A random access procedure is described for beam-based cell-less operations in fifth generation radio access technology. In one example a preamble transmission power, a preamble format, and a transmit timing are jointly determined at a user equipment (UE) for respective ones of one or more physical random access channel (PRACH) preamble transmissions. The determined preamble transmission powers, preamble formats, and transmit timing, multiple PRACH preamble transmissions are transmitted each to a target access point (AP). Based on the transmitted PRACH preamble transmissions, the UE the receives at least one random access response (RAR) message with an indication of timing advance (TA) values and beams of each target AP.