Millimeter-wave sourceless receiver

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10116396-B1
Application number	US-201715582013-A
Country	US
Kind code	B1
Filing date	Apr 28, 2017
Priority date	Apr 28, 2017
Publication date	Oct 30, 2018
Grant date	Oct 30, 2018

Abstract

A receiver includes a planar antenna array including at least three antennas. Each antenna simultaneous receives a local oscillator (LO) signal from a near field region and a radio frequency (RF) signal from a far field region. Each antenna is coupled to a respective quasi-optical mixer. Each quasi-optical mixer includes only passive components and outputs a respective intermediate frequency (IF) signal. The receiver includes two six-port demodulators. Each six-port demodulator receives a different pair of IF signals as input and outputs signals representing baseband power of the pair of IF signals. Each six-port demodulator includes only passive components. The receiver also includes a processor to calculate direction of arrival (DoA) for the LO signal and the RF signal using the output from the six-port demodulators.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A receiver comprising:
a planar antenna array including at least three antennas, each antenna being configured for simultaneously receiving a local oscillator (LO) signal from a near field region and a radio frequency (RF) signal from a far field region;
each antenna being coupled to a respective quasi-optical mixer, each quasi-optical mixer including only passive components and outputting a respective intermediate frequency (IF) signal;
at least two six-port demodulators, each six-port demodulator receiving a respective different pair of IF signals as input and outputting signals representing baseband power of the respective pair of IF signals, each six-port demodulator including only passive components; and
a processor coupled to receive output from the six-port demodulators, the processor being configured to calculate direction of arrival (DoA) for the LO signal and the RF signal using the output from the six-port demodulators.

2. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein each six-port demodulator comprises:
a correlator portion; and
a power detector portion, wherein the power detector portion is based on zero-biased schottky diode.

3. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein each quasi-optical mixer is a zero-biased schottky diode-based mixer.

4. The receiver of claim 1 , further comprising:
a power divider coupled to receive a IF signal from at least one quasi-optical mixer, the power divider dividing the IF signal into two signals for input into the at least two six-port demodulators.

5. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the processor is configured to calculate DoA by:
calculating phase differences between the respective pairs of IF signals using the output from the six-port demodulators; and
calculating the DoA of the LO and RF signals using the phase differences.

6. The receiver of claim 1 , wherein the processor is configured to calculate the DoA using the phase differences by solving the equations:

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Assignees

• Wu Ke
• Liu Ruizhi
• Huawei Tech Canada Co Ltd

Inventors

• Wu Ke
• Liu Ruizhi

Classifications

• H04B5/0043

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H04B17/27

  for locating or positioning the transmitter · CPC title

• H04B2210/006

  Devices for generating or processing an RF signal by optical means · CPC title

• H04B10/616

  Details of the electronic signal processing in coherent optical receivers · CPC title

• H01Q5/22

  RF wavebands combined with non-RF wavebands, e.g. infrared or optical · CPC title