Intentional Grating Beams for Energy Efficiency and Low Latency Beam Sweeping Process

Abstract

Directional transmission using large antenna arrays overcomes the severe signal attenuation and interference issues in millimeter-wave communications, causing a significant delay during the initial access process. In this paper, we propose a fast beam-sweeping approach leveraging the grating lobe (GL) concept to cover the required area with less delay overhead. Specifically, intentional GLs are generated by incorporating switching elements into the analog transceiver design to control the spacing between active antenna elements, enabling the generation of different GLs that cover different directions within a single beam transmission. We analyze the proposed approach in terms of discovery time, power consumption, and detection probability. Our numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach, outperforming both exhaustive and iterative search techniques. © 2025 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.