Beamformer Control Circuit With Split Phase-Gain Memory

The patent divides the beamformer circuit into multiple independent front-end circuits, each with its own dedicated phase settings memory and gain settings memory. This segmentation allows each front-end to independently store and retrieve beam settings without requiring a large centralized memory structure, thereby achieving fast beam switching while reducing overall memory requirements and device complexity.

The patent pre-loads phase and gain settings into dedicated memory structures within each front-end circuit before beam switching is required. This preliminary action allows the beamformer to rapidly switch between beams by simply retrieving pre-computed settings from memory rather than sequentially writing to individual registers, significantly reducing beam switching time while maintaining configuration flexibility.

The patent transitions from a single-dimensional memory structure (storing both phase and gain in one memory) to a two-dimensional memory architecture with separate phase settings memory and gain settings memory. This dimensional change allows independent addressing of phase and gain parameters, enabling a multiplicative increase in the number of unique beam configurations (N phase settings × M gain settings) while maintaining manageable device complexity through modular organization.