Patent Application
20240162609
Phased antenna array systems have been increasingly used for a variety of applications. The phased antenna array systems are desirable for their high directivity, narrow beams, beam-forming and scanning in systems as diverse as data links, radar communications, and synthetic aperture imaging. The transmitting elements used in phased antenna arrays have been microstrip patch, Vivaldi antennas, and dipoles because of their high gain and directionality. The narrow beamwidth and linear polarization restricts use of phased antenna arrays in many applications, such as wireless networks.
A high-level overview of various aspects of the present technology is provided in this section to introduce a selection of concepts that are further described below in the detailed description section of this disclosure. This summary is not intended to identify key or essential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended to be used as an aid in isolation to determine the scope of the claimed subject matter.
According to aspects herein, methods, apparatus, and systems are provided for a multi-stack antenna. The method of operating a multi-stack antenna begins with receiving at least one signal from at least one user equipment (UE) at a multi-stack phased antenna array. The at least one signal is received by each antenna element of the multi-stack phased antenna array. The at least one signal is then modified by adapting a received signal from each antenna element in time and phase to maximize in-phase signal strength.
In a further embodiment, a multi-stack phased antenna array is provided. The antenna includes at least two antenna element layers with the at least two antenna element layers comprising a matrix of individual antenna elements. Each individual antenna element is electrically connected to a modular ratio combining engine. At least one dielectric layers is disposed between the at least two antenna element layers.
An additional embodiment provides a non-transitory computer storage media storing computer-useable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors cause the processors to receive at least one signal from at least one UE at a multi-stack phased antenna array, with the at least one signal being received by each antenna element of the phased antenna array. The received signal is then adapted by the processors to adjust a received signal from each antenna element in time and phase to maximize in-phase signal strength.
Implementations of the present disclosure are described in detail below with reference to the attached drawing figures, wherein:
The subject matter of embodiments of the invention is described with specificity herein to meet statutory requirements. However, the description itself is not intended to limit the scope of this patent. Rather, the inventors have contemplated that the claimed subject matter might be embodied in other ways, to include different steps or combinations of steps similar to the ones described in this document, in conjunction with other present or future technologies. Moreover, although the terms “step” and/or “block” may be used herein to connote different elements of methods employed, the terms should not be interpreted as implying any particular order among or between various steps herein disclosed unless and except when the order of individual steps is explicitly described.
Throughout this disclosure, several acronyms and shorthand notations are employed to aid the understanding of certain concepts pertaining to the associated system and services. These acronyms and shorthand notations are intended to help provide an easy methodology of communicating the ideas expressed herein and are not meant to limit the scope of embodiments described in the present disclosure. The following is a list of these acronyms:
Further, various technical terms are used throughout this description. An illustrative resource that fleshes out various aspects of these terms can be found in Newton's Telecom Dictionary, 25th Edition (2009).
Embodiments of the present technology may be embodied as, among other things, a method, apparatus, system, or computer-program product. Accordingly, the embodiments may take the form of a hardware embodiment, or an embodiment combining software and hardware. An embodiment takes the form of a computer-program product that includes computer-useable instructions embodied on one or more computer-readable media.
Computer-readable media include both volatile and nonvolatile media, removable and nonremovable media, and contemplate media readable by a database, a switch, and various other network devices. Network switches, routers, and related components are conventional in nature, as are means of communicating with the same. By way of example, and not limitation, computer-readable media comprise computer-storage media and communications media.
Computer-storage media, or machine-readable media, include media implemented in any method or technology for storing information. Examples of stored information include computer-useable instructions, data structures, program modules, and other data representations. Computer-storage media include, but are not limited to RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile discs (DVD), holographic media or other optical disc storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage, and other magnetic storage devices. These memory components can store data momentarily, temporarily, or permanently.
Communications media typically store computer-useable instructions—including data structures and program modules—in a modulated data signal. The term “modulated data signal” refers to a propagated signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed to encode information in the signal. Communications media include any information-delivery media. By way of example but not limitation, communications media include wired media, such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, infrared, radio, microwave, spread-spectrum, and other wireless media technologies. Combinations of the above are included within the scope of computer-readable media.
By way of background, a traditional telecommunications network employs a plurality of base stations (i.e., nodes, cell sites, cell towers) to provide network coverage. The base stations are employed to broadcast and transmit transmissions to user devices of the telecommunications network. An base station may be considered to be a portion of a base station that may comprise an antenna, a radio, and/or a controller. In aspects, a base station is defined by its ability to communicate with a user equipment (UE), such as a wireless communication device (WCD), according to a single protocol (e.g., 3G, 4G, LTE, 5G, or 6G, and the like); however, in other aspects, a single base station may communicate with a UE according to multiple protocols. As used herein, a base station may comprise one base station or more than one base station. Factors that can affect the telecommunications transmission include, e.g., location and size of the base stations, and frequency of the transmission, among other factors. The base stations are employed to broadcast and transmit transmissions to user devices of the telecommunications network. Traditionally, the base station establishes uplink (or downlink) transmission with a mobile handset over a single frequency that is exclusive to that particular uplink connection (e.g., an LTE connection with an EnodeB). In this regard, typically only one active uplink connection can occur per frequency. The base station may include one or more sectors served by individual transmitting/receiving components associated with the base station (e.g., antenna arrays controlled by an EnodeB). These transmitting/receiving components together form a multi-sector broadcast arc for communication with mobile handsets linked to the base station.
As used herein, “base station” is one or more transmitters or receivers or a combination of transmitters and receivers, including the accessory equipment, necessary at one location for providing a service involving the transmission, emission, and/or reception of radio waves for one or more specific telecommunication purposes to a mobile station (e.g., a UE), wherein the base station is not intended to be used while in motion in the provision of the service. The term/abbreviation UE (also referenced herein as a user device or wireless communications device (WCD)) can include any device employed by an end-user to communicate with a telecommunications network, such as a wireless telecommunications network. A UE can include a mobile device, a mobile broadband adapter, or any other communications device employed to communicate with the wireless telecommunications network. A UE, as one of ordinary skill in the art may appreciate, generally includes one or more antennas coupled to a radio for exchanging (e.g., transmitting and receiving) transmissions with a nearby base station. A UE may be, in an embodiment, similar to device 600 described herein with respect to
As used herein, UE (also referenced herein as a user device or a wireless communication device) can include any device employed by an end-user to communicate with a wireless telecommunications network. A UE can include a mobile device, a mobile broadband adapter, a fixed location or temporarily fixed location device, or any other communications device employed to communicate with the wireless telecommunications network. For an illustrative example, a UE can include cell phones, smartphones, tablets, laptops, small cell network devices (such as micro cell, pico cell, femto cell, or similar devices), and so forth. Further, a UE can include a sensor or set of sensors coupled with any other communications device employed to communicate with the wireless telecommunications network; such as, but not limited to, a camera, a weather sensor (such as a rain gage, pressure sensor, thermometer, hygrometer, and so on), a motion detector, or any other sensor or combination of sensors. A UE, as one of ordinary skill in the art may appreciate, generally includes one or more antennas coupled to a radio for exchanging (e.g., transmitting and receiving) transmissions with a nearby base station.
In aspects, a UE provides UE data including location and channel quality information to the wireless communication network via the base station. Location information may be based on a current or last known position utilizing GPS or other satellite location services, terrestrial triangulation, an base station's physical location, or any other means of obtaining coarse or fine location information. Channel quality information may indicate a realized uplink and/or downlink transmission data rate, observed signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and/or signal strength at the user device, or throughput of the connection. Channel quality information may be provided via, for example, an uplink pilot time slot, downlink pilot time slot, sounding reference signal, channel quality indicator (CQI), rank indicator, precoding matrix indicator, or some combination thereof. Channel quality information may be determined to be satisfactory or unsatisfactory, for example, based on exceeding or being less than a threshold. Location and channel quality information may take into account the user device capability, such as the number of antennas and the type of receiver used for detection. Processing of location and channel quality information may be done locally, at the base station or at the individual antenna array of the base station. In other aspects, the processing of said information may be done remotely.
A service state of the UEs may include, for example, an in-service state when a UE is in-network (i.e., using services of a primary provider to which the UE is subscribed to, otherwise referred to as a home network carrier), or when the UE is roaming (i.e., using services of a secondary provider providing coverage to the particular geographic location of the UE that has agreements in place with the primary provider of the UE). The service state of the UE may also include, for example, an emergency only state when the UE is out-of-network and there are no agreements in place between the primary provider of the UE and the secondary provider providing coverage to the current geographic location of the UE. Finally, the service state of the UE may also include, for example, an out of service state when there are no service providers at the particular geographic location of the UE.
The UE data may be collected at predetermined time intervals measured in milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, or days. Alternatively, the UE data may be collected continuously. The UE data may be stored at a storage device of the UE, and may be retrievable by the UE's primary provider as needed and/or the UE data may be stored in a cloud based storage database and may be retrievable by the UE's primary provider as needed. When the UE data is stored in the cloud based storage database, the data may be stored in association with a data identifier mapping the UE data back to the UE, or alternatively, the UE data may be collected without an identifier for anonymity.
In accordance with a first aspect of the present disclosure a method of operating a multi-stack antenna is provided. The method begins with receiving at least one signal from at least one user equipment (UE) at a multi-stack phased antenna array. The signal from the UE is received by each antenna element of the multi-stack phased antenna array. The at least one signal is then adapted by adjusting a received signal from each antenna element in time and phase to maximize in-phase signal strength.
A second aspect of the present disclosure provides a multi-stack phased antenna array. The antenna includes at least two antenna element layers with the at least two antenna element layers comprising a matrix of individual antenna elements. Each individual antenna element is electrically connected to a modular ratio combining engine. At least one dielectric layers is disposed between the at least two antenna element layers.
Another aspect of the present disclosure is directed to a non-transitory computer storage media storing computer-useable instructions that, when used by one or more processors, cause the processors to receive at least one signal from at least one UE at a multi-stack phased antenna array, wherein the at least one signal is received by each antenna element of the phased antenna array. The received signal is then adapted by the processors to adjust a received signal from each antenna element in time and phase to maximize in-phase signal strength.
Network environment 100 includes user equipment (UE) devices 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110, base station 114 (which may be a cell site or the like), multi-stack antenna array 144, and one or more communication channels 112. The communication channels 112 can communicate over frequency bands assigned to the carrier. In network environment 100, UE devices may take on a variety of forms, such as a personal computer (PC), a user device, a smart phone, a smart watch, a laptop computer, a mobile phone, a mobile device, a tablet computer, a wearable computer, a personal digital assistant (PDA), a server, a CD player, an MP3 player, a global positioning system (GPS) device, a video player, a handheld communications device, a workstation, a router, a hotspot, and any combination of these delineated devices, or any other device (such as the computing device (600) that communicates via wireless communications with the base station 114 using multi-stack antenna array 144 in order to interact with a public or private network.
In some aspects, each of the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110 may correspond to computing device 600 in
In some cases, UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110 in network environment 100 can optionally utilize one or more communication channels 112 to communicate with other computing devices (e.g., a mobile device(s), a server(s), a personal computer(s), etc.) through multi-stack antenna array 144 mounted on base station 114. Base station 114 may be a gNodeB in a 5G or 6G network as described herein.
The network environment 100 may be comprised of a telecommunications network(s), or a portion thereof. A telecommunications network might include an array of devices or components (e.g., one or more base stations), some of which are not shown. Those devices or components may form network environments similar to what is shown in
The one or more communication channels 112 can be part of a telecommunication network that connects subscribers to their immediate telecommunications service provider (i.e., home network carrier). In some instances, the one or more communication channels 112 can be associated with a telecommunications provider that provides services (e.g., 3G network, 4G network, LTE network, 5G network, and the like) to user devices, such as UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110. For example, the one or more communication channels may provide voice, SMS, and/or data services to UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110, or corresponding users that are registered or subscribed to utilize the services provided by the telecommunications service provider. The one or more communication channels 112 can comprise, for example, a 1× circuit voice, a 3G network (e.g., CDMA, CDMA2000, WCDMA, GSM, UMTS), a 4G network (WiMAX, LTE, HSDPA), or a 5G network or a 6G network.
In some implementations, base station 114 is configured to communicate with a UE, such as UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110, that are located within the geographic area, or cell, covered by radio antennas or multi-stack antenna arrays 144 of base station 114. The radio antennas of base station 114 may incorporate multi-stack antenna arrays 144 as described below in
As shown, base station 114 is in communication with a network component 130 and at least a network database 120 via a backhaul channel 116. As the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110 collect individual status data, the status data can be automatically communicated by each of the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110 to the base station 114. Base station 114 may store the data communicated by the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110 at a network database 120. Alternatively, the base station 114 may automatically retrieve the status data from the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110, and similarly store the data in the network database 120. The data may be communicated or retrieved and stored periodically within a predetermined time interval which may be in seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, and the like. With the incoming of new data, the network database 120 may be refreshed with the new data every time, or within a predetermined time threshold so as to keep the status data stored in the network database 120 current. For example, the data may be received at or retrieved by the base station 114 every 10 minutes and the data stored at the network database 120 may be kept current for 30 days, which means that status data that is older than 30 days would be replaced by newer status data at 10 minute intervals. As described above, the status data collected by the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110 can include, for example, service state status, the respective UE's current geographic location, a current time, a strength of the wireless signal, available networks, and the like.
The network component 130 comprises a memory 132, a maximum ratio combining (MRC) engine 134, and a scheduler 136. All determinations, calculations, and data further generated by the MRC engine 134 and scheduler 136 may be stored at the memory 132 and also at the data store 140. Although the network component 130 is shown as a single component comprising the memory 132, MRC engine 134, and the scheduler 136, it is also contemplated that each of the memory 132, MRC engine 134 and scheduler 136 may reside at different locations, be its own separate entity, and the like, within the home network carrier system.
The network component 130 is configured to retrieve signal information, UE device information, latency information, signal information, antenna information, and metrics from the base station 114, multi-stack antenna array 144, or one of the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110. The MRC engine 134 determines which antenna or antennas of the multi-stack antenna on base station 114 is used by a given UE to communicate. The scheduler 136 can monitor the activity of the UEs 102, 104, 106, 108 in the network. The MRC engine 134 determines which antenna or antennas of the multi-stack antenna array 144 are used by each of UEs 102, 104, 106, 108, and 110 for communication and acts in conjunction with the scheduler 136 to schedule the transmissions. Once the MRC engine 134 has computed the diversity combining for a UE the scheduler sends the antenna information to the UE.
The dimensions of the antenna elements, such as 316 A-316 P, the spacing between each antenna element and the spacing between each antenna element layer determines the antenna polarization, beamwidth, beam direction, and sidelobes in conjunction with the frequency band and the center frequency of the multi-stack antenna assembly 300. In addition, the depth or thickness of each antenna layer as well as the thickness of the substrate layer also affect antenna polarization, beamwidth, beam direction, and sidelobes. Then antennas of each layer, are connected together and then the multiple layers are connected together through a maximum ratio combining (MRC) engine 134 of
The implementations of the present disclosure may be described in the general context of computer code or machine-useable instructions, including computer-executable instructions such as program components, being executed by a computer or other machine, such as a personal data assistant or other handheld device. Generally, program components, including routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, and the like, refer to code that performs particular tasks or implements particular abstract data types. Implementations of the present disclosure may be practiced in a variety of system configurations, including handheld devices, consumer electronics, general-purpose computers, specialty computing devices, etc. Implementations of the present disclosure may also be practiced in distributed computing environments where tasks are performed by remote-processing devices that are linked through a communications network.
Computing device 600 typically includes a variety of computer-readable media. Computer-readable media can be any available media that can be accessed by computing device 600 and includes both volatile and nonvolatile media, removable and non-removable media. By way of example, and not limitation, computer-readable media may comprise computer storage media and communication media. Computer storage media includes both volatile and nonvolatile, removable and non-removable media implemented in any method or technology for storage of information such as computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data. Computer storage media includes RAM, ROM, EEPROM, flash memory or other memory technology, CD-ROM, digital versatile disks (DVD) or other optical disk storage, magnetic cassettes, magnetic tape, magnetic disk storage or other magnetic storage devices. Computer storage media does not comprise a propagated data signal.
Communication media typically embodies computer-readable instructions, data structures, program modules or other data in a modulated data signal such as a carrier wave or other transport mechanism and includes any information delivery media. The term “modulated data signal” means a signal that has one or more of its characteristics set or changed in such a manner as to encode information in the signal. By way of example, and not limitation, communication media includes wired media such as a wired network or direct-wired connection, and wireless media such as acoustic, RF, infrared and other wireless media. Combinations of any of the above should also be included within the scope of computer-readable media.
Memory 604 includes computer-storage media in the form of volatile and/or nonvolatile memory. Memory 604 may be removable, nonremovable, or a combination thereof. Exemplary memory includes solid-state memory, hard drives, optical-disc drives, etc. Computing device 600 includes one or more processors 506 that read data from various entities such as bus 602, memory 604 or I/O components 610. One or more presentation components 608 present data indications to a person or other device. Exemplary one or more presentation components 608 include a display device, speaker, printing component, vibrating component, etc. I/O ports 612 allow computing device 600 to be logically coupled to other devices including I/O components 610, some of which may be built into computing device 600. Illustrative I/O components 610 include a microphone, joystick, game pad, satellite dish, scanner, printer, wireless device, etc.
The radio 616 represents one or more radios that facilitate communication with a wireless telecommunications network. While a single radio 616 is shown in
Many different arrangements of the various components depicted, as well as components not shown, are possible without departing from the scope of the claims below. Embodiments of our technology have been described with the intent to be illustrative rather than restrictive. Alternative embodiments will become apparent to readers of this disclosure after and because of reading it. Alternative means of implementing the aforementioned can be completed without departing from the scope of the claims below. Certain features and subcombinations are of utility and may be employed without reference to other features and subcombinations and are contemplated within the scope of the claims.
