Abstract:
The disclosed systems and methods achieve improved communication by periodically sending sounding packets from a transmitter; feeding back, from a receiver, the change in beamforming estimation according to reception of the sounding packets; and utilizing the change in beamforming estimation to produce transmitter beamforming.

Description:
RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    The present U.S. Utility Patent Application claims priority pursuant to 35 U.S.C. §120, as a continuation, to the following U.S. Utility Patent Application which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety and made part of the present U.S. Utility Patent Application for all purposes: 
         [0002]    1. U.S. Utility application Ser. No. 11/342,427, entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ANTENNA BEAMFORMING,” filed Jan. 30, 2006, pending, which claims priority pursuant to 35 U.S.C. §119(e) to the following U.S. Provisional Patent Application which is hereby incorporated herein by reference in its entirety and made part of the present U.S. Utility Patent Application for all purposes:
       1.1. U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 60/738,504, entitled “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR ANTENNA BEAMFORMING,” filed Nov. 21, 2005, now expired.       
 
     
    
     FEDERALLY SPONSORED RESEARCH OR DEVELOPMENT 
       [0004]    [Not Applicable] 
       MICROFICHE/COPYRIGHT REFERENCE 
       [0005]    [Not Applicable] 
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
       [0006]    Multiple antennas can be used to i) increase the antenna gain by beamforming; ii) provide diversity gain through some form of antenna combining; iii) increase the data rate by spatial multiplexing; and iv) suppress spatial interference by null steering. However, a system with multiple antennas may be unable to take advantage of all of these benefits if the system cannot accurately estimate and track a wireless communications channel. 
         [0007]    Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with some aspects of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings. 
       BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
       [0008]    A system and/or method is provided for antenna beamforming, substantially as shown in and/or described in connection with at least one of the figures, as set forth more completely in the claims. Advantages, aspects and novel features of the present invention, as well as details of an illustrated embodiment thereof, will be more fully understood from the following description and drawings. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0009]      FIG. 1  is an illustration of an exemplary system for antenna beamforming in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention; and 
           [0010]      FIG. 2  is a flowchart illustrating an exemplary method for antenna beamforming in accordance with a representative embodiment of the present invention. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION 
       [0011]    Aspects of the present invention relate to antenna beamforming and more specifically, to steady state parameter feedback systems and methods. Although the following description may refer to particular wireless communication standards, many other standards may also use these systems and methods. 
         [0012]    Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques take advantage of multiple transmit and/or receive antennas for communication. For example, the UMTS/W-CDMA standard specifies transmit diversity, and the 802.11n wireless local area network (WLAN) standard specifies spatial division multiplex. Spatial multiplexing and spatial diversity are two categories of MIMO systems. 
         [0013]    Spatial division multiplexing (SDM) occurs when several streams are transmitted simultaneously from the multiple transmit antennas to multiple receive antennas to boost the spectral efficiency of the transmission. SDM may be fully exploited if the number of antennas is, at both sides, equal to or greater than the number of parallel streams. 
         [0014]    Spatial diversity occurs when the same symbols are transmitted on different transmit antennas or received by several receive antennas. Diversity combining may be a form of beamforming where the signal transmitted or received by the antenna array may be weighted in phase and in amplitude. 
         [0015]    Spatial processing may be combined with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). OFDM multi-carrier transmission is used in many standards (e.g. WiFi 802.11 and WiMAX 802.16). The spatial processing of the current invention may be applied per sub-carrier (frequency-domain processing), thereby decoupling the spatial processing from the equalization of the frequency-selective channel and leading to low complexity solutions. MIMO processing can be performed at either the transmitter or the receiver side, or at both sides. 
         [0016]      FIG. 1  is an illustration of an exemplary system  100  for antenna beamforming in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention. The system  100  comprises a transmitter  101  and a receiver  103 . The transmitter  101  comprises Ntx antennas and the receiver  103  comprises Nrx antennas. 
         [0017]    The transmitter  101  sends Nss streams  105  of sounding packets. A stream of sounding packets is a periodic transmission of a sequence known by the receiver  103 . The periodicity may be, for example, at a rate of 1 kHz. 
         [0018]    Upon receiving a first plurality of sounding packets at time T, the receiver  103  may generate a channel estimate matrix H(T), from which a beamforming estimate matrix V(T) may be acquired. The beamforming estimate matrix V(T) contains Ntx rows and Nss columns. Alternatively, the receiver  103  may generate a channel estimate matrix H(T) with contains Nrx rows and Ntx columns. The relationship between H and V is H=U×S×V′, where V′ is the complex conjugate transpose of V, S with dimensions Nss X Nss, where Nss is the number of streams, and U with dimensions Nrx X Nss may be used for receiver beamforming. 
         [0019]    Upon receiving a second plurality of sounding packets at time TΔT, the receiver  103  may generate a beamforming estimate matrix V(T+ΔT). The receiver  103  generating a feedback signal ΔV=V(TΔT)−V(T). The feedback signal is used to perform transmit beamforming. The feedback signal is sent to the transmitting station and will usually be able to be represented by a smaller number of bits. Alternatively, the beamforming estimate matrix V can be a function of an angle V=fΘ), and the change in the angle ΔΘ.) can be used as feedback, where ΔΘ.=ΘT+ΔT)−Θ(T). For example, a 2×2 beamforming matrix may be represented as: 
         [0000]    
       
         
           
               
             
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         [0000]    Each element of the 2×2 beamforming matrix may be quantized. Alternatively, the angle Θ may be quantized, thereby representing the 2×2 beamforming matrix by a single parameter. Each beamforming matrix may also be represented by a set of angles, denoted by Θ. 
         [0020]    When the first beamforming estimate and the second beamforming estimate are substantially the same, the feedback signal may not be sent to the transmitter. Alternatively, when the first beamforming estimate and the second beamforming estimate are substantially the same, the feedback signal may be a single bit indicating that the first beamforming estimate and the second beamforming estimate are substantially the same. 
         [0021]      FIG. 2  is a flowchart  200  illustrating an exemplary method for antenna beamforming in accordance with a representative embodiment of the present invention. 
         [0022]    A first plurality of sounding packets is received at  201 . According to the first set of sounding packets, a first beamforming estimate matrix is generated at  203 . A second plurality of sounding packets is received at  205 . According to the second set of sounding packets, a second beamforming estimate matrix is generated at  207 . The difference between the first beamforming estimate matrix and the second beamforming estimate matrix is fed back at  209  for transmitter beamforming. 
         [0023]    The present invention may be realized in hardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software. The present invention may be realized in a centralized fashion in an integrated circuit or in a distributed fashion where different elements are spread across several circuits. Any kind of computer system or other apparatus adapted for carrying out the methods described herein is suited. A typical combination of hardware and software may be a general-purpose computer system with a computer program that, when being loaded and executed, controls the computer system such that it carries out the methods described herein. 
         [0024]    The present invention may also be embedded in a computer program product, which comprises all the features enabling the implementation of the methods described herein, and which when loaded in a computer system is able to carry out these methods. Computer program in the present context means any expression, in any language, code or notation, of a set of instructions intended to cause a system having an information processing capability to perform a particular function either directly or after either or both of the following: a) conversion to another language, code or notation; b) reproduction in a different material form. 
         [0025]    While the present invention has been described with reference to certain embodiments, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that various changes may be made and equivalents may be substituted without departing from the scope of the present invention. In addition, many modifications may be made to adapt a particular situation or material to the teachings of the present invention without departing from its scope. Therefore, it is intended that the present invention not be limited to the particular embodiment disclosed, but that the present invention will include all embodiments falling within the scope of the appended claims.