5G Measurement Adaptation Based on Channel Hardening Occurrence

In 5G, reference signals may be transmitted on beams. Thus, the amount of UE measurements might increase with the number of beams, increasing battery consumption. With narrow beams, under specific conditions, channel variations may decrease, the so-called Channel Hardening (CH) effect. So, the UE might obtain highly correlated measurements, which suggests that the measurements could be reduced without major drawbacks. This letter proposes a method for CH detection and measurement adaptation. Moreover, an overview of CH and 5G reference signals, i.e., SSB and CSI-RS, is presented. Simulations show that our proposal can reduce measurements in up to 8×.