An efficient beam sweeping scheme with backup paging occasions in NR-Unlicensed Spectrum

With the increasing demand of user applications and the shortage of cellular spectrum, New Radio (NR) access to Unlicensed Spectrum (NR-U) is getting significant attention. Listen Before Talk (LBT) procedure is used to sense unlicensed channel availability prior to transmission. The transmissions are subjected to LBT procedure failure, which brings extra delay as they are postponed to the next available transmission opportunity. This excess delay also affects time-critical procedures, such as paging. The directional communication in NR requires beamforming, which further complicates paging procedure as additional paging message transmissions are needed to cover all the beams. In this work, we propose an NR-U paging mechanism (called FF_BP) consisting of Full and Fast Paging Cycles with Backup Paging Occasions (POs). Full Paging uses a normal NR-U paging cycle and broadcasts a paging message on all the beams. On the other hand, Fast Paging, which targets delay-sensitive mobile users, uses a shorter paging cycle and broadcasts a paging message on selected beams only. The Backup POs deal with LBT procedure failure impairments while paging broadcast on selective beams reduces paging resource usage. We analyze FF_BP using a discrete-time semi-Markov chain model and validate the model by extensive simulations. The simulation results show that FF_BP outperforms several baseline mechanisms in terms of average paging delay and paging resource usage.