Machine learning for millimeter wave and terahertz beam management: A survey and open challenges

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Next-generation wireless communication networks will benefit from beamforming gain to utilize higher bandwidths at millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) bands. For high directional gain, a beam management (BM) framework acquires and tracks optimal downlink and uplink beam pairs through exhaustive beam scan. However, for narrower beams at higher carrier frequencies this leads to a huge beam measurement overhead that negatively impacts the beam acquisition and tracking. Moreover, volatility of mmWave and THz channels, user random mobility patterns, and environmental changes further complicate the BM process. Consequently, machine learning (ML) algorithms that can identify and learn complex mobility patterns and track environmental dynamics have been identified as a remedy. In this article, we provide an overview of the existing ML-based mmWave/THz BM and beam tracking techniques. Especially, we highlight key characteristics of an optimal BM and tracking framework. By surveying the recent studies, we identify some open research challenges and provide our recommendations that can serve as a future direction for researchers in this area.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)11880-11902
Number of pages23
JournalIEEE Access
Volume11
Publication statusPublished - 3 Feb 2023
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

Scopus 85148416512
ORCID /0000-0002-0738-556X/work/184885140
ORCID /0000-0001-7075-8990/work/184887492

Keywords

Keywords

  • 6G, millimeter wave (mmWave), terahertz (THz), beam management (BM), supervised learning (SL), machine learning (ML), beam tracking, federated learning (FL), reinforcement learning (RL)