For at least some embodiments, prior receive signal quality measurements influence whether receive signal quality measurements of future characterization of the node of each of the different transmit and receive beam settings are made. The receive signal quality measurements at times T1, T2 and T3 can be used to determine whether later receive signal quality measurement should or should not be made. For example, the receive signal quality measurements for the sector 1 transmit beam setting of 1 and the sector 2 receive beam forming setting is different for each of the receive signal quality measurements and T1, T2, T3. This would suggest that the later characterization of the node should include this setting. In contrast, the receive signal quality measurements for the sector 1 transmit beam setting of 2 and the sector 2 receive beam forming setting is same for each of the receive signal quality measurements and T1, T2, T3. This would suggest that the later characterization of the node may not need to include this setting because the environment about the peer nodes that correspond with this setting is relatively static. Accordingly, for an embodiment, characterizations of the node are performed upon determining that variations of the received signal quality measurements over a plurality of measurements are greater than a threshold.