CN117155446A

CN117155446A - Beam index method and device

Info

Publication number: CN117155446A
Application number: CN202210563036.5A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 苏鑫; 金婧; 夏亮; 吴丹
Original assignee: China Mobile Communications Group Co Ltd; China Mobile Communications Ltd Research Institute
Current assignee: China Mobile Communications Group Co Ltd; China Mobile Communications Ltd Research Institute
Priority date: 2022-05-23
Filing date: 2022-05-23
Publication date: 2023-12-01

Abstract

The invention provides a beam indexing method and device, and belongs to the technical field of wireless communication. The beam index method is applied to the intelligent reflecting surface controller and comprises the following steps: receiving a target reflected beam index sent by network side equipment, wherein the target reflected beam index is a reflected beam index carried in an initial access request sent to the network side equipment by a terminal; and adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the target reflection beam index. The technical scheme of the invention can realize the reflection phase adjustment of the intelligent reflection surface facing the initial access of the user.

Description

Beam index method and device

Technical Field

The present invention relates to the field of wireless communications technologies, and in particular, to a beam indexing method and apparatus.

Background

The intelligent reflecting surface, also called as a configurable intelligent surface (Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface, RIS), is a novel transmission entity formed by large-scale passive and controllable reflecting units, and has the characteristics of low cost, low power consumption, easy deployment and the like. Through the reasonable deployment to intelligent reflecting plate, can carry out the blind supplement effectively, the signal that the base station sent carries out the signal coverage to the blind area through the reflection of intelligent reflecting plate promptly.

The base station can adjust the phase of the intelligent reflecting surface according to the channel state information. The corresponding adjustment command may be accomplished through a wireless control link between the base station and the intelligent reflective surface. The intelligent reflecting surface controller (RIS controller) can complete the operations of receiving, decoding, executing and the like of the control information of the base station, and can report the basic configuration of the intelligent reflecting surface to the base station.

In the initial access stage of the user, the base station periodically transmits a burst set of synchronous signal blocks, each synchronous signal block in the burst set corresponds to different beam directions, and the user selects the strongest beam direction to initiate a random access flow. If there is shielding between the user and the base station, the base station covers the shielded area through intelligent reflection. However, the intelligent reflection surface can only perform passive reflection on the synchronous signal blocks, and indexes of the same synchronous signal block are the same under different reflection coefficients, so that a user cannot accurately select a beam direction corresponding to the optimal reflection phase in an access process, and the base station cannot configure a phase of the intelligent reflection surface pointing to the user according to a selection result of the user on the beam.

Disclosure of Invention

The invention aims to solve the technical problem of providing a beam indexing method and device, which can realize the reflection phase adjustment of an intelligent reflection surface facing the initial access of a user.

In order to solve the technical problems, the embodiment of the invention provides the following technical scheme:

in one aspect, a beam indexing method is provided, applied to an intelligent reflector controller, including:

receiving a target reflected beam index sent by network side equipment, wherein the target reflected beam index is a reflected beam index carried in an initial access request sent to the network side equipment by a terminal;

and adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the target reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, before the receiving the target reflected beam index sent by the network side device, the method further includes:

measuring signal intensity of M incident beams sent by network side equipment, determining the first N_index incident beams as candidate beams according to the intensity of the signal intensity, and reporting indexes of the N_index candidate beams to the network side equipment;

and reporting the capability information of the self to network side equipment, wherein the capability information comprises the longest time T_ris_max required for completing the reflection phase switching and the number N_reflection of the reflection beams.

In some embodiments, after the reporting the capability information of the network side device, the method further includes:

Receiving a first reflected beam index sent by network side equipment, wherein the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the intelligent reflection;

and adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflection beam index.

The adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflection beam index includes:

under the condition that the index of the first reflected beam is 0, indicating the direction of not repeating the previous synchronous signal block, and adjusting the reflected beam to be a scattered beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient;

and under the condition that the index of the first reflected beam is not 0, indicating the direction of repeating the previous synchronous signal block, and adjusting the reflected beam to be a narrow beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam indexing method which is applied to the network side equipment and comprises the following steps:

receiving an initial access request sent by a terminal, wherein the initial access request comprises index information of a synchronous signal block, and the index information comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflected wave beam index;

and sending a target reflection beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, wherein the target reflection beam index is a reflection beam index carried in an initial access request sent to network side equipment by the terminal.

In some embodiments, before the receiving the initial access request sent by the terminal, the method further includes:

transmitting M incident beams;

receiving indexes of candidate beams sent by an intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the candidate beams are the front N_index incident beams which are determined by the intelligent reflecting surface controller according to the signal intensity of the M incident beams;

receiving capability information reported by the intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the capability information comprises the maximum time T_ris_max and the number N_reflection of reflecting beams required for finishing the reflection coefficient switching;

repeatedly transmitting the synchronous signal block N_reflection times in an incident wave candidate set in one burst set according to the capability information, the burst set period and the relative time sequence position of the synchronous signal block in the burst set when the intelligent reflecting surface is not accessed, wherein each transmitted synchronous signal block comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflecting beam index, and the incident wave candidate set comprises N_interpolation candidate beams;

wherein before each transmission of the synchronization signal block, the method further comprises:

and sending a first reflected beam index to an intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the intelligent reflecting surface.

In some embodiments, the synchronization signal block includes a repetition indication bit, and when the repetition indication bit is 0, the direction of the current synchronization signal block not repeating the previous synchronization signal block is indicated, and the index information of the synchronization signal block includes a synchronization signal block index; and when the repetition indication bit is 1, indicating the direction in which the current synchronous signal block repeats the previous synchronous signal block, wherein the index information of the synchronous signal block comprises a reflected beam index.

In some embodiments, the synchronization signal block with the repetition indicator bit of 0 corresponds to a reflected beam index of 0;

the n_reflection-1 synchronization signal blocks with repeated indication bits of 1 sequentially correspond to the reflection beam indexes {1, …, n_reflection-1 }.

In some embodiments, repeatedly transmitting the synchronization signal block n_reflection times in the incident wave candidate set includes:

transmitting a first synchronous signal block, wherein the relative time sequence position of the first synchronous signal block is consistent with the relative time sequence position when the intelligent reflecting surface is not introduced;

and repeatedly transmitting N_reflection-1 synchronous signal blocks, wherein the relative time sequence positions of the repeatedly transmitted synchronous signal blocks ensure that the phase switching of the intelligent reflecting surface and the decoding of the control signaling by the intelligent reflecting surface controller can be completed in the time interval between the synchronous signal blocks.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam indexing method which is applied to the terminal and comprises the following steps:

measuring the signal strength of each reflected beam;

and sending an initial access request to network side equipment on the reflection beam with the best signal strength, wherein the initial access request comprises index information of a synchronous signal block, and the index information comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, before the measuring the signal strength of each reflected beam, the method further comprises:

in the cell searching stage, downlink synchronization is carried out by using a synchronization signal block with a repeated indicator bit of 0; and searching the index of the reflected beam in the index bit of the synchronous signal block by using the synchronous signal block with the repeated indication bit of 1 to obtain the corresponding direction of the reflected beam.

In some embodiments, if the measured multiple synchronization signal block indexes correspond to different signal intensities, the reported index information includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflected beam index;

if the measured indexes of the synchronous signal blocks correspond to the same signal strength, the reported index information only comprises the indexes of the synchronous signal blocks.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam index device which is applied to the intelligent reflecting surface controller and comprises a transceiver and a processor,

The transceiver is configured to receive a target reflected beam index sent by the network side device, where the target reflected beam index is a reflected beam index carried in an initial access request sent by the terminal to the network side device;

the processor is used for adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the target reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor is specifically configured to measure signal strengths of M incident beams sent by the network side device, determine, according to the strength of the signal strength, the first n_index incident beams as candidate beams, and report indexes of the n_index candidate beams to the network side device;

the transceiver is used for reporting own capability information to the network side equipment, wherein the capability information comprises the longest time T_ris_max required by completing reflection phase switching and the number N_reflection of the reflection beams.

In some embodiments, the transceiver is further configured to receive a first reflected beam index sent by the network side device, where the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the smart reflection;

the processor is used for adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor is specifically configured to, when the first reflected beam index is 0, instruct not to repeat the direction of the previous synchronization signal block, and adjust the reflected beam to be a scattered beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient;

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam index device which is applied to network side equipment and comprises a transceiver and a processor,

the transceiver is used for receiving an initial access request sent by a terminal, wherein the initial access request comprises index information of a synchronous signal block, and the index information comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflected wave beam index; and sending a target reflection beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, wherein the target reflection beam index is a reflection beam index carried in an initial access request sent to network side equipment by the terminal.

In some embodiments, the transceiver is further configured to transmit M incident beams;

the processor is used for repeatedly transmitting the synchronous signal block N_reflection times in a burst set according to the capability information, the burst set period and the relative time sequence position of the synchronous signal block in the burst set when the intelligent reflecting surface is not accessed, wherein the synchronous signal block transmitted each time comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflecting beam index, and the incident wave candidate set comprises the N_incandescence candidate beams;

the transceiver is further configured to send a first reflected beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, where the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the intelligent reflection surface.

In some embodiments, the transceiver is configured to transmit a first synchronization signal block, where a relative timing position of the first synchronization signal block is consistent with a relative timing position of the first synchronization signal block when the smart reflective surface is not in use; and repeatedly transmitting N_reflection-1 synchronous signal blocks, wherein the relative time sequence positions of the repeatedly transmitted synchronous signal blocks ensure that the phase switching of the intelligent reflecting surface and the decoding of the control signaling by the intelligent reflecting surface controller can be completed in the time interval between the synchronous signal blocks.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam index device which is applied to the terminal and comprises a transceiver and a processor,

the processor is used for measuring the signal intensity of each reflected beam;

the transceiver is configured to send an initial access request to a network side device on a reflected beam with an optimal signal strength, where the initial access request includes index information of a synchronization signal block, and the index information includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflected beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor is further configured to perform downlink synchronization in a cell search stage by using a synchronization signal block with a repetition indicator bit of 0; and searching the index of the reflected beam in the index bit of the synchronous signal block by using the synchronous signal block with the repeated indication bit of 1 to obtain the corresponding direction of the reflected beam.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam indexing device, which comprises a memory, a processor and a computer program which is stored in the memory and can run on the processor; the processor, when executing the program, implements the beam indexing method as described above.

In some embodiments, the beam index device is applied to the intelligent reflection surface controller, and the processor is configured to receive a target reflection beam index sent by the network side device, where the target reflection beam index is a reflection beam index carried in an initial access request sent by the terminal to the network side device; and adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the target reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor is configured to measure signal strengths of M incident beams sent by the network side device, determine, according to the strength of the signal strength, the first n_index incident beams as candidate beams, and report indexes of the n_index candidate beams to the network side device; and reporting the capability information of the self to network side equipment, wherein the capability information comprises the longest time T_ris_max required for completing the reflection phase switching and the number N_reflection of the reflection beams.

In some embodiments, the processor is configured to receive a first reflected beam index sent by the network side device, where the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the intelligent reflection; and adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor is configured to instruct, when the first reflected beam index is 0, not to repeat the direction of the previous synchronization signal block, and adjust the reflected beam to be a scattered beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient; and under the condition that the index of the first reflected beam is not 0, indicating the direction of repeating the previous synchronous signal block, and adjusting the reflected beam to be a narrow beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient.

In some embodiments, the beam indexing device is applied to a network side device, and the processor is configured to receive an initial access request sent by a terminal, where the initial access request includes index information of a synchronization signal block, and the index information includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflected beam index; and sending a target reflection beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, wherein the target reflection beam index is a reflection beam index carried in an initial access request sent to network side equipment by the terminal.

In some embodiments, the processor is configured to transmit M incident beams; receiving indexes of candidate beams sent by an intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the candidate beams are the front N_index incident beams which are determined by the intelligent reflecting surface controller according to the signal intensity of the M incident beams; receiving capability information reported by the intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the capability information comprises the maximum time T_ris_max and the number N_reflection of reflecting beams required for finishing the reflection coefficient switching; repeatedly transmitting the synchronous signal block N_reflection times in an incident wave candidate set in one burst set according to the capability information, the burst set period and the relative time sequence position of the synchronous signal block in the burst set when the intelligent reflecting surface is not accessed, wherein each transmitted synchronous signal block comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflecting beam index, and the incident wave candidate set comprises N_interpolation candidate beams;

The processor is configured to send a first reflected beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, where the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the intelligent reflection surface.

In some embodiments, the processor is configured to send a first synchronization signal block, where a relative timing position of the first synchronization signal block is consistent with a relative timing position of the non-intelligent reflective surface when the first synchronization signal block is introduced;

In some embodiments, the beam indexing device is applied to the terminal, and the processor is used for measuring the signal strength of each reflected beam; and sending an initial access request to network side equipment on the reflection beam with the best signal strength, wherein the initial access request comprises index information of a synchronous signal block, and the index information comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflection beam index.

The embodiments of the present invention also provide a computer readable storage medium having stored thereon a computer program which when executed by a processor implements the steps in the beam indexing method as described above.

The embodiment of the invention has the following beneficial effects:

in the above scheme, when the terminal sends an initial access request, the initial access request includes the synchronization signal block index and the reflection beam index, and the network side device sends the reflection beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, and the intelligent reflection surface controller can adjust the reflection phase according to the received reflection wave index. The method solves the problem that the index of the synchronization signal block fails after the synchronization signal block passes through the intelligent reflecting surface in the cell searching stage, and can realize the reflection phase adjustment of the intelligent reflecting surface facing the initial access of the user.

Drawings

In order to more clearly illustrate the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present invention, the drawings that are needed in the description of the embodiments of the present invention will be briefly described below, and it is obvious that the drawings in the following description are only some embodiments of the present invention, and other drawings may be obtained according to these drawings without inventive effort to a person of ordinary skill in the art.

Fig. 1 is a flow chart of a beam indexing method according to an embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram of intelligent reflector assisted initial access based on two-stage indexing;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a mapping relationship of two-stage SSB;

FIG. 4 is a schematic diagram of two levels of index bits;

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a reconfiguration of SSB pattern;

fig. 6 is a schematic structural diagram of a beam indexing device according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 7 is a schematic diagram of a beam indexing apparatus according to an embodiment of the application.

Detailed Description

In order to make the technical problems, technical solutions and advantages to be solved by the embodiments of the present application more apparent, the following detailed description will be given with reference to the accompanying drawings and the specific embodiments.

The following description of the embodiments of the present application will be made clearly and fully with reference to the accompanying drawings, in which it is evident that the embodiments described are some, but not all embodiments of the application. All other embodiments, which are derived by a person skilled in the art based on the embodiments of the application, fall within the scope of protection of the application.

The terms first, second and the like in the description and in the claims, are used for distinguishing between similar elements and not necessarily for describing a particular sequential or chronological order. It is to be understood that the terms so used are interchangeable under appropriate circumstances such that the embodiments of the application are capable of operation in sequences other than those illustrated or otherwise described herein, and that the "first" and "second" distinguishing between objects generally are not limited in number to the extent that the first object may, for example, be one or more. Furthermore, in the description and claims, "and/or" means at least one of the connected objects, and the character "/" generally means a relationship in which the associated object is an "or" before and after.

It should be noted that the techniques described in the embodiments of the present application are not limited to long term evolution (Long Term Evolution, LTE)/LTE evolution (LTE-Advanced, LTE-a) systems, but may also be used in other wireless communication systems, such as code division multiple access (Code Division Multiple Access, CDMA), time division multiple access (Time Division Multiple Access, TDMA), frequency division multiple access (Frequency Division Multiple Access, FDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple access (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, OFDMA), single-carrier frequency division multiple access (Single-carrier Frequency-Division Multiple Access, SC-FDMA), and other systems. The terms "system" and "network" in embodiments of the application are often used interchangeably, and the techniques described may be used for both the above-mentioned systems and radio technologies, as well as other systems and radio technologies. The following description describes a New air interface (NR) system for purposes of example and NR terminology is used in much of the description below, but these techniques may also be applied to applications other than NR system applications, such as the 6th generation (6th Generation,6G) communication system.

The embodiment of the application can be applied to a wireless communication system. The wireless communication system comprises a terminal and network side equipment. The terminal may also be called a terminal Device or a User Equipment (UE), and the terminal may be a mobile phone, a tablet (Tablet Personal Computer), a Laptop (Laptop Computer) or a terminal-side Device called a notebook, a personal digital assistant (Personal Digital Assistant, PDA), a palmtop, a netbook, an ultra-mobile personal Computer (ultra-mobile personal Computer, UMPC), a mobile internet Device (Mobile Internet Device, MID), a Wearable Device (Wearable Device) or a vehicle-mounted Device (Vehicle User Equipment, VUE), a pedestrian terminal (Pedestrian User Equipment, PUE), and the Wearable Device includes: a bracelet, earphone, glasses, etc. It should be noted that, the embodiment of the present application is not limited to a specific type of terminal. The network side device may be a base station or core network device, where a base station may be called a Node B, an Evolved Node B, an access point, a base transceiver station (Base Transceiver Station, BTS), a radio base station, a radio transceiver, a basic service set (Basic Service Set, BSS), an extended service set (Extended Service Set, ESS), a Node B, an Evolved Node B (eNB), a home Node B, a home Evolved Node B, a wireless local area network (Wireless Local Area Network, WLAN) access point, a wireless fidelity (Wireless Fidelity, wiFi) Node, a transmission and reception point (Transmitting Receiving Point, TRP), or some other suitable terminology in the field, and the base station is not limited to a specific technical vocabulary so long as the same technical effect is achieved, and it should be noted that, in the embodiment of the present application, only a base station in the NR system is taken as an example, but the specific type of the base station is not limited. The core network device may be referred to as a location management function (Location Management Function, LMF), an enhanced services mobile location center (Enhance Serving Mobile Location Center, E-SMLC), a location server, or some other suitable terminology in the field.

The embodiment of the invention provides a beam indexing method and device, which can realize the reflection phase adjustment of an intelligent reflection surface facing the initial access of a user.

The embodiment of the invention provides a beam indexing method, which is applied to an intelligent reflecting surface controller and comprises the following steps:

In this embodiment, when the terminal sends an initial access request, the initial access request includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflection beam index, and the network side device sends the reflection beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, where the intelligent reflection surface controller can adjust the reflection phase according to the received reflection beam index. The method solves the problem that the index of the synchronization signal block fails after the synchronization signal block passes through the intelligent reflecting surface in the cell searching stage, and can realize the reflection phase adjustment of the intelligent reflecting surface facing the initial access of the user.

It should be understood that the method provided by the embodiments of the present invention is applied to an intelligent reflective surface controller, which in some embodiments may be understood as a reflective cell array and a control device for the reflective cell array. In this embodiment, the intelligent reflection surface controller may implement the function of the reflection unit array, and perform information interaction with the network side device at the same time. An array of reflective elements is understood to be a new type of transport entity consisting of controllable reflective elements. In specific implementation, the specific structure of the reflective cell array is not limited herein.

For example, in some embodiments, the array of reflective elements may be an active array of reflective elements. In other embodiments, the array of reflective elements may be an array of passive reflective elements. In particular, in some embodiments, the array of reflective units is a configurable smart surface (Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface, RIS). In some embodiments, the RIS may also be referred to as a smart reflective surface, where the RIS is an array of passive reflective elements.

In a specific implementation, part of incident beams sent by the network side equipment cannot be searched by the intelligent reflecting surface controller due to weak signal strength. Thus, the intelligent reflector controller may determine a candidate beam from the searched plurality of incident beams. It should be understood that the specific manner in which the intelligent reflection surface controller determines the candidate beam from the plurality of incident beams of the network side device based on the signal strength of the incident beam is not limited herein. For example, in some embodiments, the intelligent reflective surface controller determines an incident beam with a signal strength greater than a threshold as a candidate beam, where the specific value of the threshold may be set and adjusted according to the actual needs.

In other embodiments, the intelligent reflection surface controller determines the first n_interpolation of the signal intensity from large to small as a candidate beam, where n_interpolation is a positive integer not greater than M, where the specific value of n_interpolation may be set and adjusted according to the actual requirement.

The intelligent reflection surface controller determining the candidate beam index corresponding to the candidate beam may be understood that, after determining the candidate beam, the intelligent reflection surface controller determines what may be used to characterize the candidate beam as the candidate beam index. For example, the intelligent reflector controller determines the number of the candidate beam as the candidate beam index.

In this embodiment, the candidate beam index of the candidate beam is the number of the candidate beam, so the network side device may determine the corresponding candidate beam based on the candidate beam index of the candidate beam.

The indexes of the front n_index incident beams and the capability information may be sent to the network side device respectively, or the indexes of the front n_index incident beams and the capability information may be sent to the network side device together. By reporting the incident beam, the scanning of the reflected beam in unnecessary incident directions can be reduced.

It should be understood that, when transmitting an incident beam, the network side device generally adopts a form of scanning the incident beam, and transmits an incident beam in one direction at each moment in a period, and covers terminal devices in a cell by transmitting incident beams in different directions at different moments. When scanning an incident beam, the network side equipment repeatedly sends N_reflection times aiming at the same incident beam, and each time the intelligent reflecting surface controller controls the intelligent reflecting surface to adopt different reflection coefficients, the incident wave is correspondingly reflected to different directions. Therefore, by the first reflected beam index, it can be determined how to adjust the reflection coefficient of the intelligent reflection surface.

Specifically, the adjusting the reflection phase of the smart reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflection beam index includes:

Among them, the synchronization signal blocks include, but are not limited to, a Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS), a Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS), and a Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH).

transmitting M incident beams;

In specific implementation, part of the incident beam of the network side device cannot be searched by the intelligent reflection surface controller due to weak signal strength. Thus, the intelligent reflector controller may determine a candidate beam from the searched plurality of incident beams. It should be understood that the specific manner in which the intelligent reflection surface controller determines the candidate beam from the plurality of incident beams of the network side device based on the signal strength of the incident beam is not limited herein. For example, in some embodiments, the intelligent reflective surface controller determines an incident beam with a signal strength greater than a threshold as a candidate beam, where the specific value of the threshold may be set and adjusted according to the actual needs.

The intelligent reflection surface controller determining the candidate beam index corresponding to the candidate beam can be understood that the intelligent reflection surface controller determines the content which can be used for representing the candidate beam as the candidate beam index after the candidate beam. For example, the intelligent reflector controller determines the number of the candidate beam as the candidate beam index.

It should be understood that when transmitting the reflected beam, the network side device generally adopts a form of reflected beam scanning, and transmits the reflected beam in one direction at each moment in one period, and covers the terminal devices in the cell by the reflected beams in different directions transmitted at different moments. When scanning an incident beam, the network side equipment repeatedly sends N_reflection times aiming at the same incident beam, and each time the intelligent reflecting surface controller controls the intelligent reflecting surface to adopt different reflection coefficients, the incident wave is correspondingly reflected to different directions. Therefore, by the first reflected beam index, it can be determined how to adjust the reflection coefficient of the intelligent reflection surface.

The synchronous signal block comprises a repeated indicating bit, when the repeated indicating bit is 0, the direction of the current synchronous signal block which does not repeat the previous synchronous signal block is indicated, and the index information of the synchronous signal block comprises a synchronous signal block index; and when the repetition indication bit is 1, indicating the direction in which the current synchronous signal block repeats the previous synchronous signal block, wherein the index information of the synchronous signal block comprises a reflected beam index. The repetition synchronization signal block transmission indicates whether or not repetition is performed with one bit (repetition indication bit), reducing redundancy bits of the repetition index.

The first synchronization signal block in the burst set corresponds to the reflection beam index 0 by default, and the index bits of the repeated synchronization signal block can be multiplexed by the reflection beam index, so that the number of bits added to the reflection beam index can be reduced.

Repeating the transmission of the synchronization signal block n_reflection times in the incident wave candidate set includes:

The first synchronization signal block is still sent at the original (no intelligent reflection surface (RIS) access) time position, so that the user can determine the field timing. The timing sequence position of the repeated transmission synchronous signal block is determined according to RIS switching capability, and the burst set can be prevented from being overlong when the number of reflected wave beam directions is excessive.

measuring the signal strength of each reflected beam;

In this embodiment, the measurement resource may be configured by a network side device, where a correspondence between the measurement resource and the reflected beam is predefined. In this embodiment, the specific manner in which the network side device configures the measurement resources is not limited herein. For example, in some embodiments, the network-side device configures measurement resources based on information such as the position and orientation of the array of reflective elements as it accesses the network. In other embodiments, the network side device configures measurement resources based on information of a plurality of reflected beams of the network side device.

It should be understood that the number of measurement resources is not limited herein, and in a specific implementation, the number of measurement resources may be at least one. The corresponding relation between the measurement resources and the plurality of reflected beams is predefined. For example, in some embodiments, the measurement resources are in one-to-one correspondence with the reflected beams. In other embodiments, each of the measurement resources corresponds to at least one of a plurality of reflected beams.

Transmitting an initial access request to the network side device on the reflected beam with the best signal strength can ensure the reliability of transmission.

The embodiment of the application provides a scheme for carrying out two-stage indexing on a reflected beam, and realizes the reflection phase adjustment of an intelligent reflecting surface facing the initial access of a user. In the embodiment of the application, the reflection coefficient generation mode is transparent to the base station, and the RIS controller only reports the total number of available reflection coefficients, thereby being beneficial to adapting to any reflection phase generation mode of an intelligent reflection surface in any form.

In the embodiment of the application, the intelligent reflecting surface is closely adjacent to the controller; the intelligent reflecting surface adopts a programmable super surface and can generate scattered beams; the network side equipment such as a base station controls the intelligent reflecting surface through an air interface; the intelligent reflecting surface has access to the base station and establishes a control link between the base station and the RIS controller.

As shown in fig. 1, taking a network side device as an example of a base station, the present embodiment includes the following steps:

step 1: the RIS controller measures the signal intensity of M incident beams sent by the base station, determines the front N_index incident beams according to the intensity of the signal intensity, and reports the synchronous signal block indexes of the N_index incident beams to the base station as an incident beam candidate set;

step 2: the RIS controller pre-stores the reflection coefficients of the N_reflection groups, and correspondingly reflects the incident wave to N_reflection beam directions. The RIS controller reports the capability information of the RIS controller to the base station, and informs the intelligent reflecting surface switching capability of the base station (the maximum time required for completing the switching of the reflecting coefficient of the whole reflecting plate is T_ris_max) and the number N_reflection of the reflecting beams.

Step 3: before each transmission of the synchronization signal block, the base station transmits a reflected beam index to the RIS controller;

step 4: the RIS controller adjusts the corresponding reflection phase according to the received reflection beam index, and the RIS controller comprises the following steps:

when the index of the reflected beam is 0, the RIS controller adjusts the reflected beam to be a scattered beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient through corresponding codes; when the index of the reflected beam is other than 0, the RIS controller adjusts the reflected beam to be a narrow beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient through corresponding codes.

Step 5: the base station repeatedly transmits a certain synchronization signal block N_reflection in the incident beam candidate set in one burst set according to the capability information T_ris_max and N_reflection reported by the RIS controller, the burst set period and the relative time sequence position of the synchronization signal block in the burst set when no RIS access exists, wherein each synchronization signal block comprises two-stage beam index indication, namely [ incident beam index, reflected beam index ]. The specific beam index method is as follows:

(1) Introducing a 1bit repetition indicator bit into the synchronous signal block to indicate whether the current synchronous signal block repeats the direction of the previous synchronous signal block:

Repeat indicator bit = 0: indicating the direction in which the previous synchronization signal block is not repeated (i.e., the 1 st synchronization signal block in the burst set), the index of the synchronization signal block is the primary beam index, i.e., the incident beam index;

repetition indicator bit = 1: indicating the direction in which the previous synchronization signal block is repeated (i.e., the 2 nd to n_refelct synchronization signal blocks in the burst set), the index of the synchronization signal block is the secondary beam index, i.e., the reflected beam index.

(2) The mapping relationship between the primary beam index (incident beam index) and the secondary beam index (reflected beam index) is:

the incident synchronization signal block with the repetition indicator bit of 0 defaults to the 0 th reflected beam;

the incident synchronization signal blocks with the repetition indicator bit of 1 sequentially correspond to the reflected beam indexes {1, …, N_reflection-1 }, i.e., the index bits of the repeated synchronization signal blocks are multiplexed to identify the secondary beam index of the corresponding synchronization signal block; if n_index exceeds the number of multiplexed indexes, the index bit of the repeated synchronization signal block is used to indicate the index of the beam group, which may be carried by the physical control channel in the common search space.

(3) The transmission time of each synchronous signal block in the burst set is determined as follows:

The relative timing position of the first synchronization signal block (repetition indicator bit=0) in the burst set is kept consistent with the original protocol specification without RIS introduction, in order to guarantee the following two points:

ensuring that users in the coverage area of the base station can determine the field time sequence and perform downlink synchronization;

and ensuring that users in the RIS coverage area can perform downlink synchronization.

The repeated sending synchronous signal blocks in the burst set can reconfigure the time sequence position, and the phase switching of RIS and the decoding of the control signaling by the RIS controller can be completed in the time interval between the synchronous signal blocks. There are two reconfiguration schemes:

i: firstly, transmitting control signaling to RIS, then transmitting a synchronous signal block;

ii: for the first synchronous signal block in burst set, the scheme i is the same; for the repeated synchronization signal block, if the control signaling duration is relatively short, the control signaling to the RIS may be sent simultaneously with the first few symbols of the repeated synchronization signal block that do not carry beam index information.

Step 6: in the cell searching stage, the terminal performs downlink synchronization by using a synchronization signal block with a repeated indicator bit of 0; and searching the secondary beam index of the synchronous signal block in the original synchronous signal block index bit to obtain the corresponding reflected beam direction.

Step 7: the terminal measures the signal intensity of each reflected beam, and initiates an initial access request on the best reflected beam (namely, the reflected beam with the best signal intensity), wherein the initial access request comprises index information of a synchronous signal block, and the index information comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflected beam index.

For the terminal in the blind coverage area of the reflecting surface, the measured indexes of the synchronous signal blocks correspond to different signal intensities, and the reported index information comprises the indexes of the synchronous signal blocks and the indexes of the reflecting beam;

for the terminal with the beam direction being able to cover in the incident beam candidate set, the measured multiple synchronization signal block indexes correspond to the same signal strength, and the reported index information may only include the synchronization signal block indexes.

Step 8: the base station informs the RIS controller of adjusting the reflection phase by using index information of a synchronous signal block contained in an initial access request sent by the terminal.

In the first embodiment, as shown in fig. 2, there is a blocking between the base station and the user 1, and the intelligent reflection is required to perform reflection blind compensation on the signal sent by the base station. User 2 is located within the coverage area of the base station.

The synchronization signal block is a signal block composed of a Primary Synchronization Signal (PSS), a Secondary Synchronization Signal (SSS) and a Physical Broadcast Channel (PBCH), SSB. The SSB burst set of base stations contains 4 SSB beam directions, denoted S0, S1, S2 and S3. The receive beam directions of the UEs are denoted as U0, U1, U2 and U3.

The first embodiment includes the following steps:

step 1, the RIS controller reports the candidate set of incident beams { S0, S1}, where the candidate set includes two incident beams S0 and S1 with the strongest signal intensities, i.e., n_correlation=2.

Step 2, pre-storing n_reflection=8 sets of reflection coefficients in the RIS controller, corresponding to 8 different reflection beam directions, where the specific directions are related to the incident beam. The RIS controller reports to the base station n_reflection and the handover capability parameter t_ris_max.

And 3, before sending the SSB each time, the base station sends control signaling to the RIS controller, and Downlink Control Information (DCI) is used for carrying the control signaling, wherein the duration of a Physical Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH) is 1 symbol length.

And 4, the RIS controller adjusts the corresponding reflection phase, the index of the reflection beam is 0, and the reflection beam is adjusted to be a scattering beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient.

And 5, the base station repeatedly transmits the synchronous signal blocks according to the capability information reported by the RIS. In this embodiment, the SSB interval in the original protocol can ensure the reflection phase switching time t_ris_max and the PDCCH duration, so that the original SSB pattern (the timing position in the original NR protocol) is reserved, and SSB0 and SSB1 are repeatedly transmitted 8 times, and the mapping relationship of two SSBs is shown in fig. 3. Fig. 3 shows a mapping relationship of two SSBs, and the control signaling transmission timing (scs=15 khz,3ghz or less) of the base station to the RIS is filled with diagonal lines along with the original SSB pattern.

And 6, the UE 1 is positioned in the coverage area of the reflecting surface, the measured multiple synchronous signal block indexes correspond to different signal intensities, and the reported index information comprises the synchronous signal block indexes and the reflected beam indexes. As shown in fig. 2, indexes S0, R2 and S1, R1 (primary beam index, secondary beam index) are measured as the strongest beam directions, and optionally one may be used to initiate the initial access procedure. The index bits are shown in fig. 4. In this embodiment, a maximum of 64 reflected beam directions can be supported for each incident direction.

Step 7, the UE 2 is located in the primary SSB coverage area, the measured multiple synchronization signal block indexes correspond to the same signal strength, and the same Reference Signal Received Power (RSRP) is measured for the multiple SSB indexes.

Embodiment two:

step 5 in embodiment one may reconfigure the SSB pattern.

Table 1 shows typical switching time values: photodiodes 5-10 ns; the capacitance diode is 100-200 ns, and does not contain extra delay introduced by circuit design, and the duty ratio of one SSB time and one symbol time is not included.

Table 1 typical switch time to SSB and one symbol duration ratio

The RIS controller reports the capability information to the network equipment: t_ris_max=100 ns, it can be seen from the above table that the switching of the beam can be done within one symbol, so two schemes as given in fig. 5 can be considered:

Firstly, control signaling (at least one symbol in advance) for RIS is sent, and then SSB is sent;

for the first SSB (repetition indicator bit=0) in the burst set, control signaling to the RIS is sent at least one symbol in advance; for a subsequently repeated SSB (repetition indicator bit=1), control signaling for the RIS is sent simultaneously with the first symbol of the repeated SSB.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam indexing device which is applied to the intelligent reflecting surface controller, as shown in fig. 6, and comprises a transceiver 21 and a processor 22,

the transceiver 21 is configured to receive a target reflected beam index sent by a network side device, where the target reflected beam index is a reflected beam index carried in an initial access request sent by a terminal to the network side device;

the processor 22 is configured to adjust the reflection phase of the smart reflective surface to a corresponding phase according to the target reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor 22 is specifically configured to measure signal strengths of M incident beams sent by the network side device, determine, according to the strength of the signal strength, the first n_index incident beams as candidate beams, and report indexes of the n_index candidate beams to the network side device;

The transceiver 21 is configured to report capability information of itself to a network side device, where the capability information includes a maximum time t_ris_max required for completing the reflection phase switching and a number n_reflection of the reflection beams.

In some embodiments, the transceiver 21 is further configured to receive a first reflected beam index sent by a network side device, where the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the smart reflection;

the processor 22 is configured to adjust the reflection phase of the smart reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor 22 is specifically configured to, if the first reflected beam index is 0, instruct not to repeat the direction of the previous synchronization signal block, and adjust the reflected beam to be a scattered beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient;

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam indexing device which is applied to network side equipment, as shown in fig. 6, and comprises a transceiver 21 and a processor 22,

The transceiver 21 is configured to receive an initial access request sent by a terminal, where the initial access request includes index information of a synchronization signal block, and the index information includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflected beam index; and sending a target reflection beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, wherein the target reflection beam index is a reflection beam index carried in an initial access request sent to network side equipment by the terminal.

In some embodiments, the transceiver 21 is further configured to transmit M incident beams; receiving indexes of candidate beams sent by an intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the candidate beams are the front N_index incident beams which are determined by the intelligent reflecting surface controller according to the signal intensity of the M incident beams; receiving capability information reported by the intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the capability information comprises the maximum time T_ris_max and the number N_reflection of reflecting beams required for finishing the reflection coefficient switching;

the processor 22 is configured to repeatedly send, in one burst set, a synchronization signal block n_reflection number of times in an incident wave candidate set according to the capability information, a burst set period, and a relative timing position of the synchronization signal block in the burst set when no intelligent reflection plane is accessed, where each sent synchronization signal block includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflection beam index, and the incident wave candidate set includes the n_synchronization candidate beams;

Wherein the transceiver 21 is further configured to send a first reflected beam index to the smart reflector controller, the first reflected beam index indicating an index of a reflected beam obtained by the smart reflector reflecting the candidate beam.

In some embodiments, the transceiver 21 is configured to send a first synchronization signal block, where a relative timing position of the first synchronization signal block is consistent with a relative timing position of the first synchronization signal block when the smart reflective surface is not in use; and repeatedly transmitting N_reflection-1 synchronous signal blocks, wherein the relative time sequence positions of the repeatedly transmitted synchronous signal blocks ensure that the phase switching of the intelligent reflecting surface and the decoding of the control signaling by the intelligent reflecting surface controller can be completed in the time interval between the synchronous signal blocks.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam indexing device which is applied to a terminal, as shown in fig. 6, and comprises a transceiver 21 and a processor 22,

the processor 22 is configured to measure the signal strength of each reflected beam;

the transceiver 21 is configured to send an initial access request to a network side device on a reflected beam with the best signal strength, where the initial access request includes index information of a synchronization signal block, and the index information includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflected beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor 22 is further configured to perform downlink synchronization during the cell search stage by using a synchronization signal block with a repetition indicator bit of 0; and searching the index of the reflected beam in the index bit of the synchronous signal block by using the synchronous signal block with the repeated indication bit of 1 to obtain the corresponding direction of the reflected beam.

The embodiment of the invention also provides a beam indexing device, as shown in fig. 7, which comprises a memory 31, a processor 32 and a computer program stored on the memory 31 and capable of running on the processor 32; the processor 32, when executing the program, implements the beam indexing method as described above.

In some embodiments, the beam index device is applied to the intelligent reflection surface controller, and the processor 32 is configured to receive a target reflection beam index sent by the network side device, where the target reflection beam index is a reflection beam index carried in an initial access request sent by the terminal to the network side device; and adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the target reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor 32 is configured to measure signal strengths of M incident beams sent by the network side device, determine, according to the strength of the signal strength, the first n_index incident beams as candidate beams, and report indexes of the n_index candidate beams to the network side device; and reporting the capability information of the self to network side equipment, wherein the capability information comprises the longest time T_ris_max required for completing the reflection phase switching and the number N_reflection of the reflection beams.

In some embodiments, the processor 32 is configured to receive a first reflected beam index sent by a network side device, where the first reflected beam index indicates an index of a reflected beam obtained by reflecting the candidate beam by the smart reflection; and adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflection surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor 32 is configured to instruct, when the first reflected beam index is 0, not to repeat the direction of the previous synchronization signal block, and adjust the reflected beam to be a scattered beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient; and under the condition that the index of the first reflected beam is not 0, indicating the direction of repeating the previous synchronous signal block, and adjusting the reflected beam to be a narrow beam according to the corresponding reflection coefficient.

In some embodiments, the beam indexing device is applied to the network side device, and the processor 32 is configured to receive an initial access request sent by the terminal, where the initial access request includes index information of a synchronization signal block, and the index information includes a synchronization signal block index and a reflected beam index; and sending a target reflection beam index to the intelligent reflection surface controller, wherein the target reflection beam index is a reflection beam index carried in an initial access request sent to network side equipment by the terminal.

In some embodiments, the processor 32 is configured to transmit M incident beams; receiving indexes of candidate beams sent by an intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the candidate beams are the front N_index incident beams which are determined by the intelligent reflecting surface controller according to the signal intensity of the M incident beams; receiving capability information reported by the intelligent reflecting surface controller, wherein the capability information comprises the maximum time T_ris_max and the number N_reflection of reflecting beams required for finishing the reflection coefficient switching; repeatedly transmitting the synchronous signal block N_reflection times in an incident wave candidate set in one burst set according to the capability information, the burst set period and the relative time sequence position of the synchronous signal block in the burst set when the intelligent reflecting surface is not accessed, wherein each transmitted synchronous signal block comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflecting beam index, and the incident wave candidate set comprises N_interpolation candidate beams;

Wherein the processor 32 is configured to send a first reflected beam index to the intelligent reflector controller, the first reflected beam index indicating an index of a reflected beam obtained by the intelligent reflector reflecting the candidate beam.

In some embodiments, the processor 32 is configured to send a first synchronization signal block, where a relative timing position of the first synchronization signal block is consistent with a relative timing position of the non-smart reflective surface when the first synchronization signal block is introduced;

In some embodiments, the beam indexing means is applied to the terminal and the processor 32 is configured to measure the signal strength of each reflected beam; and sending an initial access request to network side equipment on the reflection beam with the best signal strength, wherein the initial access request comprises index information of a synchronous signal block, and the index information comprises a synchronous signal block index and a reflection beam index.

In some embodiments, the processor 32 is further configured to perform downlink synchronization during the cell search stage by using a synchronization signal block with a repetition indicator bit of 0; and searching the index of the reflected beam in the index bit of the synchronous signal block by using the synchronous signal block with the repeated indication bit of 1 to obtain the corresponding direction of the reflected beam.

Computer readable media, including both non-transitory and non-transitory, removable and non-removable media, may implement information storage by any method or technology. The information may be computer readable instructions, data structures, modules of a program, or other data. Examples of storage media for a computer include, but are not limited to, phase change memory (PRAM), static Random Access Memory (SRAM), dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), other types of Random Access Memory (RAM), read Only Memory (ROM), electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM), flash memory or other memory technology, compact disc read only memory (CD-ROM), digital Versatile Discs (DVD) or other optical storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices to be detected, or any other non-transmission medium which can be used to store information that can be accessed by a computing device to be detected. Computer-readable media, as defined herein, does not include transitory computer-readable media (transmission media), such as modulated data signals and carrier waves.

While the foregoing is directed to the preferred embodiments of the present invention, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that various modifications and adaptations can be made without departing from the principles of the present invention, and such modifications and adaptations are intended to be comprehended within the scope of the present invention.

Claims

1. A beam indexing method, applied to an intelligent reflector controller, comprising:

2. The beam indexing method according to claim 1, wherein before the receiving the target reflected beam index transmitted by the network side device, the method further comprises:

3. The beam indexing method according to claim 2, wherein after reporting the capability information of the beam indexing method to the network side device, the method further comprises:

4. The beam indexing method of claim 3, wherein said adjusting the reflection phase of the intelligent reflecting surface to a corresponding phase according to the first reflected beam index comprises:

5. The beam indexing method is characterized by being applied to network side equipment and comprising the following steps:

6. The beam indexing method according to claim 5, wherein before the receiving the initial access request sent by the terminal, the method further comprises:

transmitting M incident beams;

7. The beam indexing method of claim 6, wherein the synchronization signal block includes a repetition indication bit, and wherein when the repetition indication bit is 0, indicating a direction in which a current synchronization signal block does not repeat a previous synchronization signal block, the index information of the synchronization signal block includes a synchronization signal block index; and when the repetition indication bit is 1, indicating the direction in which the current synchronous signal block repeats the previous synchronous signal block, wherein the index information of the synchronous signal block comprises a reflected beam index.

8. The beam indexing method of claim 7 wherein,

the synchronization signal block with the repetition indicator bit of 0 corresponds to the reflected beam index of 0;

9. The beam indexing method of claim 6 wherein repeatedly transmitting the synchronization signal block n_reflection in the incident wave candidate set comprises:

10. A beam indexing method, applied to a terminal, comprising:

measuring the signal strength of each reflected beam;

11. The beam indexing method of claim 10, wherein prior to said measuring the signal strength of each reflected beam, the method further comprises:

12. The beam indexing method of claim 10 wherein,

if the measured multiple synchronous signal block indexes correspond to different signal intensities, reporting the index information comprising the synchronous signal block indexes and the reflected wave beam indexes;

the method further comprises the steps of:

13. A beam index device is characterized by being applied to an intelligent reflecting surface controller and comprising a transceiver and a processor,

14. A beam index device is characterized by being applied to network side equipment and comprising a transceiver and a processor,

15. A beam indexing device is characterized by being applied to a terminal and comprising a transceiver and a processor,

16. A beam indexing device comprising a memory, a processor and a computer program stored on the memory and executable on the processor; the beam indexing method of any one of claims 1-12, when the processor executes the program.

17. A computer readable storage medium having stored thereon a computer program, which when executed by a processor performs the steps in the beam indexing method according to any of claims 1-12.