Radar-Assisted Beam Management Framework for mmWave NTNs: Overhead Reduction and Physical Layer Security Application

Abstract

Fast and low-overhead beam management is a critical requirement for the practical deployment of non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) operating at millimeter-wave and higher frequencies. In this paper, we propose a radar-assisted beam selection framework for NTNs that limits the set of candidate beams by utilizing spatial sensing information such as the angle-of-departure (AoD) and distance estimations. To provide theoretical insight into the expected worst-case overhead, we conduct a probabilistic analysis under idealized conditions, where an approximation of the worst-case beam selection overhead is proposed and its statistics are derived under Gaussian error. Additionally, the proposed framework is applied to a physical-layer security (PLS) scenario by leveraging the radar's capability to detect passive targets that represent unintended users. The simulation results show that the unintended user's power is suppressed below -135 dBm, while an additional beamforming gain of roughly 2 dB is attained for the legitimate users.