A Mobility Analysis of UE-Side Beamforming for Multi-Panel User Equipment with Hand Blockage

The hand blockage effect of the human hand around the user equipment (UE) is too considerable to be ignored in frequency range 2 (FR2). This adds another layer of complexity to the link budget design in FR2 for 5G networks, which already suffer from high path and diffraction loss. More recently, multi-panel UEs (MPUEs) have been proposed as a way to address this problem, whereby multiple distinct antenna panels are integrated into the UE body as a way to leverage gains from antenna directivity. MPUEs also enhance the Rx-beamforming gain because it is now subject to each individual antenna panel. In this paper, the mobility performance of hand blockage induced by three practical hand grips is analyzed in a system-level simulation, where in each grip both the UE orientation and the hand positioning around the UE is different. It is seen that each hand grip has a significant impact on mobility performance of the network, where in the worst case mobility failures increase by 43% compared to the non-hand blockage case. Moreover, a detailed analysis of the tradeoff between the mobility key performance indicators and the panel and Rx beam switching frequency is also studied. Results have shown that both the panel and Rx beam switches can be reduced considerably without compromising on the mobility performance. This is beneficial because it helps in reducing UE power consumption.