CN110166094B

CN110166094B - Wireless communication device and beam scanning method

Info

Publication number: CN110166094B
Application number: CN201811601625.8A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 蔡秋薇; 高国浩; 梁正柏; 李修圣
Original assignee: MediaTek Inc
Current assignee: MediaTek Inc
Priority date: 2018-02-12
Filing date: 2018-12-26
Publication date: 2022-05-03
Anticipated expiration: 2038-12-26
Also published as: TWI694691B; TW201935863A; CN110166094A

Abstract

The invention discloses a beam scanning method executed by a wireless communication device, which comprises the following steps: wireless signals are transmitted or received by scanning beams in a non-sequential order. In this way, there may be instances in which the next beam may not be adjacent to the previous beam, thereby avoiding interference generated between adjacent beams and mitigating interference at the beam switching boundary. In the invention, the beams are scanned in a beam interleaving mode, thereby further reducing the intersymbol interference between orthogonal frequency division multiplexing.

Description

Wireless communication device and beam scanning method

Technical Field

The present invention relates to the field of communications technologies, and in particular, to a wireless communication device and a beam scanning method.

Background

The New Radio (NR, New Radio) technology of the fifth generation (5G) is an improvement of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology of the fourth generation (4G), and provides an extremely large data (transmission) speed and capacity for wireless broadband communication by using a higher and unlicensed frequency spectrum band (e.g., above 30GHz, colloquially referred to as millimeter Wave (mm Wave)). Due to the large path and penetration loss of millimeter wave wavelengths, a technique called "beamforming" has been adopted, which plays an important role in establishing and maintaining a robust communication link (link).

Beamforming typically requires one or more antenna arrays, each antenna array comprising multiple antennas. By appropriately setting the antenna weights defining the contribution of each antenna to a transmit or receive operation, the sensitivity of transmission/reception can be shaped to a particularly high value in a particular beam forming direction. By applying different antenna weights, different beam patterns (patterns) can be achieved, e.g. beams of different orientations (directive) can be employed sequentially.

During transmit (Tx) operations, beamforming may direct a signal to a receiver of interest. As such, during receive (Rx) operations, beamforming may provide high sensitivity in receiving signals originating from the transmitter of interest. Since the transmit power (power) can be focused anisotropically (e.g., to the solid angle of interest), beamforming can provide a better link budget (link budget) when compared to conventional practice that does not employ beamforming and relies more or less isotropically, due to the lower Tx power required and higher received signal power.

However, such techniques as described above face certain challenges. For example, during an initial (initial) access (access) phase of wireless communication, multi-beam (multi-beam) operations are often performed to scan all beams to select an appropriate beam pair (beam pair) for wireless transmission and reception. Typically, beam scanning is performed by sequentially pointing (pointing) directional beams to find the transceiver of interest. Specifically, during the initial Access phase of the 5G NR system, there is a case where consecutive Random Access Channel (RACH) occasions (acquisition) are allocated to a next generation Node B (gNB) to perform beam scanning for wireless reception. Fig. 1 is a diagram illustrating sequential RACH occasions assigned to the gNB in order for Rx beam scanning. Since the third Generation Partnership Project (3 GPP) has agreed, the ON-OFF transient period for a UE (User Equipment) is 5 microseconds for carrier frequencies above 24 GHz. As shown in FIG. 1, the 5 microsecond transient period for a UE may introduce significant interference to other UEs attempting to access the gNB in a preceding and following (sounding) RACH occasion.

Therefore, it would be desirable in the art to have a more robust beam scanning approach that can mitigate interference at beam switching boundaries.

Disclosure of Invention

In view of the above, the present invention provides a wireless communication device and a beam scanning method, which can mitigate interference at a beam switching boundary.

According to a first aspect of the present invention, there is disclosed a beam scanning method performed by a wireless communication device, comprising:

wireless signals are transmitted or received by scanning beams in a non-sequential order.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, there is disclosed a wireless communication device comprising:

a controller; and

a storage device operatively coupled to the controller;

wherein the controller is configured to execute program code stored in the memory device to perform operations comprising the beam scanning method as described above.

The beam scanning method provided by the invention comprises the following steps: wireless signals are transmitted or received by scanning beams in a non-sequential order. In this way, there may be instances in which the next beam may not be adjacent to the previous beam, thereby avoiding interference generated between adjacent beams and mitigating interference at the beam switching boundary. In the invention, the beams are scanned in a beam interleaving mode, thereby further reducing the intersymbol interference between orthogonal frequency division multiplexing.

These and other objects of the present invention will no doubt become obvious to those of ordinary skill in the art after having read the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments which are illustrated in the various drawing figures.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a diagram illustrating sequential RACH occasions sequentially assigned to the gNB for Rx beam scanning.

Fig. 2 is a block diagram of a wireless communication environment in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 3 is a block diagram illustrating the UE110 according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a cellular base station (cellular station) according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 5 is a diagram illustrating a directional sequence of beams according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a beam scanning method according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 7 is a block diagram illustrating beam scanning in a non-sequential order according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 8 is a block diagram illustrating beam scanning in a non-sequential order according to another embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram illustrating beam scanning in a non-sequential order according to another embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 10 is a diagram illustrating interference of beams according to an embodiment of the present invention.

Fig. 11 is a diagram illustrating interference of beams according to another embodiment of the present invention.

Detailed Description

Certain terms are used throughout the description and following claims to refer to particular components. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, manufacturers may refer to a component by different names. This document does not intend to distinguish between components that differ in name but not function. In the following description and claims, the terms "include" and "comprise" are used in an open-ended fashion, and thus should be interpreted to mean "include, but not limited to. Furthermore, the term "coupled" is intended to mean either an indirect or direct electrical connection. Thus, if one device couples to another device, that connection may be through a direct electrical connection, or through an indirect electrical connection via other devices and connections.

The following description is of the best contemplated mode of carrying out the invention. This description is made for the purpose of illustrating the general principles of the invention and is not meant to be limiting. The scope of the invention is determined by the appended claims.

The present invention will be described with respect to particular embodiments and with reference to certain drawings but the invention is not limited thereto but only by the claims. The drawings described are only schematic and are non-limiting. In the drawings, the size of some of the elements may be exaggerated and not drawn on scale for illustrative purposes. In the practice of the present invention, the dimensions and relative dimensions do not correspond to actual dimensions.

Fig. 2 is a block diagram of a wireless communication environment according to an embodiment of the present application. The wireless communication environment 100 includes a User Equipment (UE)110 and a 5G NR network 120, where the UE110 wirelessly connects to the 5G NR network 120 to obtain mobile services.

The UE110 may be a feature phone, a smart phone, a panel Personal Computer (PC), a laptop computer (laptop) or any Wireless communication device supporting Wireless technology (i.e., 5G NR technology) used by the 5G NR network 120 and/or Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) technology. In particular, wireless communication devices employ beamforming techniques for wireless transmission and/or reception.

The 5G NR Network 120 includes a Radio Access Network (RAN) 121 and a Next Generation Core Network (NG-CN) 122.

RAN 121 is responsible for processing radio signals, terminating radio protocols, and connecting UE110 with NG-CN 122. RAN 121 may include one or more gnbs supporting high frequency bands (e.g., above 24GHz), each of which may also include one or more Transmission Reception Points (TRPs), where each gNB or TRP may be referred to as a 5G cellular base station. Some of the gNB functions may be distributed over different TRPs, while other functions may be grouped together, leaving flexibility and scope for specific deployments to meet specific usage requirements. In particular, each gNB or TRP may employ beamforming techniques to generate one or more beams, each beam having a different beamforming direction for wireless transmission and/or reception.

NG-CN 122 is typically composed of various network functions, including Access and Mobility Functions (AMF), Session Management Functions (SMF), Policy Management functions (PCF), Policy Control functions (AF), Application functions (Application Function), Authentication Server functions (AUSF), User Plane Functions (UPF), and User Data Management (UDM), where each network Function may be implemented as a network element on dedicated hardware, or as an instance of software running on dedicated hardware, or as an instance of a virtualization Function on a suitable platform, such as cloud infrastructure.

The AMF provides UE-based authentication, authorization, mobility management (mobility) and the like. The SMF is responsible for session management and assigns an Internet Protocol (IP) address to the UE. The SMF also selects and controls the UPF for data transfer. If the UE has multiple sessions, different SMFs may be assigned to each session to manage each session separately, and different SMFs may provide different functionality in each session. The AF provides information about packet flow (packet flow) to the PCF responsible for policy control in order to support Quality of Service (QoS). Based on this information, the PCF determines policies regarding mobility and session management for the AMF and SMF to function properly. The AUSF stores the material for authentication of the UE, while the UDM stores the subscription material of the UE.

It should be noted that the 5G NR network 120 depicted in fig. 2 is for illustrative purposes only and is not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. The present invention may be applied to other wireless technologies. For example, the UE110 may be a wireless communication device that supports Wi-Fi technology and may be wirelessly connected to a Wi-Fi network that also supports beamforming technology for wirelessly transmitting and/or receiving to/from the UE 110.

Fig. 3 is a block diagram illustrating the UE110 according to an embodiment of the present invention. The UE110 includes a wireless transceiver 10, a controller 20, a storage device 30, a display device 40, and an Input/Output (I/O) device 50.

The wireless transceiver 10 is configured to perform wireless transmission to the RAN 121 (shown in fig. 2) and wireless reception from the RAN 121 (shown in fig. 2). Specifically, the wireless transceiver 10 includes a Radio Frequency (RF) device 11, a baseband processing device 12, and an antenna 13. The one or more antennas 13 may include one or more antennas for beamforming, among others. The baseband processing device 12 is configured to perform baseband signal processing and control communication between a subscriber identity card (not shown) and the RF device 11. The baseband processing device 12 may contain a number of hardware components to perform baseband signal processing, including Analog-to-Digital Conversion (ADC)/Digital-to-Analog Conversion (DAC), gain adjustment, modulation/demodulation, encoding/decoding, and so forth. The RF device 11 may receive an RF wireless signal via the antenna 13, convert the received RF wireless signal into a baseband signal, which is processed by the baseband processing device 12, or receive a baseband signal from the baseband processing device 12 and convert the received RF wireless signal into a baseband signal, which is to be transmitted later through the antenna 13. The RF device 11 may also contain a number of hard devices to perform radio frequency conversion. For example, the RF device 11 may include a mixer for multiplying a baseband signal with a carrier oscillating in a radio frequency of the supported wireless technology, wherein the radio frequency may be any radio frequency used for 5G NR technology or other radio frequencies (e.g., 30GHz 300GHz for mmWave), depending on the wireless technology used.

For further clarification, beamforming is a signal processing technique used in the antenna array 13 or implemented by the baseband processing device 12, or a signal processing technique used by a combination of the two for directional signal transmission/reception. In beamforming, a beam is formed by combining elements in a phased antenna array such that signals at a particular angle undergo constructive interference (constructive interference) and other signals undergo destructive interference (destructive interference). Different beams are formed simultaneously using multiple antenna arrays. While the number of beams in the time/frequency domain depends on the number of antenna arrays and the radio frequency used.

The controller 20 may be a general purpose Processor, a Micro Control Unit (MCU), an Application Processor, a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), an Application Processor (AP), an Application Processor, etc., the controller 20 including various circuits for providing data processing and computing functions, controls the wireless transceiver 10 to wirelessly communicate with the RAN 121, stores data (e.g., program code) to and retrieves (retrieving) data (e.g., program code) from the storage device 30, transmits a series of frame data (e.g., representing text messages, graphics, images, etc.) to the display device 40, and receives signals from the I/O device 50. In particular, the controller 20 coordinates the operation of the wireless transceiver 10, the memory device 30, the display device 40 and the I/O device 50 described above for performing the beam scanning method of the present invention.

In another embodiment, the controller 20 may be incorporated into the baseband processing apparatus 12 to function as a baseband processor.

The storage device 30 is a Non-transitory machine-readable storage medium including Memory, such as FLASH Memory or Non-Volatile Random Access Memory (NVRAM), or a magnetic storage device, such as a hard disk, or a magnetic tape, or an optical disk, or any combination of instructions and/or program code for storing the applications, communication protocols, and/or beam scanning methods of the present invention.

The Display device 40 may be a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD), a Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Display, an Electronic Paper Display (EPD), or the like, for providing a Display function. Alternatively, the display device 40 may further include one or more touch sensors disposed above the display device 40 or below the display device 40 for sensing a touch, contact or proximity of an object (e.g., a finger or a stylus).

The I/O device 50 may include one or more buttons, a keyboard, a mouse, a touch pad, a camera, a microphone and/or a speaker, etc., to serve as a Man-Machine Interface (MMI) for interacting with a user.

It should be understood that the components described in the embodiment of fig. 3 are for illustration purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present application. For example, UE110 may include more components, such as a power supply or a Global Positioning System (GPS) device, where the power supply may be a mobile/replaceable battery that provides power to all other components of UE110, and the GPS device may provide location information of UE110 to use some location-based service or application.

Fig. 4 is a block diagram illustrating a cellular base station according to an embodiment of the present invention. The cellular base station may be a 5G cellular base station, e.g. a gNB or a TRP. The cellular base station includes a wireless transceiver 60, a controller 70, a memory device 80 and a wired interface 90. The wireless communication device may also include a cellular base station or a 5G cellular base station, etc.

Wireless transceiver 60 is configured to perform wireless transmissions to UE110 and wireless receptions from UE 110. In particular, the wireless transceiver 60 comprises an RF device 61, a baseband processing device 62 and an antenna 63, wherein the antenna 63 may comprise one or more antennas for beamforming. The functions of the RF device 61, the baseband processing device 62 and the antenna 63 may be similar to the functions of the RF device 11, the baseband processing device 12 and the antenna 13 described in the embodiment of fig. 3. Therefore, for the sake of brevity, detailed description will not be repeated here.

The controller 70 may be a general purpose processor, MCU, application processor, DSP, AP, etc., and the controller 70 includes various circuitry to provide data processing and computing functionality, controls the wireless transceiver 60 for wireless communication with the UE110, stores data (e.g., program code) to and retrieves data (e.g., program code) from the storage device 80, and transmits/receives messages to/from other network entities (e.g., other cellular base stations in the RAN 121 or other network entities in the NG-CN 122) via the wired interface 90. In particular, the controller 70 coordinates the operation of the wireless transceiver 60, the memory device 80 and the wired interface 90 as described above to perform the scanning method of the present invention.

In another embodiment, the controller 70 may be incorporated into the baseband processing device 62 to function as a baseband processor.

As will be appreciated by those skilled in the art, the circuitry of the controllers 20 (as shown in fig. 3) and 70 will typically include transistors configured in a manner to control the operation of the circuitry in accordance with the functions and operations described herein. As will be further appreciated, the particular structure or interconnection of the transistors will typically be determined by a compiler, such as a Register Transfer Language (RTL) compiler. An RTL compiler may be run by a processor on a script that closely resembles assembly language code to compile the script into a form for laying out or manufacturing the final circuit. Indeed, RTL is known for its role and use in facilitating the design of electronic and digital systems.

The storage device 80 may be a memory, such as FLASH memory or NVRAM, or a magnetic storage device, such as a hard disk or magnetic tape, or an optical disk, or any combination of instructions and/or program code for storing an application, a communication protocol, and/or a beam scanning method of the present application.

The wired interface 90 is responsible for providing wired communications with other network entities, such as other cellular base stations in the RAN 121 or other network entities in the NG-CN 122. The wired interface 90 may include a cable Modem, an Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) Modem, a Fiber Optic Modem (FOM), and/or an ethernet network interface.

It should be understood that the components described in the embodiment of FIG. 4 are for illustration purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present application. For example, the cellular base station may also include other functional devices such as a display device (e.g., LCD, LED display, EPD, etc.), I/O devices (e.g., buttons, keyboard, mouse, touch pad, camera, microphone, speakers, etc.), and/or a power supply, etc.

Fig. 5 is a diagram illustrating a directional sequence of beams according to an embodiment of the present invention. As shown in fig. 5, there are 5 beams in the sequence, represented by numbers 0 to 4, and generated sequentially at different times. For example, beam 0 is generated in a first time interval, beam 1 is generated in a second time interval, and so on. In particular, all beams are generated with the same beamwidth, but the direction of the generated beam is rotated counterclockwise later. Note that conventionally, beam scanning is performed in the order of a sequence of directions (i.e., beam 0 is scanned first, and then beam 1, beam 2, beam 3, and beam 4 are scanned in sequence). That is, FIG. 5 shows a schematic diagram of beam scanning of all beams in sequential order.

Fig. 6 is a flowchart illustrating a beam scanning method according to an embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, the beam scanning method may be applied to a wireless communication device, such as UE110 (shown in fig. 2) or a 5G cellular base station or Wi-Fi router, for either transmit or receive operations. First, the wireless communication apparatus performs wireless transmission or reception by scanning beams in a non-sequential order (step S610), and the method ends. In particular, beams are generated in different time intervals, e.g., different RACH occasions allocated in the time domain, and the non-sequential order indicates that some or all beams do not follow neighboring ones of the beams. In other words, unlike the conventional method, the beams are scanned in a beam-interleaving (beam-interleaving) manner in the present invention, thereby further reducing inter-OFDM-symbol (inter-OFDM) interference between OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). For example, the present embodiment has a first time interval and a second time interval, and the first time interval and the second time interval are adjacent (that is, the next time interval of the first time interval is the second time interval, or the next time interval of the second time interval is the first time interval), wherein the first time interval scans the first beam, and the second time interval scans the second beam. In the beam scanning method in this embodiment, at least one of the first beam and the second beam is not adjacent, that is, the first beam and the second beam are separated by another beam (for example, a third beam, or a third beam and a fourth beam, etc.). Of course, the beam scanning method in the present invention does not mean that all the first beams and the second beams are not adjacent, and at least one of the cases in the present invention is that the first beam (scanned in a first time interval) is not adjacent to the second beam (scanned in a second time interval), and another first beam (scanned in another first time interval) may be adjacent to another second beam (scanned in another second time interval) in the present invention, and the following description on fig. 7, fig. 8 and fig. 9 may be referred to specifically.

During the beam scanning procedure, the wireless communication device may determine whether the interference of the boundary between the current beam and the adjacent beam is greater than a predetermined threshold, and if so, may preferably select the non-adjacent beam as the next beam. Otherwise, an adjacent beam or a non-adjacent beam may be selected as the next beam. In another embodiment, the wireless communication device may separately calculate interference for the boundary between the current beam and each of the remaining beams and select one of the remaining beams with the least interference as the next beam. For example, the area of the overlapping region of each beam with other beams may be calculated, and the predetermined threshold may be set to be 10% of the total area of the beams; that is, if the area of the overlapping region of the beam with any other beam is larger than 10% of the total area of the beams, the beam is not selected as the next beam, and the area of the other overlapping region is selected to be smaller. The predetermined threshold may be other values, for example, the predetermined threshold may be set to have an area of the overlapping area equal to 7%, 8%, 11%, 16%, 22%, 30% of the total area of the beam, and the predetermined threshold may be set freely according to the requirement.

In one embodiment, the wireless transmission in step S610 may refer to the UE transmitting multiple Physical Random Access Channel (PRACH) signals in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order.

In another embodiment, the wireless transmission in step S610 may refer to the UE transmitting multiple Sounding Reference Signals (SRS) in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order. In addition, the UE may also transmit the physical random access channel signal and the sounding reference signal at different time intervals (e.g., consecutive time slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order; that is, during the same time period, the UE may transmit either one of the physical random access channel signal and the sounding reference signal or both.

In another embodiment, the wireless transmission in step S610 may refer to the 5G cellular base station (e.g., gNB or TRP) transmitting a Synchronization Signal Block (SSB) and Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH) information in a non-sequential order using different beams in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive time slots).

In another embodiment, the wireless transmission in step S610 may refer to the 5G cellular base station (e.g., the gNB or the TRP) transmitting the Channel State Information Reference Signal (CSI-RS) in a non-sequential order using different beams in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive time slots). Furthermore, the 5G cellular base station may also transmit the synchronization signal blocks, the physical broadcast channel information and the channel state information reference signals at different time intervals (e.g., consecutive time slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order; that is, the 5G cellular base station may select one or both of the synchronization signal block and the physical broadcast channel information and the channel state information to be transmitted during the same time period.

In one embodiment, the wireless reception in step S610 may refer to a 5G cellular base station (e.g., gNB or TRP) receiving multiple PRACH signals in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order.

In another embodiment, the wireless reception in step S610 may refer to a 5G cellular base station (e.g., a gNB or a TRP) receiving multiple Physical Uplink Shared Channel (PUSCH) signals in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order.

In another embodiment, the wireless reception in step S610 may refer to a 5G cellular base station (e.g., a gNB or a TRP) receiving a plurality of Physical Uplink Control Channel (PUCCH) signals in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order. In addition, the wireless reception in step S610 may also refer to the 5G cellular base station (e.g., the gNB or the TRP) receiving multiple SRSs in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order.

In another embodiment, the wireless reception in step S610 may refer to the 5G cellular base station (e.g., gNB or TRP) receiving different types of signals (e.g., including at least two of PRACH signal, SRS, PUCCH signal and PUSCH signal) in different time intervals (e.g., consecutive slots) using different beams in a non-sequential order. In another embodiment, the wireless receiving in step S610 may refer to the wireless communication device transmitting or receiving signals using different beams in a non-sequential order for each symbol time interval (e.g., each time the wireless communication device transmits or receives a symbol, the wireless communication device uses a different beam and the beams switch in a non-sequential order).

FIG. 7 is a block diagram illustrating beam scanning in a non-sequential order according to an embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, a sequence of 5 beams (indicated by numbers 0 to 4) is generated in different time intervals for wireless transmission or reception.

In a first time interval, a beam 0 is generated and scanned, as shown in fig. 7. In a second time interval, a beam 2 is generated and scanned. In a third time interval, a beam 4 is generated and scanned. In a fourth time interval, beam 1 is generated and scanned. Finally, in a fifth time interval, a beam 3 is generated and scanned. That is, FIG. 7 shows a schematic diagram of beam scanning in a non-sequential order for all beams.

It should be noted that in the present invention, regardless of the directional sequence of the beams, the beam scanning is performed in a non-sequential order, i.e., in a beam-interleaved manner. With the particular arrangement of non-sequential order as shown in fig. 7, none of the beams follows the adjacent ones of the beams. Further in concert with the above description of fig. 6, in this embodiment there is a first time interval and a second time interval, the first time interval and the second time interval being contiguous, wherein the first time interval is scanned for the first beam and the second time interval is scanned for the second beam. In the beam scanning method of the embodiment shown in fig. 7, the first beam (e.g., beam 0 scanned in the first time interval) and the second beam (e.g., beam 2 scanned in the second time interval) are not adjacent to each other, that is, the first beam (e.g., beam 0) and the second beam (e.g., beam 2) are separated by another beam (e.g., beam 1); of course, specifically, beam 2 may not be adjacent to beam 4, with beam 3 therebetween; beam 4 is not adjacent to beam 1, with

beams

2 and 3 between them; beam 1 is not adjacent to beam 3 with beam 2 therebetween.

FIG. 8 is a block diagram illustrating beam scanning in a non-sequential order according to another embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, a sequence of 5 beams (indicated by numbers 0 to 4) is generated in different time intervals for wireless transmission or reception.

In a first time interval, a beam 0 is generated and scanned, as shown in fig. 8. In a second time interval, a beam 2 is generated and scanned. In a third time interval, a beam 4 is generated and scanned. In a fourth time interval, beam 3 (i.e., the adjacent beam to the previous beam (beam 4)) is generated and scanned. Finally, in a fifth time interval, beam 1 is generated and scanned. That is, FIG. 8 illustrates a partial beam scanning in a non-sequential order, where after beam 4 is generated, the next beam (i.e., beam 3) follows beam 4, and thus beam scanning in a sequential order is performed from beam 4 to beam 3, while the remaining beams (e.g., beam 2, beam 4, beam 1) do not follow adjacent beams (e.g., the previous beam of beam 2 is beam 0, the previous beam of beam 4 is beam 2, the previous beam of beam 1 is beam 3, and it is noted that the first beam of beam 0, and thus beam 0 does not have the previous beam in this case), i.e., the remaining beams are beam scanning in a non-sequential order.

It should be noted that in the present invention, regardless of the directional sequence of the beams, the beam scanning is performed in a non-sequential order, i.e., in a beam-interleaved manner. With the particular arrangement of non-sequential order as shown in fig. 8, the partial beams do not follow adjacent ones of the beams. In addition, in this embodiment, the order of beam scanning may also be a transformation of 0-2-3-4-1 or 0-1-3-2-4 or the like. That is, the non-sequential order in this embodiment may be an adjacent beam indicating that some or all of the beams do not follow the corresponding beam. For example, in the embodiment of fig. 7, all beams do not follow adjacent beams to the corresponding beam, e.g., beam 0 does not follow beam 1 (beam 1 is an adjacent beam to beam 0), beam 1 does not follow beams 0 or 2 (

beam

0 or 2 is an adjacent beam to beam 1, and the like, below), beam 2 does not follow

beams

1 or 3, beam 3 does not follow

beams

2 or 4, and beam 4 does not follow beam 3. For example, in the embodiment of fig. 8, some of the beams do not follow adjacent beams of the corresponding beam, e.g., beam 0 does not follow beam 1 (beam 1 is an adjacent beam of beam 0), beam 1 does not follow beam 0 or 2 (

beam

0 or 2 is an adjacent beam of beam 1, and the other is similar), beam 2 does not follow

beam

1 or 3, whereas beam 3 follows beam 4 (beam 3 is a following beam 2), beam 4 does not follow beam 3 but beam 3 is the next beam of beam 4.

Further, in concert with the above description of fig. 6, in the present embodiment, there are first and second time intervals, the first and second time intervals being contiguous, wherein the first time interval is during which the first beam is scanned and the second time interval is during which the second beam is scanned. In the beam scanning method of the embodiment shown in fig. 8, the first beam (e.g., beam 0 scanned in the first time interval) and the second beam (e.g., beam 2 scanned in the second time interval) are not adjacent to each other, that is, the first beam (e.g., beam 0) and the second beam (e.g., beam 2) are separated by another beam (e.g., beam 1); of course, specifically, beam 2 may not be adjacent to beam 4, with beam 3 therebetween; beam 3 is not adjacent to beam 1, with beam 2 in between; however, in the example shown in fig. 8, there is a case where the beam 4 (another first beam (beam 4) scanned in another first time interval (third time interval)) is adjacent to the beam 3 (another second beam (beam 3) scanned in another second time interval (fourth time interval)), and therefore, there may be a case where the beams scanned in the two adjacent time intervals are adjacent or not adjacent to each other.

FIG. 9 is a block diagram illustrating beam scanning in a non-sequential order according to another embodiment of the present invention. In this embodiment, a sequence of 4 beams (indicated by numbers 0 to 3) is generated in different time intervals for wireless transmission or reception.

In a first time interval, a beam 0 is generated and scanned, as shown in fig. 9. In a second time interval, a beam 2 is generated and scanned. In a third time interval, beam 1 (i.e., the adjacent beam to the previous beam (beam 2)) is generated and scanned. Finally, in a fourth time interval, the beam 3 is generated and scanned. Therefore, in this embodiment, all beams may be selected not to follow the adjacent beams, and certainly, some beams may not follow the adjacent beams, and some beams may follow the adjacent beams. That is, FIG. 9 shows a schematic diagram of beam scanning of a portion of beams in a non-sequential order, where after beam 2 is generated, the next beam (i.e., beam 1) follows beam 2, and thus beam scanning proceeds in a sequential order from beam 2 to beam 1, while the remaining beams (e.g., beam 2, beam 3) do not follow adjacent beams (e.g., the previous beam of beam 2 is Beam 0, the previous beam of beam 3 is Beam 1, and it is noted that beam 0 is the first beam of Beam 0, and thus beam 0 does not have a previous beam in this case), i.e., the remaining beams are beam scanning in a non-sequential order.

It should be noted that in the present invention, regardless of the directional sequence of the beams, the beam scanning is performed in a non-sequential order, i.e., in a beam-interleaved manner. With the particular arrangement of non-sequential order as shown in fig. 9, the partial beams do not follow adjacent ones of the beams. Thus, according to the examples of fig. 8 and 9, at least one beam of the beam sweep of the present invention does not follow the adjacent beam of this beam. That is, the invention refers to scanning beams in a non-sequential order for transmitting or receiving wireless signals, which means that at least one beam scans beams in a non-sequential order for transmitting or receiving wireless signals. Of course, two or more beams may be scanned in a non-sequential order to transmit or receive wireless signals. Further, for example, by the time there are only three beams, such as in the example of fig. 8 or 9 described above, with only beam 0, beam 1, and beam 2, the order of beam scanning may be beam 0, then beam 2, and finally beam 1, where beam 2 does not follow beam 0, but beam 1 follows beam 2.

As described above, before or during the beam scanning, the wireless communication device may select a non-adjacent beam as the next beam, or may determine whether interference at a boundary between the current beam and the adjacent beam is greater than a predetermined threshold. If so, a non-adjacent beam may preferably be selected as the next beam. Otherwise, an adjacent beam or a non-adjacent beam may be selected as the next beam. In this embodiment, reference may be made to fig. 10 and fig. 11 to describe in detail, where fig. 10 is a schematic diagram illustrating interference of a beam according to an embodiment of the present invention, and fig. 11 is a schematic diagram illustrating interference of a beam according to another embodiment of the present invention. As shown in fig. 10, beam 0 has an overlap region R01 with beam 1, beam 1 has an overlap region R12 with beam 2, and beam 2 has an overlap region R23 with beam 3. In this embodiment, the area of the overlapping region between a beam and another beam may be used to represent the interference between the beam and another beam. For example, the amount of interference between beam 0 and beam 1 may be measured or scaled using the size of the area of overlap region R01; the amount of interference between beam 1 and beam 2 may be measured or scaled using the size of the area of overlap region R12; the amount of interference between beam 2 and beam 3 may be measured or scaled using the size of the area of overlap region R23. For example, in this embodiment, when the interference between the beam (e.g., beam 2) and another beam (e.g., beam 3) is detected to just reach the predetermined threshold, the area of the overlap region (e.g., R23) can be calculated, resulting in an area threshold (e.g., St) corresponding to the predetermined threshold. Thus, if the area of the overlapping area between a beam and another beam exceeds the area threshold St, i.e. the interference between the beam and another beam is considered to be greater than a predetermined threshold, one of the two beams may not be selected as the beam next to the other. For example, when the area of the overlap region R01 between beam 0 and beam 1 is greater than the area threshold St (i.e., indicating that the interference between beam 0 and beam 1 is greater than the predetermined threshold), in the case where beam 0 is the current beam, the next beam will not select beam 1, and either beam 2 or beam 3 may be selected (e.g., beam 2 may be selected in a sequential order). Of course, when the area of the overlap region R01 between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is less than or equal to the area threshold (i.e. it means that the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is less than or equal to the predetermined threshold), the next beam can select the beam 1 if the beam 0 is the current beam, and of course, the beam 2 or the beam 3 can be selected (the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 2 or the beam 3 is less, and the beam 2 can be selected in a sequential order). In the present embodiment, there is no overlap between the beam 0 and the beam 2 or the beam 3, and therefore, the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 2 or the beam 3 can be considered to be 0 or very small. In addition, in the present embodiment, when the interference between the detected beam (e.g. beam 2) and another beam (e.g. beam 3) just reaches the predetermined threshold value, i.e., the ratio of the area of the overlap region (e.g., R23) to the total area of the entire beam (e.g., the total area of beam 2, where the total area of beam 2 may be equal to the total area of beam 1, beam 0, and beam 3) may be calculated, resulting in an area percentage threshold (e.g., t) corresponding to the predetermined threshold, the area percentage threshold t is, for example, 8%, then for example when the proportion of the overlap region R01 in the total area of the whole beam 0 is greater than 8%, that is, the interference between beam 0 and beam 1 is considered to exceed the predetermined threshold, so that the next beam will not select beam 1 when the current beam is beam 0 (or the next beam will not select beam 0 when the current beam is beam 1). Of course, when the occupation ratio of the overlap region R01 in the total area of the entire beam 0 is less than or equal to 8% (i.e., it means that the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is less than or equal to the predetermined threshold), the beam 1 may be selected as the next beam (of course, the beam 2 or the beam 3 may be selected as the next beam). Furthermore, the percentage threshold t may also be, for example, 5%, 9%, 10%, 11%, 16%, 22%, 35%, etc., and may be set freely as required. In this embodiment, the occupation ratio of the overlapping region R12 between the beam 1 and the beam 2 in the total area of the whole beam 1 (or the beam 2) may be smaller (for example, smaller than the occupation ratio of the overlapping region R01 in the total area of the whole beam 0 (or the beam 1)), so that the occupation ratio of the overlapping region R12 in the total area of the whole beam 1 (or the beam 2) may be smaller than the area percentage threshold t (for example, smaller than or equal to 8%), so if the current beam is the beam 1, the beam 2 may be selected as the next beam (if the current beam is the beam 2, the beam 1 may be selected as the next beam); of course, beam 3 may be selected as the next beam so that interference is less. In addition, in this embodiment, when it is detected that the interference between the beam (e.g., beam 2) and another beam (e.g., beam 3) just reaches the predetermined threshold, a remaining area obtained by subtracting the area of the overlapping region (e.g., R23) from the total area of the beams (e.g., the total area of beams 2 or 3) may be calculated as a remaining area threshold (e.g., Sn, where Sn + St may be equal to the total area of

beams

0, 1, 2, or 3) corresponding to the predetermined threshold, or a remaining area percentage of the remaining area occupying the total area of the beams (e.g., the total area of beams 2 or 3) corresponding to the predetermined threshold may be calculated as a remaining area percentage threshold (e.g., t') corresponding to the predetermined threshold. When the remaining area of the total area of beam 0 (or beam 1) minus the area of overlap region R01 is less than the remaining area threshold, then the interference between beam 0 and beam 1 may be considered to exceed (or be greater than) the predetermined threshold, so that the next beam will not select beam 1 when the current beam is beam 0 (or beam 0 when the current beam is beam 1). Of course, when the remaining area obtained by subtracting the area of the overlap region R01 from the total area of the beam 0 (or the beam 1) is greater than or equal to the remaining area threshold, it may be considered that the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 1 does not exceed (or is less than or equal to) the predetermined threshold, and therefore, when the current beam is the beam 0, the next beam may be selected as the beam 1. In this embodiment, the interference between other beams may also be determined in a similar manner as described above (for example, whether the areas of the overlapping regions R12 and R23 are greater than the area threshold, or whether the occupied percentage is greater than the area percentage threshold, etc.), and details thereof are not repeated herein.

In addition, in this embodiment, it may also be determined whether the interference between the beams is greater than the predetermined threshold in other manners. For example, as shown in fig. 11, when the interference between the beam (e.g., beam 2) and the other beam (e.g., beam 3) is detected to just reach the predetermined threshold, the span angle (span angle) between the beam (e.g., beam 2) and the other beam (e.g., beam 3) can be calculated, so as to obtain the span angle threshold (e.g., θ t) corresponding to the predetermined threshold. Thus, if the span angle between a beam and another beam exceeds the span angle threshold θ t, the interference between the beam and another beam is considered to be greater than the predetermined threshold, and then one of the two beams may not be selected as the beam next to the other beam. For example, when the span angle θ 1 between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is greater than the span angle threshold θ t (i.e., indicating that the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is greater than the predetermined threshold), in the case that the beam 0 is the current beam, the next beam will not select the beam 1, and either the beam 2 or the beam 3 may be selected (e.g., the beams 2 may be selected in a sequential order). Of course, when the span angle threshold θ 1 between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is smaller than or equal to the span angle threshold θ t (i.e. it means that the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is smaller than or equal to the predetermined threshold), in the case that the beam 0 is the current beam, the situation is thatOne beam may select beam 1, but beam 2 or beam 3 may be selected (beam 0 interferes less with beam 2 or beam 3, and beam 2 may be selected in a sequential order). In addition, in this embodiment, for example, when the span angle θ 2 between the beam 1 and the beam 2 is small, for example, smaller than or equal to the span angle threshold θ t (that is, it indicates that the interference between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is smaller than or equal to a predetermined threshold), in the case that the beam 1 is the current beam, the next beam may select the beam 2 (of course, the beam 3 may also be selected); or in the case that beam 2 is the current beam, the next beam may be selected as beam 1 (although beam 0 may be selected). In addition, the calculation manner of the span angle will be described in detail in this embodiment, as shown in fig. 11, there are two intersection points P01 and P01 ' between the beam 0 and the beam 1, and the intersection points P01 and P01 ' are connected to obtain a line segment P01P01 '; then, starting from P01, take the segment P01P01

At point P0 (i.e. the length of segment P01P0 is the length of segment P01P 01')

) Then, a straight line perpendicular to the line segment P01P 01' is drawn at a point P0 and intersects with the beam 1 and the beam 0 respectively to obtain intersection points P1 and P2 respectively; wherein the intersection points P1 and P2 may represent values of signal strength from the line segment P01P 01' to both sides, for example, -3dB to +3 dB; therefore, the span angle θ 1 between the beam 0 and the beam 1 is the angle P1P01P2 (i.e., < P1P01P 2). Beam 1 and beam 2 have two intersection points P12 and P12' between them; beam 2 and beam 3 have two intersection points P23 and P23' between them; wherein the intersection points P01, P12 and P23 are more concentrated (or closer to each other) relative to the intersection points P01 ', P12 ' and P23 '. Following a similar procedure to that described above, starting from P12, the segment P12P 12' is taken

A point P3 is defined as a straight line perpendicular to the line segment P12P 12' by taking a point P3, and an intersection point P4 with the beam 2 and an intersection point P5 with the beam 1 are respectively obtained; and starting from P23, taking the segment P23P23

The point P6 is a straight line perpendicular to the line segment P23P 23' and defined by the point P6, which respectively defines an intersection point P7 with the beam 3 and an intersection point P8 with the beam 2. Therefore, the span angle θ 2 between the beam 1 and the beam 2 is the angle P4P12P5 (i.e., < P4P12P5), and the span angle θ 3 between the beam 2 and the beam 3 is the angle P7P23P8 (i.e., < P7P23P 8). The above-mentioned segment P01P01 ' (or P12P12 ', P23P23 ') is obtained from the intersection point P01 (or P12, P23)

The intersection points P1 and P2 (or P4 and P5, P7 and P8) obtained by making the point P0 (or P3 and P6) as a vertical line represent values of signal intensity of the segment P01P01 'from-3 dB to +3dB to both sides, which is only an example, and those skilled in the art can understand that other values (for example, P12P 12' and P23P23 ') of the segment P01P 01' (or P12P12 'and P23P 23') can be obtained by taking the intersection point P01 as a starting point

1/2, etc.) to obtain intersection points with the beam 1 and the beam 0, and these intersection points represent values of other signal strengths, which can be freely selected according to actual needs or angles convenient for calculation, without limitation in the present invention. That is, the span angle may be: after a point is obtained by taking a value on a line segment formed by connecting two points of two intersected beams, the point is taken as an intersection point which is perpendicular to the line segment and is respectively connected with the two beams, and the two intersection points are respectively connected with an intersection point (the intersection point is an intersection point which is more gathered between the beams) of the two beams to form an angle (a vertex angle), wherein the value (such as the value) on the line segment is taken

1/2, etc.) can be freely set according to the requirements, for example, the value on the line segment can be determined according to the preset value of the signal strength (for example, -3dB to +3dB, or other values). Illustratively, in the present embodiment, the span angle θ 2 between the beam 1 and the beam 2 is small, that is, the waveInterference between beam 1 and beam 2 is small; the span angle θ 3 between the beam 2 and the beam 3 is slightly larger, i.e. the interference between the beam 2 and the beam 3 is slightly larger; while the span angle between beam 0 and beam 1 is larger, i.e., the interference between beam 0 and beam 1 is larger (e.g., larger than the interference between beam 2 and beam 3). In addition, in this embodiment, it may also be determined whether the interference between the beams is greater than the predetermined threshold in other manners. For example, the two end points closer to the two short axis end points of the two beams form the length of a line segment, such as the length of the line segment P1P2 (i.e., the length of the line segment formed after P1 is connected to P2), the length of the line segment P4P5, and the length of the line segment P7P 8; or the length of the segment P01P01 ', the length of the segment P12P12 ', the length of the segment P23P23 ', etc. From the above description, those skilled in the art can appreciate that there are many different implementations of determining whether the interference between a beam and another beam is greater than the predetermined threshold, and the above description is only exemplary and not limiting of the present invention.

In view of the foregoing embodiments, it should be understood that, in the present invention, at least one of the beams may not be adjacent to the previous beam (i.e., the next beam may be separated from the previous beam by at least one beam), so as to avoid interference generated between adjacent beams and mitigate interference at the beam switching boundary. The present invention advantageously mitigates interference at beam switching boundaries by configuring the beams to be scanned in a non-sequential order. In particular, the non-sequential order indicates that some or all of the beams do not follow adjacent ones of the beams. Of course, in the present invention, it may also be determined whether the next beam is an adjacent beam to the current beam by detecting whether interference of a boundary between the current beam and the adjacent beam is greater than a predetermined threshold. For example, in fig. 11, when the span angle between the beam 0 and its adjacent beam 1 is larger than a predetermined threshold, in order to avoid interference between adjacent beams, a non-adjacent beam should be selected as the next transmission or reception beam. Although examples of non-sequential orders are provided in fig. 7-9, it should also be understood that these examples are for illustrative purposes only and are not intended to limit the scope of the present invention. For example, beam scanning may be performed according to a sequence of directions as shown in fig. 5. I.e. beam scanning may be performed by switching between the different embodiments depicted in fig. 5 and fig. 7 to 9.

Use of ordinal terms such as "first," "second," etc., in the claims to modify a claim element does not by itself connote any priority, precedence, or order of one claim element over another or the temporal order in which acts of a method are performed. But are used merely as labels to distinguish one claim element having a particular name from another element having a same name (but for using ordinal terms) to distinguish the claim elements.

Those skilled in the art will readily observe that numerous modifications and variations of the apparatus and method may be made while maintaining the teachings of the invention. Accordingly, the above disclosure should be construed as limited only by the metes and bounds of the appended claims.

Claims

1. A method of beam scanning performed by a wireless communication device, comprising:

transmitting or receiving wireless signals by scanning beams in a non-sequential order;

wherein a first beam and at least one second beam adjacent to the first beam are included, the non-sequential order indicating that one of the first beam and the second beam does not follow the other when interference between the first beam and the second beam is greater than a predetermined threshold.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the non-sequential order indicates that some or all beams do not follow neighboring beams of a corresponding beam.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein when an area of an overlapping region between the first beam and the second beam is greater than an area threshold, then interference between the first beam and the second beam is greater than a predetermined threshold.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein when a span angle between the first beam and the second beam is greater than a span angle threshold, then interference between the first beam and the second beam is greater than a predetermined threshold.

5. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the wireless signal transmitted comprises a plurality of physical random access channel signals in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G user device.

6. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the transmitted wireless signal comprises a plurality of sounding reference signals in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G user device.

7. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the transmitted wireless signals comprise synchronization signal blocks and physical broadcast channel information in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G cellular base station.

8. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the transmitted wireless signal comprises a plurality of channel state information reference signals in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G cellular base station.

9. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the received wireless signals comprise a plurality of physical random access channel signals in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G cellular base station.

10. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the received wireless signal comprises a plurality of physical uplink shared channel signals in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G cellular base station.

11. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the received wireless signals comprise a plurality of physical uplink control channel signals in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G cellular base station.

12. The beam scanning method of claim 1, wherein the received wireless signals comprise at least two of the received physical random access channel signal, sounding reference signal, physical uplink control channel signal and physical uplink shared channel signal in different time intervals when the wireless communication device is configured as a 5G cellular base station.

13. A wireless communication device, comprising:

a controller; and

a storage device operatively coupled to the controller;

wherein the controller is configured to execute program code stored in the memory device to perform the operations of any of claims 1-12.