Antenna Array Beamwidth Reduction via ADC Oversampling
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Solution Overview
Problem
Traditional RADAR and directive antenna systems face limitations in reducing beamwidth due to physical constraints and cost, leading to interference and clutter noise issues, which affect signal accuracy and detection range.
Innovation Solution
The use of high-speed Analog to Digital Converters for over-sampling signals above the Nyquist rate generates additional vector samples, allowing for the construction of higher-dimensional signal and calibration data vectors, effectively increasing the antenna array size and reducing beamwidth.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If the physical size of the antenna array L is increased to reduce beamwidth, then the beamwidth decreases and interference rejection improves, but the cost and physical constraints increase linearly with the number of elements M
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates synthetic copies of antenna elements through oversampling. By sampling the received signal at a rate P times higher than the Nyquist rate, the system generates P-1 additional synthetic antenna elements for each physical element. This virtual copying allows the system to achieve the beamwidth of a large physical array without the corresponding increase in hardware complexity and cost.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from the spatial dimension to the temporal dimension by using oversampling in time. Instead of adding more physical antenna elements in space, the system exploits the time domain by taking multiple samples per signal period. This dimensional transformation allows synthetic element creation without increasing physical array dimensions.
2Reliability
If the number of array elements M is increased to narrow the beamwidth, then the Signal to Interference Ratio improves, but the cost increases linearly with M
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates synthetic copies of antenna elements through oversampling. By sampling the received signal at a rate P times higher than the Nyquist rate, the system generates P-1 additional synthetic antenna elements for each physical element. This virtual copying allows the system to achieve the beamwidth of a large physical array without the corresponding increase in hardware complexity and cost.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the sampling rate parameter from the minimum Nyquist rate to a higher rate P times greater. This parameter change in the temporal domain creates additional degrees of freedom that are mathematically equivalent to having more physical antenna elements, thereby improving signal-to-interference ratio without adding hardware.
3Measurement precision
If the carrier frequency fc is changed to adjust beamwidth, then the beamwidth changes proportionally to wavelength, but this limits flexibility as beamwidth is tied to frequency selection
Solution Approach 1:
The patent transitions from the spatial dimension to the temporal dimension by using oversampling in time. Instead of adding more physical antenna elements in space, the system exploits the time domain by taking multiple samples per signal period. This dimensional transformation allows synthetic element creation without increasing physical array dimensions.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the sampling rate parameter from the minimum Nyquist rate to a higher rate P times greater. This parameter change in the temporal domain creates additional degrees of freedom that are mathematically equivalent to having more physical antenna elements, thereby improving signal-to-interference ratio without adding hardware.
Data Source
AI summary
Invention that uses over-sampling of the Analog to Digital Converter to produce additional synthetic vector signal samples that are used to construct high dimensional Signal Data Vectors and Calibration Steering Vectors, that are used to synthetically increase the effective size of the original real array which results in the generation of a narrower array beamwidth.