Evaluation of the effects of 3GPP-specific beamforming and channel estimation on the 3D EIRP profile of a 5G gNB
2026-04-24 • Networking and Internet Architecture
Networking and Internet Architecture
AI summaryⓘ
The authors studied how 5G base stations (gNBs) send signals in 3D directions using many antennas, which can boost performance but may interfere with existing systems like radar or satellites. They measured the actual power sent out in various directions using current standards instead of just simple models. Their work shows interference depends on more than just the main signal direction and is affected by the antenna setup. They also tested two ways to reduce power aimed at sensitive directions, finding a notable power drop but with some signal quality loss for users. This helps understand real-world impacts and trade-offs in 5G 3D beamforming.
5G NR3D beamforminggNodeB (gNB)Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP)3GPP Release-18beam nullingside-lobesadvanced antenna systems (AAS)bit error rate (BER)
Authors
Armed Tusha, Joshua Roy Palathinkal, Monisha Ghosh
Abstract
Spatial domain exploitation through 3D beamforming serves as a critical technology enabler for performance enhancement in the Fifth Generation New Radio (5G NR) specification. This is realized at the gNodeB (gNB) through the integration of massive antenna element arrays that facilitates 3D spatial multiplexing. However, these systems with high-directional transmissions also represent a threat to incumbent services such as radar and satellites. These incumbents already operate in midband spectrum\textemdash{}including the 4.4-4.9 GHz and 7.125-7.4 GHz bands\textemdash{}that are currently being evaluated for future cellular deployments. Here, we present the first work that evaluates the transmitted Effective Isotropic Radiated Power (EIRP) of a gNB in 3D space, using the 3GPP Release-18 standard for FR-1 instead of theoretical analyses of beam nulling, which can be simplistic. We shed light on the problems requiring attention with the EIRP profile in 3D space for existing codebook designs predefined in 3GPP: i) interference from a gNB does not depend only on the worst-case beamforming direction, but on a variety of beamforming directions due to side-lobes; ii) advanced antenna systems (AAS) architecture and antenna port configurations play a crucial role in average 3D EIRP, which are implementation dependent, and iii) we introduce two beam nulling methods, which achieve a 11 dB power reduction toward a target direction, with 3.5-4.5 dB SNR loss in UE link performance at a 10^{-4} bit error rate (BER) across modulation schemes under ideal and practical channel estimation, a higher loss compared to predictions from theoretical analyses.