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A Mobility Analysis of UE-Side Beamforming for Multi-Panel User Equipment with Hand Blockage

Subhyal Bin Iqbal, Salman Nadaf, Umur Karabulut, Philipp Schulz, Anna Prado, Gerhard P. Fettweis, Wolfgang Kellerer

TL;DR

This work addresses mobility in FR2 with hand blockage by evaluating multi-panel UEs (MPUEs) that enable UE-side Rx-beamforming. It introduces a system-level framework combining inter-cell handovers, Tx beam management, and MPUE Rx-beamforming (MPUE-A3), and analyzes three practical hand grips to quantify mobility degradation and switching costs. The study uncovers a strong grip-dependent impact on mobility, with the DHG grip causing up to a 43% increase in mobility failures, and demonstrates that panel and Rx-beam switching offsets can dramatically reduce switching activity (and thus UE power) with limited mobility impact. The findings support design strategies that trade-off reduced switching for maintained mobility, informing MPUE hardware and protocol choices for efficient FR2 5G deployments.

Abstract

The hand blockage effect of the human hand around the user equipment (UE) is too considerable to be ignored in frequency range 2 (FR2). This adds another layer of complexity to the link budget design in FR2 for 5G networks, which already suffer from high path and diffraction loss. More recently, multipanel UEs (MPUEs) have been proposed as a way to address this problem, whereby multiple distinct antenna panels are integrated into the UE body as a way to leverage gains from antenna directivity. MPUEs also enhance the Rx-beamforming gain because it is now subject to each individual antenna panel. In this paper, the mobility performance of hand blockage induced by three practical hand grips is analyzed in a system-level simulation, where in each grip both the UE orientation and the hand positioning around the UE is different. It is seen that each hand grip has a significant impact on mobility performance of the network, where in the worst case mobility failures increase by 43% compared to the non-hand blockage case. Moreover, a detailed analysis of the tradeoff between the mobility key performance indicators and the panel and Rx beam switching frequency is also studied. Results have shown that both the panel and Rx beam switches can be reduced considerably without compromising on the mobility performance. This is beneficial because it helps in reducing UE power consumption.

A Mobility Analysis of UE-Side Beamforming for Multi-Panel User Equipment with Hand Blockage

TL;DR

This work addresses mobility in FR2 with hand blockage by evaluating multi-panel UEs (MPUEs) that enable UE-side Rx-beamforming. It introduces a system-level framework combining inter-cell handovers, Tx beam management, and MPUE Rx-beamforming (MPUE-A3), and analyzes three practical hand grips to quantify mobility degradation and switching costs. The study uncovers a strong grip-dependent impact on mobility, with the DHG grip causing up to a 43% increase in mobility failures, and demonstrates that panel and Rx-beam switching offsets can dramatically reduce switching activity (and thus UE power) with limited mobility impact. The findings support design strategies that trade-off reduced switching for maintained mobility, informing MPUE hardware and protocol choices for efficient FR2 5G deployments.

Abstract

The hand blockage effect of the human hand around the user equipment (UE) is too considerable to be ignored in frequency range 2 (FR2). This adds another layer of complexity to the link budget design in FR2 for 5G networks, which already suffer from high path and diffraction loss. More recently, multipanel UEs (MPUEs) have been proposed as a way to address this problem, whereby multiple distinct antenna panels are integrated into the UE body as a way to leverage gains from antenna directivity. MPUEs also enhance the Rx-beamforming gain because it is now subject to each individual antenna panel. In this paper, the mobility performance of hand blockage induced by three practical hand grips is analyzed in a system-level simulation, where in each grip both the UE orientation and the hand positioning around the UE is different. It is seen that each hand grip has a significant impact on mobility performance of the network, where in the worst case mobility failures increase by 43% compared to the non-hand blockage case. Moreover, a detailed analysis of the tradeoff between the mobility key performance indicators and the panel and Rx beam switching frequency is also studied. Results have shown that both the panel and Rx beam switches can be reduced considerably without compromising on the mobility performance. This is beneficial because it helps in reducing UE power consumption.
Paper Structure (12 sections, 6 equations, 5 figures)

This paper contains 12 sections, 6 equations, 5 figures.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Network Model
  3. HO Model
  4. Tx Beamforming
  5. UE-side Rx-beamforming
  6. Panel and Beam Switching
  7. Hand Blockage in MPUEs
  8. Simulation Scenario and Parameters
  9. Performance Evaluation
  10. KPIs
  11. Simulation Results
  12. Conclusion

Figures (5)

  • Figure 1: The three different hand grip models, which introduce a varying degree of hand blockage to the three different panels for an MPUE in the edge design. The MPUE, hand blockage and the Rx-beams (not shown here) have been modeled using CST Microwave Studiob14.
  • Figure 2: Simulation scenario consisting of seven hexagonal sites, where each site is serving three cells with 120$^{\circ}$ coverage. The effect of shadow fading is also visible in the form of coverage islands.
  • Figure 3: A comparison of the mobility performance between the free-space case and the three hand blockage models.
  • Figure 4: A comparison of the serving panel stay percentage between the free-space case and the three different hand blockage models.
  • Figure 5: A mobility performance comparison for different serving panel switching offset $o^\mathrm{p}$ and serving Rx beam switching offset $o^\mathrm{b}$ values.