Beam training and tracking in mmWave communication: A survey

Communicating on millimeter wave (mmWave) bands is ushering in a new epoch of mobile communication which provides the availability of 10 Gbps high data rate transmission. However, mmWave links are easily prone to short transmission range communication because of the serious free space path loss and the blockage by obstacles. To overcome these challenges, highly directional beams are exploited to achieve robust links by hybrid beamforming. Accurately aligning the transmitter and receiver beams, i.e. beam training, is vitally important to high data rate transmission. However, it may cause huge overhead which has negative effects on initial access, handover, and tracking. Besides, the mobility patterns of users are complicated and dynamic, which may cause tracking error and large tracking latency. An efficient beam tracking method has a positive effect on sustaining robust links. This article provides an overview of the beam training and tracking technologies on mmWave bands and reveals the insights for future research in the 6th Generation (6G) mobile network. Especially, some open research problems are proposed to realize fast, accurate, and robust beam training and tracking. We hope that this survey provides guidelines for the researchers in the area of mmWave communications.