Reconfigurable hybrid beamforming MIMO receiver with inter-band carrier aggregation and RF-domain LMS weight adaptation

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10707947-B2
Application number	US-201816163374-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 17, 2018
Priority date	Oct 17, 2017
Publication date	Jul 7, 2020
Grant date	Jul 7, 2020

Abstract

A reconfigurable, multi-band hybrid beamforming architecture is introduced. The present invention is related to a Cartesian-Combining architecture to efficiently implement RF beamforming for a single downconversion chain employing direct downconversion in which the Cartesian-Combining architecture is extended to hybrid beamforming and to heterodyne downconversion.

First claim

We claim:

1. A fully-connected hybrid beamforming receiver comprising:
a. circuitry implementing one or more low noise amplifiers, each coupled to an antenna, each low-noise amplifier outputting one or more streams;
b. circuitry, for applying complex weighting to each of the one or more streams;
c. circuitry implementing a multi-stage combiner, for combining one stream from each of the one or more low noise amplifiers to produce a combined stream; and
d. circuitry implementing one or more two-stage mixers, per the combined stream, and one mixer per stage, a first stage for performing a heterodyne downconverting of the combined stream to an intermediate frequency using a signal generated by a first local oscillator and a second stage for performing a heterodyne downconverting of each combined stream at the intermediate frequency to a baseband frequency using a signal generated by a second local oscillator.

2. The receiver of claim 1 wherein each of the one or more low noise amplifiers comprises a concurrent dual-band low noise amplifier.

3. The receiver of claim 1 wherein each of the one or more low noise amplifiers comprises a contiguously wideband low noise amplifier.

4. The receiver of claim 1 wherein the circuitry for applying complex weighting comprises:
a. a variable gain amplifier; and
b. a phase shifter.

5. The receiver of claim 4 wherein the variable gain amplifier is controlled by an analog voltage or a digital code.

6. The receiver of claim 4 wherein the variable gain amplifier is controlled by an analog voltage or current.

7. The receiver of claim 4 , the phase shifter having a gain, wherein the gain of the phase shifter is controlled by an analog voltage or current.

8. The receiver of claim 4 , the phase shifter having a gain, wherein the gain of the phase shifter is controlled by a digital code.

9. The receiver of claim 1 wherein the circuitry for applying complex weighting comprises:
a. a pair of variable gain amplifiers; and
b. a downconverter.

10. The receiver of claim 9 wherein the gain of the variable gain amplifiers is controlled by an analog voltage or current.

11. The receiver of claim 9 wherein the gain of the variable gain amplifiers is controlled by a digital code.

12. The receiver of claim 1 wherein the signal generated by the second local oscillator is derived from the signal generated by the first local oscillator.

13. The receiver of claim 5 wherein each of the one or more streams comprises a real and an imaginary component.

14. The receiver of claim 9 wherein the second stage of the one or more two-stage mixers performs image rejection.

15. The receiver of claim 9 wherein the first stage of the one or more two-stage mixers performs simple downconversion of the combined stream to the intermediate frequency and further wherein the second stage of the one or more two-stage mixers performs downconversion of the combined stream to the baseband frequency.

16. The receiver of claim 9 wherein the first stage of the one or more two-stage mixers performs quadrature downconversion of the combined stream to the intermediate frequency and combines the real and imaginary components of the stream into a combined signal and further wherein the second stage of the one or more two-stage mixers performs quadrature downconversion of the combined signal to the baseband frequency.

17. The receiver of claim 9 wherein the first stage of the one or more two-stage mixers performs downconversion of the combined stream to the intermediate frequency and further wherein the second stage of the one or more two-stage mixers performs simple downconversion of the combined stream to the baseband frequency.

Assignees

• Univ Carnegie Mellon

Inventors

• Paramesh Jeyanandh
• Mondal Susnata

Classifications

• H04B1/0028 Primary

  wherein the AD/DA conversion occurs at baseband stage · CPC title

• H04B1/0078

  with a common intermediate frequency amplifier for the different intermediate frequencies, e.g. when using switched intermediate frequency filters · CPC title

• H04B7/088 Primary

  using beam selection · CPC title

• H04B7/0413

  MIMO systems · CPC title

• H04B1/16

  Circuits · CPC title