Hybrid Beamforming Signal Transceiver for Massive MIMO Complexity
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Solution Overview
Problem
In high-data-rate communication systems like 5G and 6G, especially in terahertz frequency bands, massive MIMO systems face challenges with severe path loss and increased complexity due to a large number of RF chains and antennas, making signal transmission and reception difficult and error-prone.
Innovation Solution
A signal transmitting and receiving method that splits message streams into common and private streams, linearly precodes them to adjust amplitudes and phases, and uses hybrid beamforming with digital and analog components to reduce complexity and power consumption, while optimizing RF chain usage and beamforming matrices for efficient signal distribution.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the number of RF chains is increased to match the number of antennas in a massive MIMO system, then the system capacity and multiplexing gain are improved, but the power consumption and implementation complexity increase drastically
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the beamforming functionality into two distinct parts: digital beamforming (operating in baseband with fewer RF chains) and analog beamforming (operating at RF stage with phase shifters). This segmentation allows the system to achieve massive MIMO capacity with a reduced number of RF chains, thereby reducing implementation complexity while maintaining system capacity through the combined effect of both beamforming stages.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transitions from a purely digital beamforming approach (single dimension in baseband) to a hybrid approach that adds an analog beamforming dimension at the RF stage. This dimensional expansion allows the system to achieve higher spectral efficiency and capacity without proportionally increasing the number of RF chains, as the analog phase shifters provide additional degrees of freedom for signal control.
2Productivity
If the number of RF chains is increased to match the number of antennas, then the spectral efficiency is improved, but the power consumption increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the signal processing functions between digital baseband processing (affecting spectral efficiency) and analog RF processing (affecting power consumption). By performing only essential digital beamforming operations with fewer RF chains and offloading amplitude/phase control to analog phase shifters, the system maintains spectral efficiency while significantly reducing the power consumption associated with having one RF chain per antenna.
3Productivity
If a large number of antennas are used in massive MIMO, then the antenna gain and multiplexing gain are improved, but the difficulty in signal separation and restoration increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies preliminary digital beamforming processing to pre-separate and pre-process signals from multiple antennas before they reach the RF stage. This preliminary action reduces the dimensionality of the signal separation problem at the RF stage, making the subsequent analog beamforming and signal restoration tasks more manageable despite the large number of antennas involved.
Data Source
AI summary
A signal transmitting method suitable for a MU-MIMO environment and achieving a high performance with low complexity is provided. The signal transmitting method includes: splitting each message stream into a common message stream and a private message stream; combining a plurality of common message streams for the plurality of receivers to generate a common stream; encoding the common stream and private message streams for the plurality of receivers to generate an encoded common stream and encoded private message streams; precoding the encoded common stream and the encoded private message streams to adjust amplitudes and phases of symbols such that power is distributed between the encoded common stream and the encoded private message streams and generate precoded signals; and converting the precoded signals into a plurality of RF signals, adjusting phases of the plurality of RF signals, and outputting the phase-adjusted RF signals through a plurality of MIMO antennas.