1,590 research outputs found
Massive MIMO is a Reality -- What is Next? Five Promising Research Directions for Antenna Arrays
Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is no longer a "wild" or
"promising" concept for future cellular networks - in 2018 it became a reality.
Base stations (BSs) with 64 fully digital transceiver chains were commercially
deployed in several countries, the key ingredients of Massive MIMO have made it
into the 5G standard, the signal processing methods required to achieve
unprecedented spectral efficiency have been developed, and the limitation due
to pilot contamination has been resolved. Even the development of fully digital
Massive MIMO arrays for mmWave frequencies - once viewed prohibitively
complicated and costly - is well underway. In a few years, Massive MIMO with
fully digital transceivers will be a mainstream feature at both sub-6 GHz and
mmWave frequencies. In this paper, we explain how the first chapter of the
Massive MIMO research saga has come to an end, while the story has just begun.
The coming wide-scale deployment of BSs with massive antenna arrays opens the
door to a brand new world where spatial processing capabilities are
omnipresent. In addition to mobile broadband services, the antennas can be used
for other communication applications, such as low-power machine-type or
ultra-reliable communications, as well as non-communication applications such
as radar, sensing and positioning. We outline five new Massive MIMO related
research directions: Extremely large aperture arrays, Holographic Massive MIMO,
Six-dimensional positioning, Large-scale MIMO radar, and Intelligent Massive
MIMO.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Digital Signal Processin
The Case for Combining a Large Low-Band Very High Frequency Transmitter With Multiple Receiving Arrays for Geospace Research: A Geospace Radar
We argue that combining a high‐power, large‐aperture radar transmitter with several large‐aperture receiving arrays to make a geospace radar—a radar capable of probing near‐Earth space from the upper troposphere through to the solar corona—would transform geospace research. We review the emergence of incoherent scatter radar in the 1960s as an agent that unified early, pioneering research in geospace in a common theoretical, experimental, and instrumental framework, and we suggest that a geospace radar would have a similar effect on future developments in space weather research. We then discuss recent developments in radio‐array technology that could be exploited in the development of a geospace radar with new or substantially improved capabilities compared to the radars in use presently. A number of applications for a geospace radar with the new and improved capabilities are reviewed including studies of meteor echoes, mesospheric and stratospheric turbulence, ionospheric flows, plasmaspheric and ionospheric irregularities, and reflection from the solar corona and coronal mass ejections. We conclude with a summary of technical requirements
Adaptive multibeam antennas for spacelab. Phase A: Feasibility study
The feasibility was studied of using adaptive multibeam multi-frequency antennas on the spacelab, and to define the experiment configuration and program plan needed for a demonstration to prove the concept. Three applications missions were selected, and requirements were defined for an L band communications experiment, an L band radiometer experiment, and a Ku band communications experiment. Reflector, passive lens, and phased array antenna systems were considered, and the Adaptive Multibeam Phased Array (AMPA) was chosen. Array configuration and beamforming network tradeoffs resulted in a single 3m x 3m L band array with 576 elements for high radiometer beam efficiency. Separate 0.4m x 0.4 m arrays are used to transmit and receive at Ku band with either 576 elements or thinned apertures. Each array has two independently steerable 5 deg beams, which are adaptively controlled
A Scalable 6-to-18 GHz Concurrent Dual-Band Quad-Beam Phased-Array Receiver in CMOS
This paper reports a 6-to-18 GHz integrated phased- array receiver implemented in 130-nm CMOS. The receiver is easily scalable to build a very large-scale phased-array system. It concurrently forms four independent beams at two different frequencies from 6 to 18 GHz. The nominal conversion gain of the receiver ranges from 16 to 24 dB over the entire band while the worst-case cross-band and cross-polarization rejections are achieved 48 dB and 63 dB, respectively. Phase shifting is performed in the LO path by a digital phase rotator with the worst-case RMS phase error and amplitude variation of 0.5° and 0.4 dB, respectively, over the entire band. A four-element phased-array receiver system is implemented based on four receiver chips. The measured array patterns agree well with the theoretical ones with a peak-to-null ratio of over 21.5 dB
Design and characterization of T/R module for commercial beamforming applications
In the smart antenna system, the transmit and receive (T/R) module is one of the core components as it accounts for nearly 45% of the overall smart antenna system cost. Due to the high implementation cost of the T/R module, the literature was mainly centered around the military and satellite radar applications. However, over the years, the cost of the T/R module has been reduced drastically by leveraging on the advanced manufacturing technology, volume production pricing and adaptation of the commercially available off-the-shelf components, as a result, the adoption of the T/R module in commercial and industrial application become possible. In this work, we have proposed a commercially affordable T/R module that operates in 4.9 – 5.9 GHz band for commercial and industrial applications. The T/R module was designed, calibrated, and characterized for use in the beamforming smart antenna system. The design process including the circuit, schematic and printed circuit board (PCB) were highlighted. The proposed recursive calibration process managed to correct the phase error to ± 1° and amplitude error to ± 0.2 dB. In addition, the amplitude distribution of 0.5-1-1-0.5 combination has successfully suppressed the side-lobe level (SLL) to -28.7 dB for 0°, -22.71 dB for ± 20° and -12.77 dB for ± 40° beam steering. This work is aimed to promote the adoption of the T/R module into the commercial and industrial applications such as public or government infrastructure
Multi-stage Antenna Selection for Adaptive Beamforming in MIMO Arrays
Increasing the number of transmit and receive elements in
multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antenna arrays imposes a substantial
increase in hardware and computational costs. We mitigate this problem by
employing a reconfigurable MIMO array where large transmit and receive arrays
are multiplexed in a smaller set of k baseband signals. We consider four stages
for the MIMO array configuration and propose four different selection
strategies to offer dimensionality reduction in post-processing and achieve
hardware cost reduction in digital signal processing (DSP) and radio-frequency
(RF) stages. We define the problem as a determinant maximization and develop a
unified formulation to decouple the joint problem and select antennas/elements
in various stages in one integrated problem. We then analyze the performance of
the proposed selection approaches and prove that, in terms of the output SINR,
a joint transmit-receive selection method performs best followed by
matched-filter, hybrid and factored selection methods. The theoretical results
are validated numerically, demonstrating that all methods allow an excellent
trade-off between performance and cost.Comment: Submitted for publicatio
Design and Implementation of a FPGA and DSP Based MIMO Radar Imaging System
The work presented in this paper is aimed at the implementation of a real-time multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) imaging radar used for area surveillance. In this radar, the equivalent virtual array method and time-division technique are applied to make 16 virtual elements synthesized from the MIMO antenna array. The chirp signal generater is based on a combination of direct digital synthesizer (DDS) and phase locked loop (PLL). A signal conditioning circuit is used to deal with the coupling effect within the array. The signal processing platform is based on an efficient field programmable gates array (FPGA) and digital signal processor (DSP) pipeline where a robust beamforming imaging algorithm is running on. The radar system was evaluated through a real field experiment. Imaging capability and real-time performance shown in the results demonstrate the practical feasibility of the implementation
Fast Implementation of Transmit Beamforming for Colocated MIMO Radar
Multiple-input Multiple-output (MIMO) radars benefit from spatial and waveform diversities to improve the performance potential. Phased array radars transmit scaled versions of a single waveform thereby limiting the transmit degrees of freedom to one. However MIMO radars transmit diverse waveforms from different transmit array elements thereby increasing the degrees of freedom to form flexible transmit beampatterns. The transmit beampattern of a colocated MIMO radar depends on the zero-lag correlation matrix of different transmit waveforms. Many solutions have been developed for designing the signal correlation matrix to achieve a desired transmit beampattern based on optimization algorithms in the literature. In this paper, a fast algorithm for designing the correlation matrix of the transmit waveforms is developed that allows the next generation radars to form flexible beampatterns in real-time. An efficient method for sidelobe control with negligible increase in mainlobe width is also presented
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