This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been
fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2017.2748938, IEEE
Communications Letters
Robust Beam-tracking for mmWave Mobile Communications
Suhanya Jayaprakasam, Member, IEEE, XiaoXue Ma, Jun Won Choi, Member, IEEE, and Sunwoo Kim, Member,
IEEE
Abstract—We propose a robust beam-tracking algorithm to
maintain the communication link between a base station (BS)
and a mobile station (MS) in a millimeter wave (mmWave)
mobile communications system, with antenna arrays at both the
BS and MS. The channel is tracked with the extended Kalman
filter (EKF) at the static BS and the beamforming weight is
updated with a robust minimum mean squared error (MMSE)
beamformer bounded by the array vector error which is fed from
the error variance estimated by the EKF. Results show that our
proposed method is able to maintain a link with the MS with
a smaller mismatch error compared to existing beamtracking
method at moderate MS mobility and antenna array size.
Index Terms—robust beamforming, beam tracking, mmWave,
extended Kalman filter, minimum mean squared error beam-
forming
I. I NTRODUCTION
The key enabling technology of the milimeter-wave
(mmWave) communications is beamforming at both the trans-
mitter and the receiver [1], [2]. However, challenges still
remain in mobilizing the mmWave which requires smart
beamforming and beamtracking to avoid beam misalignment.
Two common tracking methods for mmWave beamforming
are codebook-based method and perturbation method [3]–[5].
However, the codebook method is limited by the resolution of
the codebook whereas perturbation method requires lengthy
beam training which incurs large overhead as well as delay,
rendering these approaches unsuitable for mobile environment.
Recently, Zhang et al. and Va et al. proposed Kalman
filter based beam-tracking solutions in the mobile mm-wave
communications [6], [7]. In Zhang et al.’s proposed Kalman
filter based tracking for analog transmitter-receiver model, the
number of measurements and time-slots needed for the estima-
tion grows with the number of antennas at the transmitter and
the receiver. Va et al. proposed an alternative solution which
requires only one measurement with the extended Kalman
filter (EKF) estimation and a conditional beam-switching
scheme. However, the proposed method assumes that the
devices can switch the beampattern to any arbitrary direction
as the system loses track, which is not possible in analog
beamforming where the number of unique beampattern is
limited to the number of antenna elements in the beamforming
array.
This work was partly supported by Institute for Information & Communi-
cations Technology Promotion (IITP) grant funded by the Korea government
(MSIT) [2016-0-00208, High Accurate Positioning Enabled MIMO Trans-
mission and Network Technologies for Next 5G-V2X (vehicle-to-everything)
Services] and by Samsung Research Funding & Incubation Center of Samsung
Electronics under Project Number SRFC-IT-1601-09.
Suhanya Jayaprakasam, XiaoXue Ma and Sunwoo Kim are with the Depart-
ment of Electronics and Computer Engineering while Jun Won Choi is with
the Department of Electrical Engineering, Hanyang University, 17 Haengdang-
dong, Seoungdong-gu, Seoul, 133-791, Korea (e-mail:suhanya.jp@ieee.org).
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1
In this paper, we propose a joint minimum mean squared er-
ror (MMSE) robust beamforming and EKF tracking strategy to
minimize the beamforming angle mismatch between a mobile
device and a fixed infrastructure in an mmWave environment.
II. S YSTEM M ODEL
Consider a scenario where a mobile station (MS) and a
static base station (BS) are equipped with uniform linear arrays
(ULA) of Nm and Nb antennas, respectively. Due to the high
cost and power consumption of analog-to-digital converters for
mmWave frequencies, the MS is equipped with a single analog
radio frequency (RF) chain, limiting its beamforming and
combining capability. The back-haul BS has higher processing
capability and is not restricted by power constraints and hence
a fully digital beamforming is possible at the BS, providing a
higher degree of freedom for beamforming and combining.
In an mmWave channel with beamforming, the channel is
characterized by a complex channel gain α, the beamforming
vector w, the angle of arrival (AoA) at the BS θb , and the
angle of departure (AoD) from the MS θm [6]. In this paper,
we assume that accurate initial channel values are already
available at the BS via existing initial access method and
endeavour to maintain the link after the initial channel access
procedure.
From the perspective of a downlink scheme, the array factor
of the BS or MS with N antenna elements is 1
1 h iT
a(θ, N ) = √ 1, ejkdcos(θ) , . . . , ejkd(N −1)cos(θ) (1)
N
where k = 2π/λ, λ is the propagation signal wavelength, d
is the distance between adjacent antenna elements in λ, θ ∈
{θb , θm } and N ∈ {Nb , Nm }.
At every time-slot, the MS sends K samples of known
training symbols q ∈ R1×K using beamforming vector f ∈
CNm ×1 , which the BS receives and combines with the weight
vector w ∈ CNb ×1 . We consider a case where the MS has
an estimation of θm via some localization technique and the
value of f = a(θm , N ) is transmitted to the BS along with
the training signals. It is assumed that the channel remains
stationary during this observation interval, and the channel
sparsity in the mmWave makes the paths to be likely separated
from each other. Hence, only a single path falls into the main
beam direction [7]. Furthermore, in our model, we assume that
the antenna arrays of the MS is always parallel to the antenna
arrays of the BS, hence θb = θm is assumed at the BS for
the estimation thus we use θ to represent the estimated angle.
1 Notations: Throughout the paper, vectors and matrices are denoted by
lower and upper-case bold letters. The real and complex fields are indicated
by R and C. The superscripts ∗, T and H denote conjugate, transpose matrix
and the Hermitian matrix operations, respectively.
This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2017.2748938, IEEE
Communications Letters
2

Applying the distributive law of multiplication, the observed Algorithm 1 Robust Beamtracking Algorithm
received signal string y ∈ R1×K at the BS is Input: θ0 , α0 , q
h(α,θ)
Output: θ̂t , α̂t , wt
z }| !{ Initialization; t ← 0
Nb X
Nm
α X 1: repeat t ← t + 1
y(α, θ) = √ wb∗ fm ejkd(b−m)cos(θ) q +n State Prediction
Nb Nm b=1 m=1
(2) 2: x̂t|t−1 = Fx̂t−1|t−1 + ut
where α is the path gain, function h(α, θ) corresponds to the 3: Pt|t−1 = FPt−1|t−1 FH + Q
measurement model of the system and n is the zero-mean Received Signal Measurement
complex white Gaussian noise. 4: y = αt wtH a(θt )a(θt )H fq + n
Similar to [7], we adopt a first-order Gauss-Markov model State Correction and Update
P HH
for the path gain evolution over the time, given by 5: Kt = Ht P t|t−1HHt +Rt
t|t−1 t
6: x̂t|t = x̂t|t−1 + Kt (yt − ht (x̂t|t−1 ))
αt+1 = ραt + ζt (3)
7: Pt|t = (I − Kt Ht )Pt|t−1
where ρ is the channel correlation coefficient, t is the timeslot Robust Beamforming Weight Update; k ← 0; a0 ← â
index and ζt = CN (0, (1 − ρ2 )). 8: repeat k ← k + 1
(ak )H R−1 ∗
yy Yq −1
The evolution model for the AoA and AoD is represented 9: λk1 = (ak )H R −1
(ak )
yy
by Gaussian process noise model [7] |λk |
10: λk2 = √1ε ||wk ||
θt+1 = θt + ξt (4) 11: wk = R−1 ∗ k k
yy (Yq − λ1 a )
λk
2 2
where ξt = N (0, σ ) and σ is the angle variance in one time 12: ak = â − λ1k (wk )H
2
slot. 13: until ||wk − wk−1 ||2 ≤ 
14: wt ← wk
III. ROBUST B EAMTRACKING WITH E XTENDED K ALMAN 15: until E[|θt − θ̂t |2 ] ≥ ∆θ
F ILTER AND M INIMUM M EAN S QUARED E RROR
B EAMFORMING
The aim of this paper is to enable the BS to effectively assumed to be the same at all times for the model we have
track the MS for successful data transmission with small discussed, the state vector in our problem is
angle mismatch error between the MS and the BS after
x = [<(α), =(α), θ]T (5)
the initial channel acquisition [8]. The flow of the proposed
method is summarized in Fig.1 and consists of two stages, i.e., From (3) and (4), the target state evolves according to the
channel estimation via EKF and optimal beamforming weight discrete time stochastic evolution model
update via robust MMSE beamforming. We have detailed the
algorithm in Algorithm 1. xt = Fxt−1 + ut + zt−1 (6)

where F = diag([ρ, ρ, 1]). If the angle and the path gain

Initial values are assumed to be independent of each other, then ut ∼
Array Elements Phase shifters Re(α0) Im(α0) θb0 θm0 N (0, [(1 − ρ2 )/2, (1 − ρ2 )/2, σ 2 ]T ). The zt−1 is referred to
y1 EKF as a process noise sequence and caters for any mismodelling
1) Prediction
Re(α) Im(α) θb θm
effects of unforeseen disturbances in the target motion model.
y2 y From the measurement model (2), we see that while α
is linear to the measurement, θ is non-linear. The extended
...

+ -
Kalman filter (EKF) tracks well in such case, given that the
yNb 2) Correction
3) Update non-linearity in the evolution and the measurement is not
w (updated Re(α) Im(α) θb θm severe [9].
weight）
ROBUST The objective of the EKF is to recursively estimate the
BEAMFORMING a(θb ), P(θb )
channel parameters from the observed signal y , yt (α, θ)
update w q (Reference signal )
and the measurement model h , ht (α̂, θ). ˆ At the time-slot t,
the new estimated state vector x̂t|t−1 and the estimated error
Fig. 1. The proposed tracking and robust beamforming system at the static covariance Pt|t−1 are predicted according to the state evolution
base station. model (see lines 2–3, Algorithm 1), where Q is a constant
state noise covariance matrix, Rt is the measurement error
covariance matrix, and Kt is the Kalman gain matrix. The Ĥ is
A. Channel Estimation via Extended Kalman Filter the local linearization of the non-linear function h. It is defined
In the mmWave channel, tracking the channel corresponds as Jacobian evaluated at x̂t|t−1 . To ensure that the state consists
to tracking four parameters: the θb , the θm and the real and of only real values, y and H are redefined as y = [<(y), =(y)]
∂h
the imaginary parts of the α [6]. Since both the θb and θm are and H = [<(h), =(h)]. The partial differentiation of ∂<(α) ,

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2017.2748938, IEEE
Communications Letters
3

∂h ∂h
∂=(α) and ∂θ are straightforward and are not detailed in this
paper.
B. Optimal Weight Selection via MMSE Robust Beamforming
Ideally, if both the BS and MS are aware of each others
location, the combining and the beamforming weight vector
can be set at w = a(θb , Nb ) and f = a(θm , Nm ) to ensure
that both the devices are in alignment at all times. The error
in the channel estimation as well as the inability of the analog
beamformer to direct mainbeam at any arbitrary location will
degenerate the BS-MS alignment. This in turn will result in
We show the beampatterns of a robust beamforming in Fig.
2. Robust beamforming predicts array vector which points to
the true angle from the prior information on estimated angle
and widens the mainbeam to cover both the estimated and the
true angle. Note that the capability of the robust beamforming
to widen its mainbeam is limited by the number of antenna
arrays N . As N increases, the beamwidth becomes narrower.
Thus the possibility of the true angle to be located in the
cusp of the beampattern increases, which will cause poor
measurement of the observed signal.
1

radiation power
estimated angle N=4
poor observed measurement y and cause further error in the true angle
delay-sum beamforming
estimation procedure in the next time slot. The misalignment 0.5
robust beamforming
will quickly accumulate over time.
Therefore, we propose to estimate the optimal beamforming 0
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80
weight w with the information on the estimated state param- angle [o ]
eters as well as the known training symbols q. Due to the 1

uncertainty in the array vector as only estimated angle θ̂ is
available, the problem is formulated as robust beamforming
problem with the goal to minimize the mean squared error
(MSE) between the beamformer output y and the known
transmission data q subject to wH a = 1 where w and a
are the optimal weight and array vector obtained with the
estimated array vector â , a(θ̂, Nb ) information.
Note that due to the uncertainty in θ̂, only an estimated
steering vector â is available at the BS and the true steering
vector a is unknown. In this paper, we endeavour to minimize
error between a and â and hence ε is set to ε = ||a(θ̂ +
σθ̂ ) − a(θ̂ − σθ̂ )||2 where σθ̂ is the standard deviation of
the estimated angle which can be obtained from the error
covariance matrix Pt|t . Under such uncertainty conditions, the
problem is formulated as a constrained robust beamforming
problem [10]:
minimize ||wH Y − q||2
w, a
subject to wH a = 1,
2
||a − â|| ≤ ε,
where the received signal matrix Y comprises of the individual
received signal at each antenna element before subjected to
the combining weight multiplication at the BS such that
Y = [a1 , · · · , ab · · · aNb ]T αt a(θt , Nm )fq, where ab refers to
the array response at the b-th element of the BS.
Solutions to Eq (10) in the manuscript is obtained by
solving the Lagrangian of Eq(10) with the Karush-Khan-
Tucker (KKT) conditions, and yields solutions provided in
lines 9-12 in the Algorithm 1, where the λ1 and λ2 multipliers
are the Lagrange multipliers and Ryy = E[yyH ] is the auto-
correlation matrix of the received signal. Note that solving for
w (line 11 of Algorithm 1) requires the value of a whereas
solving for a (line 12 of Algorithm 1) requires the value of w.
Hence, w and a cannot be solved discretely as the equations
are recursive. Therefore, the values of a and w are estimated
using an iterative method as shown in lines 8-13 in Algorithm
1 where the iteration is continued until the difference between
the two successful iteration of w is smaller than a threshold
value  [10]. In this paper, the value of  is set to 0.01.
radiation power
estimated angle
true angle
N=16
0.5 delay-sum beamforming
robust beamforming
0
-80 -60 -40 -20 0 20 40 60 80
angle [o ]
Fig. 2. Beampattern of the robust beamforming and beampattern of a
conventional beamforming when there is an error in the estimated angle.
IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSIONS
The initial values of the states, process error and the weight
are set to x̂0|−1 = [<(α0 ), =(α0 ), θ0 ], and P0|−1 = diag[(1 −
ρ2 )/2, (1 − ρ2 )/2, σ 2 ]T , respectively, where α0 and θ0 are
obtained via initial channel acquisition method, which is not
considered in this paper. The state covariance matrix is fixed
at Q = [(1 − ρ2 )/2, (1 − ρ2 )/2, σ 2 ]T . The distance between
(7a)
each element at both antenna arrays is d = 0.5λ.
(7b) The initial combining vector at the MS is w0 = a(θ0 , Nb ).
(7c) Subsequent values of the w is obtained from the robust
beamforming. The time-slot is the time taken for measurement,
which is 45ms [2] for an outdoor 28GHz mmWave channel.
The number of samples K is set to Nm which has been proved
to be sufficient for beamforming [1]. For simplicity, we assume
Nm = Nb in our simulations. The path gain correlation ρ is
set to 0.995 as the mmWave channel is mostly free from time
varying small scale fading [7].
We compare our results to the results of Va et al. [7].
The work in [7] also applies EKF to track the channel with
the aid of beamswitching at the analog bearmformers at the
transmitter and the receiver. The beam is switched to adjacent
beam when the difference between the difference between the
estimated angle and the true angle is larger the the the half
power beamwidth (HPBW) of the beamformer.
We show that our proposed EKF tracking with robust
beamforming at the BS is able to track the AoA/AoD more
accurately. However, over the time, the system will lose its
tracking ability as the error exceed a preset threshold ∆θ and
channel acquisition will be needed again to realign the BS and
the MS, which is not covered in this paper. We show in Fig.

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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/LCOMM.2017.2748938, IEEE
Communications Letters
4

10-2 10-1 10-1 10-1

Va et. al. [7] Va et. al. [7]
robust tracking (proposed) robust tracking (proposed)
10-2

MSE of θ [rad 2]
MSE of θ [rad 2]
MSE of θ [rad 2]

MSE of θ [rad 2]
10-3

10-2 10-2 10-3

-4
10
10-4
Va et. al. [7]
Va et. al. [7] robust tracking (proposed)
robust tracking (proposed)
10 -5 10-3 10 -3
0 20 40 60 80 100 0 10 20 30 10 15 20 25 30 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 1.2
time-slot SNR [dB] N σ 2 ( o)

(a) (b) (c) (d)

Fig. 3. MSE of the angle defined by E[|θt − θ̂t |]2 , (a) for the first 100 time-slot (b) at the 100-th time-slot at N = 16, σ 2 = 0.5 for various SNR (c) at
the 100-th time-slot for various antenna elements Nm and Nb at SNR = 30dB, σ 2 = 0.5, and (d) at the 100-th time-slot for various angle variance σ 2 at
SNR = 30dB, N = 16.

3(a) and (b) that the error accumulation of our proposed model
is much lower in both low and high SNR regime and hence
channel acquisition can be done less frequently compared to
the model proposed in [7].
However, the proposed EKF tracking with robust beam-
forming starts losing its edge over Va’s EKF tracking with
beam-switching as the number of antenna elements in the
arrays increases, as can be seen in Fig. 3(c). The error stems
from the cusping issue we have discussed in Fig. 2. This
phenomenon becomes more pronounced when the mobility
variance of the θ increases, as shown in Fig. 3(d). However,
the mobility of 1◦ per time-slot accounts to 22◦ /s. Hence we
argue that in practical mobility of a MS device, our proposed
method performs quite well. The error propagation caused
by the cusping issue at higher N can be alleviated if the
system is allowed to turn some antennas off. This requires joint
optimization of both the weight and the number of antennas
which will be addressed in future research.
The results in Fig.3 are provided with the assumption that
the MS has accurate location information of θm . However,
in reality the MS will only have an estimation of the θm
with some error, whereby the beamforming vector f is not
accurate and hence will affect the estimation at the BS. We
show in Fig.4 (a) and (b) that as the error variance of the angle
information σm2
increases, the error increases almost linearly,
regardless of the system’s SNR.
100
10-1
MSE of θ [rad 2]
MSE of θ [rad 2]
V. C ONCLUSIONS
In this paper, we proposed a robust beam-tracking method
in the mmWave mobile communications to enable a static,
BS equipped with a digital beamformer to effectively track
a mobile MS equipped with an analog beamformer after the
initial channel acquisition. The method jointly applies EKF
for tracking and robust MMSE beamforming for beamforming
weight estimation. We show that proposed method can effec-
tively reduce the alignment error in the beamforming angle
and thus engage a longer BS-MS communication link without
the need for channel re-acquisition, provided that the mobility
of the MS and the antenna sizes are moderate.
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