Cross-Mixing Hybrid Beamformer for Wideband Apertures

Existing beamforming arrays suffer from the size and cost of the RF front-end and digital back-end components. In this paper, a novel hybrid beamforming configuration for wideband receivers is introduced. The design replaces phase shifters and local oscillators (LO) with cross mixing antenna element...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Rimon Hokayem, Sandhiya Reddy Govindarajulu, Elias A. Alwan, John L. Volakis
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: IEEE 2021-01-01
Series:IEEE Access
Subjects:
Online Access:https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9405993/
Description
Summary:Existing beamforming arrays suffer from the size and cost of the RF front-end and digital back-end components. In this paper, a novel hybrid beamforming configuration for wideband receivers is introduced. The design replaces phase shifters and local oscillators (LO) with cross mixing antenna elements to maximize diversity gain. In this paper, an analytical model of the cross mixing beamformer (CMB) is first presented. Simulations are carried out showing that a maximum diversity gain can be achieved with the CMB approach. Two prototypes were implemented using <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2\times 1$ </tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$4\times 2$ </tex-math></inline-formula> element arrays and tested at 2.31 GHz. Measured results show that CMB achieves coherent signal combining and can preserve the phase delay information needed for hybrid beamforming setups.
ISSN:2169-3536