Distributed transmit beamforming for UAV to base communications

© 2013 IEEE. Distributed transmit beamforming (DTB) is very efficient for extending the communication distance between a swarm of UAVs and the base, particularly when considering the constraints in weight and battery life for payloads on UAVs. In this paper, we review major function modules and potential solutions in realizing DTB in UAV systems, such as timing and carrier synchronization, phase drift tracking and compensation, and beamforming vector generation and updating. We then focus on beamforming vector generation and updating, and introduce a concatenated training scheme, together with a recursive channel estimation and updating algorithm. We also propose three approaches for tracking the variation of channels and updating the vectors. The effectiveness of these approaches is validated by simulation results

An Adaptive Approach for the Joint Antenna Selection and Beamforming Optimization

Adaptive beamforming techniques are widely known for their capability of leveraging the performance of antenna arrays. The effectiveness of such techniques typically increases as the number of antennas grows. In contrast, computational and hardware costs very often limit the deployment of beamforming in large-scale arrays. To circumvent this problem, antenna selection strategies have been developed aiming to maintain much of the performance gain obtained by using a large array while keeping computational and hardware costs at acceptable levels. In this context, the present paper is dedicated to the development of two new adaptive algorithms for solving the problem of joint antenna selection and beamforming for uplink reception in mobile communication systems. Both algorithms are based on an alternating optimization strategy and are designed to operate with a limited number of radio-frequency chains. The main difference between the proposed algorithms is that the first is formulated by considering the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) criterion, while the second is based on the minimum-variance distortionless-response (MVDR) approach. The numerical simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms

Under-determined training and estimation for distributed transmit beamforming systems

Distributed transmit beamforming (DTB) can significantly boost the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a wireless communication system. To realize the benefits of DTB, generating and feeding back beamforming vector are very challenging tasks. Existing schemes have either enormous overhead or weak robustness in noisy channels. In this paper, we investigate the design of training sequences and beamforming vector estimators in DTB systems. We consider an under-determined case, where the length of training sequence N sent from each node is smaller than the number of source nodes M. We derive the optimal estimation of the beamforming vector that maximizes the beamforming gain and show that it can be well approximated as the linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimator. Based on the LMMSE estimator, we investigate the optimal design of training sequences and propose efficient DTB schemes. We analytically show that these schemes can achieve approximately N times increased SNR in uncorrelated channels, and even higher gain in correlated ones. We also propose a concatenated training scheme which optimally combines the training signals over multiple frames to obtain the beamforming vector. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DTB schemes can yield significant gains even at very low SNRs, with total feedback bits much less than those required in the existing schemes.11 page(s