armed beam including a plurality of BS narrow beams that each include an identifier and are configured to transmit signals at different angular sectors;
• measure a signal quality of each of the plurality of multi-armed beams;
• determine a signal quality of each BS narrow beam based on at least the measured signal quality of the plurality of multi-armed beams and the respective BS narrow beam identifiers;
• and
• transmit a reporting signal including at least an index of the signal quality corresponding to the BS narrow beams.

A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing instructions that, when executed by a processor, cause the processor to perform a method, the method comprising:

• receiving reference signals at a user equipment (UE) from a plurality of multi-armed beams of a base station (BS), each multi-armed beam including a plurality of BS narrow beams that each include an identifier and are configured to transmit signals at different angular sectors;
• measuring a signal quality of each of the plurality of multi-armed beams;
• determining a signal quality of each BS narrow beam based on at least the measured signal quality of the plurality of multi-armed beams and the respective BS narrow beam identifiers;
• and
• transmitting a reporting signal including at least an index of the signal quality corresponding to the BS narrow beams.