Engineering Commons^™

Real-Time Beamforming Using High-Speed Fpgas At The Allen Telescope Array, William C. Barott, Oren Milgrome, Melvyn Wright, David Macmahon, Tom Kilsdonk, Peter Backus, Matt Dexter

William Barott

The Allen Telescope Array (ATA) at the Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO) is a wide‐field panchromatic radio telescope currently consisting of 42 offset‐Gregorian antennas each with a 6 m aperture, with plans to expand the array to 350 antennas. Through unique back‐end hardware, the ATA performs real‐time wideband beamforming with independent subarray capabilities and customizable beam shaping. The beamformers enable science observations requiring the full gain of the array, time domain (nonintegrated) output, and interference excision or orthogonal beamsets. In this paper we report on the design of this beamformer, including architecture and experimental results. Furthermore, we address some practical …

Joint User Grouping And Linear Virtual Beamforming: Complexity, Algorithms And Approximation Bounds, Mingyi Hong, Zi Xu, Meisam Razaviyayn, Zhi-Quan Luo

Mingyi Hong

In a wireless system with a large number of distributed nodes, the quality of communication can be greatly improved by pooling the nodes to perform joint transmission/reception. In this paper, we consider the problem of optimally selecting a subset of nodes from potentially a large number of candidates to form a virtual multi-antenna system, while at the same time designing their joint linear transmission strategies. We focus on two specific application scenarios: 1) multiple single antenna transmitters cooperatively transmit to a receiver; 2) a single transmitter transmits to a receiver with the help of a number of cooperative relays. We …

Connectivity Of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks: Impacts Of Antenna Models, Qiu Wang, Hong-Ning Dai, Qinglin Zhao

Hong-Ning Dai

This paper concerns the impact of various antenna models on the network connectivity of wireless ad hoc networks. Existing antenna models have their pros and cons in the accuracy reflecting realistic antennas and the computational complexity. We therefore propose a new directional antenna model called Approx-real to balance the accuracy against the complexity. We then run extensive simulations to compare the existing models and the Approx-real model in terms of the network connectivity. The study results show that the Approx-real model can better approximate the best accurate existing antenna models than other simplified antenna models, while introducing no high computational …

Throughput And Delay In Wireless Sensor Networks Using Directional Antennas, Hong-Ning Dai

Hong-Ning Dai

Most of studies only consider that wireless sensor networks are equipped with only omni-directional antennas, which can cause high collisions. It is shown that the per node throughput in such networks is decreased with the increased number of nodes. Thus, the transmission with multiple short-range hops is preferred to reduce the interference. However, other studies show that the transmission delay increases with the increased number of hops.

In this paper, we consider using directional antennas in wireless sensor networks. We have found that using directional antennas not only can increase the throughput capacity but also can decrease the delay by …

On Collision-Tolerant Transmission With Directional Antennas, Hong-Ning Dai, Kam-Wing Ng, Min-You Wu

Hong-Ning Dai

The application of directional antennas in wireless networks brings numerous benefits, such as increased spatial reuse and mitigated interferences. Most MAC protocols with directional antennas are based on the RTS/CTS mechanism which works well in wireless networks using omni-directional antennas. However, RTS/CTS frames cannot mitigate the interfering nodes completely. Besides, they also contribute a lot to the performance overhead. This paper studies the problem from a new perspective. We analyze the transmission success probability under directional transmission and directional reception when the antenna beamwidth is quite narrow. Motivated by the analytical results, we design a lightweight MAC protocol without RTS/CTS …

On The Capacity Of Multi-Channel Wireless Networks Using Directional Antennas, Hong-Ning Dai, Kam-Wing Ng, Raymond Chi-Wing Wong, Min-You Wu

Hong-Ning Dai

The capacity of wireless ad hoc networks is affected by two key factors: the interference among concurrent transmissions and the number of simultaneous transmissions on a single interface. Recent studies found that using multiple channels can separate concurrent transmissions and greatly improve network throughput. However, those studies only consider that wireless nodes are equipped with only omnidirectional antennas, which cause high collisions. On the other hand, some researchers found that directional antennas bring more benefits such as reduced interference and increased spatial reuse compared with omnidirectional antennas. But, they only focused on a single-channel network which only allows finite concurrent …

Combined Beamforming And Space-Time Block Coding With A Sparse Array Antenna, Robert H. Morelos-Zaragoza, Mohammad Ghavami

Robert Henry Morelos-Zaragoza

In this paper, we continue our investigation of joint beamforming and transmit diversity with space-time block coding. In particular, the performance of a four-element array antenna is considered, in the context of an indoor wireless communication system. The main contribution is to show that transmit diversity may be practically achieved, even with correlated beams produced by a sparse array antenna.

Combined Beamforming And Space-Time Block Coding With Sparse Array Antennas, Robert H. Morelos-Zaragoza

Robert Henry Morelos-Zaragoza

In this paper, the combination of beamforming and space-time block coding is investigated. An adaptive scheme for the assignment of transmission beams is proposed. Data for the determination of beams are obtained using a triangular switch-beam array antenna at the transmitter. The number of peak points is determined from the data and a prescribed threshold level. Orthogonal space-time block coding is then applied to the transmission beams. We examine the distribution of the number of assigned beams as a function of indoor wireless channel parameters. Also, the effects of a small number of array elements and associated correlated beams, and …