Virtual Antenna Ports for LTE A Legacy UE Data Rate
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Solution Overview
Problem
Legacy user equipment in wireless communication systems, such as LTE A, can only utilize up to four transmit antenna ports, limiting their ability to leverage the full diversity of multiple transmit antennas, which restricts data rate and performance.
Innovation Solution
The system groups multiple transmit antennas into virtual antennas using linear combinations, such as cyclic delay diversity, allowing legacy user equipment to utilize more than four transmit antenna ports by creating virtual antenna ports that can be used by both legacy and new user equipment, enabling them to estimate channels from all available antennas.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If legacy user equipment is designed to support only up to four transmit antenna ports, then device complexity is reduced and ease of operation is improved, but the data rate and performance are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent creates virtual antenna ports that are copies or representations of physical antenna ports. Legacy user equipment can process these virtual antenna ports as if they were physical ports, enabling the equipment to utilize more than four transmit antennas without increasing device complexity. The virtual antenna ports act as intermediaries that map multiple physical antennas to the limited four-port interface of legacy equipment.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces virtual antenna ports as an intermediary layer between physical transmit antennas and legacy user equipment. This intermediary enables legacy equipment to communicate with more than four physical antennas by translating the multi-antenna signals into a format compatible with the equipment's four-port limitation, thus resolving the contradiction between maintaining simplicity and increasing data rate capability.
2Reliability
If multiple transmit antennas are used to increase transmit diversity and data rate, then reliability and productivity are improved, but legacy user equipment cannot utilize more than four antenna ports
Solution Approach 1:
The patent makes the antenna port system universal by creating virtual antenna ports that can serve both legacy user equipment (which supports up to four ports) and new user equipment (which can support more than four ports). The same set of physical transmit antennas can thus provide transmit diversity benefits to all user equipment types simultaneously, with the virtual ports adapting the signal presentation to match each equipment type's capabilities.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements dynamic adaptability where the system can flexibly present different numbers of antenna ports depending on the user equipment type. Legacy equipment sees up to four virtual antenna ports while new equipment can access more than four, allowing the system to dynamically adjust its interface to match equipment capabilities while maintaining compatibility across different device generations.
Data Source
AI summary
Systems and methods are disclosed that facilitate creating antenna ports to correspond to two or more groups of user equipment. The systems and methods can organize two or more groups of user equipment and signal to each of the two or more groups a respective antenna port. The systems and methods can further communicate mapping information, a reference signal, or delay related to a linear combination in order to identify antenna ports. Based on such communicated information, the reference signal can be decoded in order to identify each antenna port.