The present disclosure provides for the trigger of a beam refinement reference signal (BRRS) message. Triggering a BRRS message can include determining that a measured quality of a transmit and receive (Tx-Rx) beam pair is below the first value of the first quality threshold, the Tx-Rx beam pair corresponding to a current transmit (Tx) beam from an evolved node B (eNodeB) and the current receive (Rx) beam at the user equipment (UE), encoding a message for the eNodeB based on the determination that the quality of the Tx-Rx beam pair is below the quality threshold, wherein the message comprises a request for one or more BRRS, and processing the one or more BRRS to select a different Rx beam at the UE than the current Rx beam.