It should be understood that in various embodiments of this application, a beam may be understood as a spatial resource, and may be a transmit or receive precoding vector having energy transmission directivity. In addition, the transmit or receive precoding vector can be identified by using index information. The index information may be corresponding to an identity (ID) of a configured resource of the terminal. For example, the index information may be corresponding to an identity or a resource of a configured SSB, or may be corresponding to an identity or a resource of a configured CSI-RS, or may be corresponding to an identity or a resource of a configured uplink sounding reference signal (SRS). Optionally, the index information may also be explicitly or implicitly carried by a signal or a channel that is carried by a beam. The energy transmission directivity may mean that the precoding vector is used to perform precoding processing on a signal that needs to be sent, so that the signal obtained after the precoding processing has specific spatial directivity, and that a received signal obtained after the precoding processing is performed by using the precoding vector has relatively good received power, for example, satisfies a received demodulation signal-to-noise ratio. The energy transmission directivity may also mean that same signals sent from different spatial positions and received by using the precoding vector have different received power. Optionally, a same communications apparatus (for example, a terminal device or a network device) may have different precoding vectors, and different devices may also have different precoding vectors, that is, correspond to different beams. For a configuration or a capability of a communications apparatus, one communications apparatus may simultaneously use one or more of a plurality of different precoding vectors, that is, one or more beams may be simultaneously formed.