ATG Subband Beamformer for Multi-User Capacity
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current Air-to-Ground (ATG) wireless communication systems face challenges in accommodating increasing demand for Internet services due to limited spectrum availability, particularly in providing high data rates to aircraft without interfering with primary satellite communications.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of a subband beamformer structure that dynamically allocates unit subbands to multiple aircraft, allowing for multi-user beamforming and subband combining, which reduces inter-beam interference and efficiently serves a large number of aircraft with increased data rates using a smaller number of base station ports compared to conventional designs.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If conventional beamforming is used with limited spectrum, then system complexity is reduced, but network throughput and user capacity are insufficient to accommodate increasing demand for Internet services
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the frequency spectrum into multiple subbands and processes each subband separately through dedicated beamformers. This segmentation allows the system to handle multiple users simultaneously with increased throughput while keeping each individual beamformer relatively simple, resolving the contradiction between network throughput and device complexity.
2Productivity
If more antenna elements are used to increase data rates, then user capacity improves, but the number of required base station ports increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple beamformed subband signals from multiple antenna elements into a reduced number of base station ports through signal combining operations. This allows the system to utilize many antenna elements for high user capacity while mapping the processed signals to fewer physical ports, resolving the contradiction between user capacity and base station ports.
3Productivity
If spectrum bandwidth is increased to accommodate more Internet services, then data rates improve, but interference with primary satellite communications increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the available spectrum into multiple narrow subbands and processes each with dedicated beamforming. This frequency-selective approach allows efficient utilization of limited spectrum resources to achieve high data rates while minimizing overall spectral emissions and interference with satellite communications, resolving the contradiction between data rate and harmful interference.
Data Source
AI summary
Aspects of the present disclosure generally relate to techniques and apparatus that may help improve greatly reduce the implementation complexity of the ground station, and ground base-station user capacity by utilizing a subband beamformer for processing uplink signals received from aircraft at ground base stations, in an air-to-ground (ATG) system. The techniques presented herein may allow for dynamic subband allocation to different airborne devices with multi-user beamforming and subband combining.