Conjugate-Phase Beam Alignment for Fast 5G mmWave Tracking
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Solution Overview
Problem
The challenge of aligning beams in 5G millimeter wave communication systems is exacerbated by high path loss, penetration loss, and short coherence times, leading to reduced mobility and communication quality due to rapid signal degradation from user equipment movement, rotation, or path blocking, necessitating fast and precise beam alignment.
Innovation Solution
A beam alignment method utilizing conjugate phase processing in an analog domain to calculate and align narrow beams without requiring prior AOA information or channel estimation, enabling rapid beam alignment and tracking, reducing sweeping times, and improving precision.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If beamforming technology is used to overcome path loss, then signal transmission quality is improved, but beam alignment time increases and mobility is restricted
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary action by performing conjugate phase calculation on uplink signals to pre-determine the optimal downlink transmit beam direction before actual downlink transmission. This allows the base station to align beams in advance based on uplink channel characteristics, eliminating the need for time-consuming downlink beam sweeping and enabling faster beam alignment while maintaining high signal quality.
2Power
If narrow beams are used to increase signal gain, then path loss is overcome, but beam alignment precision requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent employs feedback by using the uplink signal received from the terminal to calculate the conjugate phase, which provides feedback information about the channel characteristics. This feedback mechanism enables the base station to accurately determine the optimal beam direction without requiring complex beam sweeping procedures, thus achieving high beam alignment precision while maintaining narrow beam signal gain.
3Reliability
If conventional beam sweeping is performed to align beams, then beam alignment is achieved, but beamforming convergence rate is slow
Solution Approach 1:
The patent replaces the mechanical beam sweeping system with a computational approach. Instead of physically sweeping through multiple beam directions to find the optimal one, the system uses conjugate phase calculation on uplink signals to directly compute the optimal downlink beam direction. This substitution dramatically accelerates beamforming convergence while ensuring reliable beam alignment.
Data Source
AI summary
A network device receives a first uplink signal from a terminal device; the network device calculates a conjugate phase corresponding to the first uplink signal, and determines, based on the conjugate phase, a narrow beam whose direction of arrival is opposite to a direction of arrival of the first uplink signal as a target transmit beam aligned between the network device and the terminal device; and the network device communicates with the terminal device by using the target transmit beam.