Method and apparatus for a wireless mobile system implementing beam steering phase array antenna

• US 8,468,414 B2
• Filed: 10/24/2010
• Issued: 06/18/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 08/27/2009
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: TurboCode LLC (Jeffrey M. Gross)
• Original Assignee: ICOMM Technologies, Inc.
• Inventors: Nguyen, Quang
• Primary Examiner(s): CHAUDRY, MUJTABA M
• Application Number:
  US12/910,827
• Publication Number:
  US 20110260918A1
• Time in Patent Office: 968 Days
• Field of Search: 714/755, 342/154
• US Class Current: 714/755
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0617 for beam forming
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 7/0682 using phase diversity (e.g. phase sweeping)
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/005 Iterative decoding, including iteration between signal detection and decoding operation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0055 MAP-decoding
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/006 Trellis-coded modulation
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 1/0071 Use of interleaving interleaving per se H03M13/27
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 30/70 in wireless communication networks

Abstract

In a preferred embodiment, a wireless mobile system implementing Beam Steering Phased Array Antenna is disclosed having an array of [N×N] antennas mounting on the wireless mobile Terminal transmits unidirectional signals directly to the Base Station as opposed to transmitting multi-directional signals. The wireless mobile system implementing beam-steering phased array antenna, wherein the phases of the signals fed to the array antenna elements are varied by the phase shifters in small programmable step values calculated by the Digital Signal Processor (DSP) Phase Processor which causes the antennas radiation beam to be steered at angle θ. Thus, improvements in beam steering for transmitting unidirectional signals directly to the Base Station will greatly reduce the energy required by the wireless terminal for transmitting signals to the Base Station. And, the effective result would achieve our green-energy technology requirements.

Claims

1. A wireless mobile system with beam-steering phased array antennas, the wireless mobile system comprising:

at least one or more phased array antennas, each phased array antenna comprising an array [N×

N] of radiating elements;

at least one DSP Phase Processor for calculating desired phase shift values to achieve transmit wave lobe steering angle θ

for controlling phased shifters associated with each radiating elements;

at least one or more Phase Shifters associated with each radiating elements adapted to receive transmit signals, wherein each phase shifter varies the phase of the transmit signals before feeding to the radiating elements;

at least one or more base station trackers associated with each radiating elements adapted to receive signals, each base station tracker determining the current location of the communicating base station;

at least one or Signal Feed Processor for distributing the transmit signals to each radiating elements;

at least one Transmitter adapted to receive OFDM signals for further modulating and wave shaping the signals before sending to the radiating elements;

at least one or more Transmit Baseband Processors adapted to received digital information data for transmitting, wherein each Transmit Base Processor comprises;

at least one inverse Fast Fourier Transform (iFFT) module adapted to receive encoded data sequences for modulating the data into multiple Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) signals before feeding to the Transmitter; and

at least one Turbo Codes Encoder module adapted to receive data for encoding input information into encoded data sequences with parity bits for error-correction before feeding to the iFFT module;

at least one Clock Management Logic for controlling the clock distributions to the target modules; and

at least one Power Management Logic for controlling the power distributions to the target modules.

2. The wireless mobile system according to claim 1, further comprising a MIMO system with diversity baseband processing for iteratively decoding data received on multiple data paths from at least two or multiple antennas, the MIMO system comprising:

at least one or more Pre-Processors adapted to receive the data received on corresponding one of the multiple data paths RX(i), wherein each Pre-Processor further comprises;

at least one I/Q Demodulator to demodulated the receive signal into baseband component I and Q signals;

at least one Guard Interval Removal for removing cyclic-prefix;

at least one Clock Recovery circuit to calculate sampling error to control the Digital Phase locked-loop; and

a Digital Phase locked-loop circuit to produce the sampling clock for the I/Q Demodulator;

a Diversity Processor adapted to received signals from the Pre-Processors, wherein the Diversity Processor further comprises;

an Algorithm to select the optimum pair of diversity channels;

a Combiner to combine the signals pair of diversity channels; and

a Matched Filter to produce an output signal of the diversity channels;

at least one M-point Complex FFT Processor to process each of the M sub-channels;

a MUX to convert the data from each channel into a serial stream of data; and

at least one Turbo Codes Decoder to process the data stream from each channel to produce an error-free data output, wherein each Turbo Codes Decoder further comprises;

at least two soft decision decoders serially coupled and adapted to receive soft data associated with corresponding signal paths, wherein the at least two soft decision decoders have at least a first soft decision decoder and a last soft decision decoder adapted to output soft data for the serially coupled series of soft decision decoders, wherein each soft decision decoder further comprises;

a branch metric module that is adapted to receive soft input signal and is configured to compute branch metric values for each branch in a Trellis by calculating a Euclidean distance for each branch;

a branch metric memory module that is coupled to the branch metric module and is adapted to store data associated at least with the branch metric values;

a state metric module that is coupled to the branch metric memory module and is configured to compute state metric values for each state in the Trellis using the computed branch metric values;

an add-compare-select circuit that is coupled to the state metric module and is configured to compute state metric values at each node in the Trellis;

a state metric memory module that is coupled to the state metric module and is adapted to store data associated at least with the state metric values; and

a logarithmic likelihood ratio (LLR) function computation module that is coupled to at least the branch metric memory module and the state metric memory module, wherein the computation module is configured to compute a soft decision output based at least on the branch metric values and the state metric values.

3. The wireless mobile system according to claim 2, wherein the soft decision decoder decodes a plurality of diversity baseband signals, and wherein the computation module is implemented with a logarithm approximation algorithm.

4. The wireless mobile system according to claim 2, wherein the soft decision decoder decodes a plurality of diversity baseband signals, and wherein the add-compare-select circuit comprises:

a first adder for computing the sum of a first state metric value and a first branch metric value;

a second adder for computing the sum of a second state metric value and a second branch metric value;

a comparator for comparing the results of the first adder and the results of the second adder; and

a multiplexer for selecting a larger sum for a predetermined state.

5. The wireless mobile system according to claim 2, wherein the soft decision decoder decodes a plurality of diversity baseband signals and comprises:

branch metric means for receiving soft input signal and computing branch metric values for each branch in a Trellis by calculating a Euclidean distance for each branch;

branch metric memory means for storing data associated at least with the branch metric values;

state metric means for computing state metric values for each state in the Trellis using the computed branch metric values;

add-compare-select means for computing state metric values at each node in the Trellis;

state metric memory means for storing data associated at least with the state metric values;

logarithmic likelihood ratio (LLR) function computation means for computing a soft decision output based at least on the branch metric values and the state metric values; and

control logic state machine means for controlling operations of at least one of the branch metric means, the branch metric memory means, the state metric means, the add-compare-select means, the state metric memory means, and the computation means.

6. A method of implementing a wireless mobile system with beam-steering phased array antennas according to claim 1, wherein the method comprises:

calculating a current location of a base station relative to a mobile device;

calculating the required phase to control a phase shifter;

receiving transmit signals from a signal feeder;

varying the phase of transmit signals through the phase shifter;

feeding the transmit signals from the phase shifter to the radiation elements; and

transmitting the phased steering transmit waves to the base station.