Patent · US Expired

Digital beam-forming technique using temporary noise injection

US5077562A · kind A · utility

49Cited by
2References
17Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventors

Key dates

Filing dateDec 24, 1990
Grant dateDec 31, 1991
Priority date
Expiry dateDec 24, 2010

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH01Q3/26
  • WIPO fieldTelecommunications
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

An efficient digital beam-forming network (100) utilizing a relatively few small-scale A/D converters is disclosed herein. The inventive beam-forming network (100) is disposed to generate an output beam B in response to a set of N input signals. The set of input signals is provided by an antenna array (110) having N elements, upon which is incident an electromagnetic wavefront of a first carrier frequency. The present invention includes an orthogonal encoder circuit (170) for generating a set of N orthogonal voltage waveforms. A set of biphase modulators (162-168) modulates the phase of each of the input signals in response to one of the orthogonal voltage waveforms, thereby generating a set of N phase modulated input signals. The N phase modulated input signals are combined within an adder (180) to form a composite input signal. The inventive network (100) further includes a downconverting mixer (184) for generating an IF input signal in response to the composite input signal. The IF input signal is then separated into baseband in-phase and quadrature-phase components by an I/Q split network 192. A pair of A/D converters (198, 200) then sample the in-phase and quadrature-phase com…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.