QUALCOMM Incorporated
Beamforming architecture for scalable radio-frequency front end

Abstract:

An apparatus and a method for configuring antenna arrays for scalable radio frequency (RF) architecture are dis-closed. A subset of antenna arrays are grouped into K groups and a receive or transmit weight vector is applied to each of the antenna arrays in each of the K groups. A channel response is measured for each of the antenna in the K groups. The response is summed for each group and complex scaling factors are calculated based on the summed response. Based on the scaling factors the antenna weight vectors arc updated and the updated weight vectors arc applied to the antenna arrays. The steps of grouping the antennas and refining the weight vectors are performed till the antenna weight vectors reach a steady point, i.e. the current antenna weight does not improve the beamforming gain by a predetermined threshold in comparison to the previous antenna weight.