LiDAR-driven mmWave beam management

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-12339366-B2
Application number	US-202217575193-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jan 13, 2022
Priority date	Jan 15, 2021
Publication date	Jun 24, 2025
Grant date	Jun 24, 2025

Abstract

A method is provided for beam management. The method includes obtaining, by a Light Detection and Radar (LiDAR) sensor having one or more LiDAR cameras performing ray-tracing, out-of-band infrared measurements of a surrounding environment. The method further includes selecting, by a base station, a transmission and reception beam pair for use in the surrounding environment from a plurality of available transmission and reception beam pairs responsive to the out-of-band measurements of the surrounding environment.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method for beam management comprising:
obtaining, by a Light Detection and Radar (LIDAR) sensor having one or more LiDAR cameras performing ray-tracing, out-of-band infrared measurements of a surrounding environment; and
selecting, by a base station, a transmission and reception beam pair for use in the surrounding environment from a plurality of available transmission and reception beam pairs responsive to the out-of-band measurements of the surrounding environment by:
pre-computing beam assignments over a three-dimensional (3D) grid of possible transmission and reception positions within a 3D model of reflected power modelled as a combination of specular reflection and diffuse scattering within the surrounding environment; and
fulfilling a beam assignment request via a table lookup of a lookup table specifying paths for the transmission and reception beam pairs.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the beam assignment request is fulfilled by finding a closest pre-computed point in the 3D grid to the lookup table.

3. The method of claim 1 , further comprising concurrently looking up multiple transmission and reception pairs for multiple users in the lookup table.

4. The method of claim 1 , further comprising increasing ray-tracing tolerance to errors in transmission and reception positions by identifying real Radio Frequency RF paths in a 3D mesh and rejecting false reflection paths caused by 3D model reconstruction noise.

5. The method of claim 1 , wherein a material reflection coefficient is used to account for material specular and scattering properties of a given material in said selecting step.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein said obtaining step comprises measuring infrared intensity patterns with varying dark and light patches indicating different levels of scattering.

7. The method of claim 1 , wherein said obtaining step comprises generating a three-dimensional (3D) map of the surrounding environment, wherein said generating step comprises capturing scattering characteristics of physical materials in the surrounding environment in a form of heuristics.

8. The method of claim 7 , further comprising rejecting false reflection paths caused by reconstruction noise in the 3D map, wherein the false rejection paths are identified based on approximate path generation, path clustering and spurious path pruning.

9. The method of claim 1 , further comprising compensating for reconstruction noise due to a limited accuracy of the one or more LIDAR cameras.

10. The method of claim 1 , further comprising identifying actual RF paths and false reflection paths in the 3D grid based on an amount of reconstruction noise.

11. The method of claim 1 , further comprising recomputing the 3D grid responsive to changes in the surrounding environment greater than a threshold amount.

12. The method of claim 1 , wherein obtaining the out-of-band measurements of the surrounding environment comprises deploying a surface roughness minimizing component.

13. A computer program product for beam management, the computer program product comprising a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having program instructions embodied therewith, the program instructions executable by a computer in a base station to cause the computer to perform a method comprising:
obtaining, by a Light Detection and Radar (LiDAR) sensor having one or more LiDAR cameras in signal contact with the computer performing ray-tracing, out-of-band infrared measurements of a surrounding environment; and
selecting, by a processor of the computer, a transmission and reception beam pair for use in the surrounding environment from a plurality of available transmission and reception beam pairs responsive to the out-of-band measurements of the surrounding environment by:
pre-computing beam assignments over a three-dimensional (3D) grid of possible transmission and reception positions within a 3D model of reflected power modelled as a combination of specular reflection and diffuse scattering within the surrounding environment; and
fulfilling a beam assignment request via a table lookup of a lookup table specifying paths for the transmission and reception beam pairs.

14. The computer program product of claim 13 , wherein the beam assignment request is fulfilled by finding a closest pre-computed point in the 3D grid to the lookup table.

15. The computer program product of claim 13 , wherein the method further comprises concurrently looking up multiple transmission and reception pairs for multiple users in the lookup table.

16. The computer program product of claim 13 , wherein the method further comprises increasing ray-tracing tolerance to errors in transmission and reception positions by identifying real Radio Frequency RF paths in a 3D mesh and rejecting false reflection paths caused by 3D model reconstruction noise.

17. The computer program product of claim 13 , wherein a material reflection coefficient is used to account for material specular and scattering properties of a given material in said selecting step.

18. A system for beam management comprising:
a Light Detection and Radar (LIDAR) sensor having one or more LIDAR cameras performing ray-tracing to obtain out-of-band infrared measurements of a surrounding environment; and
a base station for selecting a transmission and reception beam pair for use in the surrounding environment from a plurality of available transmission and reception beam pairs responsive to the out-of-band measurements of the surrounding environment by:
pre-computing beam assignments over a three-dimensional (3D) grid of possible transmission and reception positions within a 3D model of reflected power modelled as a combination of specular reflection and diffuse scattering within the surrounding environment; and
fulfilling a beam assignment request via a table lookup of a lookup table specifying paths for the transmission and reception beam pairs.

Assignees

• Nec Lab America Inc
• Nec Corp

Inventors

• Chai Eugene
• Sundaresan Karthikeyan
• Khojastepour Mohammad
• Woodford Timothy

Classifications

• G01S7/4808

  Evaluating distance, position or velocity data · CPC title

• G01S7/4811

  common to transmitter and receiver · CPC title

• G01S17/87

  Combinations of systems using electromagnetic waves other than radio waves · CPC title

• G01S17/89 Primary

  for mapping or imaging · CPC title

• G01S17/88 Primary

  Lidar systems specially adapted for specific applications · CPC title