1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods to implement a transmit diversity architecture for wireless packet data communications systems, such as those conforming to the IEEE 802.11a/g standards.
2. Description of the Related Art
Wireless communication system performance depends heavily on the radio propagation environment. For example, in a simplified two-dimensional radio propagation environment, such as a typical office environment, radio signal obstacles are represented as one-dimensional walls with certain transmission and reflection coefficients. The radio signal propagation environment between the transmitter and receiver is called a channel. Due to wall transmissions and reflections, multiple replicas of the original signal transmitted by the transmitter are received. The replicas have different amplitudes and arrival times, resulting in different channel frequency responses.
Such behavior is called frequency selective multipath fading and is typical in multipath channels. In an OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplexed) system, data is modulated on narrowband subcarriers. For example, IEEE 802.11a/g uses 64 narrowband subcarriers over a 20 MHz range. Because of multipath fading, each subcarrier experiences a different channel frequency response. Those subcarriers with response dips would experience lower channel gains resulting in data loss on those subcarriers.
There are different ways to mitigate the effect of multipath fading. One way is through frequency diversity where the data is spread across multiple carriers so that the deep fades on some of subcarriers can be offset by gains on other subcarriers. Another method uses spatial diversity to mitigate multipath fading. In this latter method, the transceiver uses multiple antennas (in the form of an antenna array) and RF front-ends and combines the signals from different antenna branches to mitigate multipath fading.
In accordance with the presently claimed invention, an apparatus and method generate signal gain coefficients for use in packet data communication between a single-input-single-output (SISO) transceiver and a single-input-multiple-output/multiple-input-single-output (SIMO/MISO) transceiver. Coordinate rotation digital computation (CORDIC) techniques are used to generate transmit channel coefficients which are substantially complementary to receive channel coefficients representing relative strengths of individual signals received via multiple spatially diverse antenna elements and corresponding to a wireless data signal originating from a particular SISO radio frequency (RF) transceiver. Using such transmit channel coefficients to produce outgoing RF signals for transmission via the same antenna elements and reception by such particular SISO RF transceiver provides for signal transmission and reception diversity.
In accordance with one embodiment of the presently claimed invention, an apparatus for generating signal gain coefficients for a single-input-multiple-output/multiple-input-single-output (SIMO/MISO) transceiver for providing packet data communication with a single-input-single-output (SISO) transceiver includes a plurality of signal terminals, input coordinate rotation digital computation (CORDIC) circuitry and normalization circuitry. The plurality of signal terminals is for conveying a plurality of input signals representing first Cartesian coordinates X, Y for a plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients corresponding to relative signal strengths of respective ones of a plurality of incoming radio frequency (RF) signals received via a plurality of spatially diverse antenna elements and corresponding to a wireless data signal originating from a particular SISO RF transceiver. The input CORDIC circuitry is coupled to the plurality of signal terminals and responsive to the plurality of input signals by providing a plurality of input magnitude signals and a plurality of input phase signals representing pluralities of magnitudes and phases, respectively, of polar coordinates for the plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients. The normalization circuitry is coupled to the input CORDIC circuitry and responsive to at least a portion of the plurality of input magnitude signals by providing a plurality of normalized signals representing a plurality of normalized magnitudes of the polar coordinates for the plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients.
In accordance with another embodiment of the presently claimed invention, an apparatus for generating signal gain coefficients for a single-input-multiple-output/multiple-input-single-output (SIMO/MISO) transceiver for providing packet data communication with a single-input-single-output (SISO) transceiver includes signal means, input coordinate rotation digital computer (CORDIC) means and normalizing means. The signal means is for conveying a plurality of input signals representing first Cartesian coordinates X, Y for a plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients corresponding to relative signal strengths of respective ones of a plurality of incoming radio frequency (RF) signals received via a plurality of spatially diverse antenna elements and corresponding to a wireless data signal originating from a particular SISO RF transceiver. The input CORDIC means is for responding to the plurality of input signals by generating a plurality of input magnitude signals and a plurality of input phase signals representing pluralities of magnitudes and phases, respectively, of polar coordinates for the plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients. The normalizing means is for responding to at least a portion of the plurality of input magnitude signals by generating a plurality of normalized signals representing a plurality of normalized magnitudes of the polar coordinates for the plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients.
In accordance with still another embodiment of the presently claimed invention, a method of generating signal gain coefficients for a single-input-multiple-output/multiple-input-single-output (SIMO/MISO) transceiver for providing packet data communication with a single-input-single-output (SISO) transceiver includes:
conveying a plurality of input signals representing first Cartesian coordinates X, Y for a plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients corresponding to relative signal strengths of respective ones of a plurality of incoming radio frequency (RF) signals received via a plurality of spatially diverse antenna elements and corresponding to a wireless data signal originating from a particular SISO RF transceiver;
performing coordinate rotation digital computation in response to the plurality of input signals to generate a plurality of input magnitude signals and a plurality of input phase signals representing pluralities of magnitudes and phases, respectively, of polar coordinates for the plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients; and
responding to at least a portion of the plurality of input magnitude signals by generating a plurality of normalized signals representing a plurality of normalized magnitudes of the polar coordinates for the plurality of receiver channel gain coefficients.
The following detailed description is of example embodiments of the presently claimed invention with references to the accompanying drawings. Such description is intended to be illustrative and not limiting with respect to the scope of the present invention. Such embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable one of ordinary skill in the art to practice the subject invention, and it will be understood that other embodiments may be practiced with some variations without departing from the spirit or scope of the subject invention.
Throughout the present disclosure, absent a clear indication to the contrary from the context, it will be understood that individual circuit elements as described may be singular or plural in number. For example, the terms “circuit” and “circuitry” may include either a single component or a plurality of components, which are either active and/or passive and are connected or otherwise coupled together (e.g., as one or more integrated circuit chips) to provide the described function. Additionally, the term “signal” may refer to one or more currents, one or more voltages, or a data signal. Within the drawings, like or related elements will have like or related alpha, numeric or alphanumeric designators. Further, while the present invention has been discussed in the context of implementations using discrete electronic circuitry (preferably in the form of one or more integrated circuit chips), the functions of any part of such circuitry may alternatively be implemented using one or more appropriately programmed processors, depending upon the signal frequencies or data rates to be processed.
In commonly assigned, copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/818,151, filed on even date herewith, and entitled “SIMO/MISO Transceiver For Providing Packet Data Communication With SISO Transceiver” (the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference), a baseband SIMO/MISO architecture is proposed to improve IEEE 802.11a/g system performance. The proposed SIMO/MISO system is shown in
The baseband block diagram for a proposed IEEE 802.11a/g SIMO/MISO transceiver is shown in
We first briefly discuss the mathematical operation to be performed for the MISO processing. (For a more detailed discussion, please refer to the aforementioned U.S. patent application entitled “SIMO/MISO Transceiver For Providing Packet Data Communication With SISO Transceiver”, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.) In the MISO operation, for each subcarrier k and antenna branch i, the MISO gain coefficient is computed as
where Ci(k) is the channel frequency response on antenna i and subcarrier k and Gi(k) is the MISO gain coefficient. During transmission, the MISO gain coefficients will be used to scale frequency domain data
Xi(k)=Gi(k)X(k) (2)
Referring to
The computation of Equation 1 involves division and square root, neither of which has a simple hardware implementation. In accordance with the presently claimed invention, a novel CORDIC-based approach performs the mathematical operation as expressed in Equation 1. (CORDIC stands for Coordinate Rotation Digital Computation and is a well-known technique to perform Cartesian-to-Polar coordinate conversion.) Through successive rotation with incrementally decreasing steps, CORDIC can perform conversion between the Cartesian and Polar coordinates with arbitrary precision.
There are usually two kinds of CORDICs that are in common use. One kind of CORDIC performs the Cartesian-to-Polar conversion, which we will call CORDIC Mag. The other kind of CORDIC rotates an Cartesian input by certain angle, which we call CORDIC Rot. Mathematically, the CORDIC Mag performs the operation
(x,y)→(R,A) (3)
Here x and y are fixed-point representation the Cartesian coordinates and R and A are fixed-point representation of the Polar coordinates and
Given angle Ar, the CORDIC Rot performs the operation
(x,y)→(xr,yr) (6)
where the new coordinates (xr, yr) has the Polar representation (R, A-Ar).
Now we describe a novel method of using the CORDIC Mag module 1102 to implement the MISO Coefficient Computation module 280 (
Instead of computing the Cartesian coordinates of Gi(k), we will compute the Polar coordinates of the conjugate
Here iε[1,4]. Referring to
|Ci(k)|=√{square root over (Re2[Ci(k)]+Im2[Ci(k)])}{square root over (Re2[Ci(k)]+Im2[Ci(k)])} (8)
where iε[1,4]. The angle of Ci(k) is equal to the angle of Gi*(k) and thus the CORDIC Mag module angle outputs A are the angle outputs of the MISO Coefficient Computation module 280, i.e., −arg[G1(k)] through −arg[G4(k)].
The Normalization modules 1104 together with the Cosine Lookup modules 1106 compute the magnitude |Gi*(k)| for the 4 antenna branches 106.
By reordering the inputs to the Normalization modules 1104 we can then compute Equation 10 for any iε[1,4] as shown in
The Normalization module 1104 outputs after the Cosine lookups 1106 will generate the desired magnitudes
for the antenna branches 106.
The complex conjugates of the MISO gain coefficients 243a will be stored in the MISO profile storage module 282. For IEEE 802.11a/g system, there are total of 64 subcarriers and for each subcarrier the 4 complex coefficients will be stored as 4 magnitude and angle pairs. We call MISO gain coefficients on all the subcarriers and antenna branches a MISO profile.
The MISO Profile Storage module 282 will keep a bank of profiles, e.g., 32. The profiles are indexed, e.g., from 0 through 31. The MAC (Medium Access Control) unit 200m maintains an association table 1602, which associates a profile index 1604 with a MAC address 1606, as depicted in
Due to memory constraints, only a limited number of profiles may be stored in the MISO Profile Storage 282. Software for the MAC unit 200m cleans up the association table 1602 periodically to ensure there are empty profiles for use by the PHY 200r for the next packet reception. Certain metrics may be used by the software to determine which user profiles to keep or delete upon an overflow, e.g., according to frequencies of use of specific MAC addresses.
Referring again to
Xi(k)=Gi(k)X(k)=|Gi(k)|e−j(−arg[G
In most IEEE 802.11a/g implementations, the PHY preamble is usually stored as time-domain waveform (referring to
Referring to
Various other modifications and alternations in the structure and method of operation of this invention will be apparent to those skilled in the art without departing from the scope and the spirit of the invention. Although the invention has been described in connection with specific preferred embodiments, it should be understood that the invention as claimed should not be unduly limited to such specific embodiments. It is intended that the following claims define the scope of the present invention and that structures and methods within the scope of these claims and their equivalents be covered thereby.
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