A contention-based initial beam search scheme for mmWave cellular communications

In this paper, we study a contention-based beam search procedure for directional communication in a Millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular network. A beam search procedure is required for directional alignment/spatial synchronization between the base station (BS) and a user Equipment (UE) to get beamforming (BF) gain in the mmWave communication. We propose a beam search procedure, which is performed by BS and multiple UEs to establish physical link based on contention in the initial access phase, without any prior knowledge and feedback channel. The proposed scheme enables multiple UEs to perform beam search procedures with the BS simultaneously. Also that enables the BS to select multiple UEs and corresponding beam pairs that can maximize the achievable sum rate.