Probabilistic Position-Aided Beam Selection for mmWave MIMO Systems

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) MIMO systems rely on highly directional beamforming to overcome severe path loss and ensure robust communication links. However, selecting the optimal beam pair efficiently remains a challenge due to the large search space and the overhead of conventional methods. This paper proposes a probabilistic position-aided beam selection approach that exploits the statistical dependence between user equipment (UE) positions and optimal beam indices. We model the underlying joint probability mass function (PMF) of the positions and the beam indices as a low-rank tensor and estimate its parameters from training data using Bayesian inference. The estimated model is then used to predict the best (or a list of the top) beam pair indices for new UE positions. The proposed method is evaluated using data generated from a state-of-the-art ray tracing simulator and compared with neural network-based and fingerprinting approaches. The results show that our approach achieves a high data rate with fewer training samples and a significantly reduced beam search space. These advantages render it a promising solution for practical mmWave MIMO deployments, reducing the beam search overhead while maintaining a reliable connectivity.