Patent ID: 11956834
Assignee: NOKIA TECHNOLOGIES OY
Field: Digital communication (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 12:
13. A method comprising:
selecting, by user equipment, at least one preamble group that indicates a use of beam sweeping, wherein a preamble of a first group transmitted from the user equipment indicates that the user equipment is attempting access with beam sweeping; and
transmitting, by the user equipment to a base station, a plurality of beam-formed random access signals comprising at least one preamble from the selected preamble group over a set of random access channel occasions, each beam-formed random access signal being transmitted using a different beam, wherein each of the plurality of beam-formed random access signals are uniquely identifiable by the random access channel occasion over which they are transmitted;
receiving, by the base station from the user equipment, a first one of the plurality of beam-formed random access signals comprising at least one preamble from the selected preamble group over a set of random access channel occasions;
based on a preamble of the received first one of the plurality of beam-formed random access signals, determine, by the base station, that the user equipment is attempting access with beam sweeping;
based on the determining, await, by the base station, reception of all of the plurality of beam-formed access signals before selecting one of the plurality of beam-formed random access signals;
after receipt of all of the plurality of beam-formed random access signals, comparing, by the base station, a reference signal received power (RSRP) for each of the plurality of beamed formed random access signals;
based on the comparing, selecting, by the base station, one of the beam-formed random access signals that has a highest RSRP; and
transmitting, by the base station to the user equipment, within a random access response message to the user equipment, at least an indicator of the selected beam-formed random access signal.