CN115275646A

CN115275646A - Intelligent beam switching antenna and electronic equipment

Info

Publication number: CN115275646A
Application number: CN202110486070.2A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 苏明; 袁东明; 王立江; 刘莹; 丰·石; 冯同冷; 方聪
Original assignee: Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications; Boeing Co
Current assignee: Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications; Boeing Co
Priority date: 2021-04-30
Filing date: 2021-04-30
Publication date: 2022-11-01

Abstract

The present disclosure provides an intelligent beam switching antenna and an electronic device. The smart beam switching antenna includes: a smart antenna array configured to generate main beams of at least two different directions; a reconfigurable power splitter configured to detect respective beam directions of a plurality of target access points and to change a mode of the smart antenna array based on the detection such that a main beam direction of the smart antenna array points to the respective beam directions of the plurality of target access points, respectively. The problem that an intelligent beam switching antenna cannot accurately communicate with a plurality of target access points in the related art is solved, and the beneficial effects that the intelligent beam switching antenna can accurately communicate with the target access points in different directions are achieved.

Description

Intelligent beam switching antenna and electronic equipment

Technical Field

The present technology relates to the field of communications, and in particular, to an intelligent beam switching antenna.

Background

The beam switching antenna in the related art cannot allow two or more beams in different directions to coexist at the same time, and is complicated in structure.

Disclosure of Invention

According to an aspect of an embodiment of the present disclosure, there is provided a smart beam switching antenna including: a smart antenna array configured to generate main beams of at least two different directions; a reconfigurable power divider configured to detect respective beam directions of a plurality of target access points and to change a mode of the smart antenna array based on the detection such that a main beam direction of the smart antenna array points to the respective beam directions of the plurality of target access points, respectively.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, according to a beam direction detected by the probe antenna, the control module changes a mode of the smart antenna array by adjusting on/off of the switch, so that a main beam direction of the smart antenna array points to a Wi-Fi signal source direction of a target AP in an airport environment.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the smart antenna array includes a plurality of antenna elements, and two adjacent antenna elements form a single beam to form a plurality of single beams in different directions and/or form a plurality of different dual-beam combinations.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the reconfigurable power divider includes: a control module including a switch chip, the control module configured to input an input signal to the power divider; a power divider configured to divide energy of the input signal into two or more paths and provide the divided energy to corresponding one or more of the switch chips to enable switching of a mode of the smart beam switching antenna by controlling the switch chips.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the switch chip includes a plurality of SP3T switch chips and a plurality of SPDT switch chips, and the control module implements switching of a mode of the smart beam switching antenna by controlling on and off of the plurality of SP3T switch chips and the plurality of SPDT switch chips, so that a main beam direction of the smart antenna array is respectively directed to corresponding Wi-Fi signal source directions of a plurality of target access points.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the reconfigurable power splitter further includes a probe antenna configured to detect respective beam directions of a plurality of target access points.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the pattern of the smart antenna array includes a plurality of patterns, a part of the plurality of patterns corresponding to a single beam pattern and another part of the plurality of patterns corresponding to a dual beam pattern.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the reconfigurable power divider includes one input port and a plurality of output ports, each for connecting a corresponding one of a plurality of antenna elements of the smart antenna array.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the smart antenna array is connected to the power divider by a plurality of SMA cables.

According to another aspect of the disclosed embodiments, there is provided an electronic device including the smart beam switching antenna of any one of the above.

In an exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, the electronic device is configured for use in an airport, communicating with a plurality of aircraft.

Through the structure, the problem that the intelligent beam switching antenna cannot accurately communicate with a plurality of target access points in the related art is solved, and the intelligent beam switching antenna has the beneficial effect that the intelligent beam switching antenna can accurately communicate with the target access points in different directions.

Drawings

The accompanying drawings, which are included to provide a further understanding of the disclosure, illustrate embodiments of the disclosure and together with the description serve to explain the disclosure and are not to limit the disclosure. In the drawings:

fig. 1 is a schematic diagram of a circuit configuration of a smart beam switching antenna implementing multi-beam coexistence according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 2 is a schematic structural diagram of a smart beam switching antenna implementing multi-beam coexistence according to an embodiment of the present disclosure;

fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of a reconfigurable power divider, according to an embodiment of the present disclosure.

Detailed Description

In order to make the technical solutions of the present disclosure better understood by those skilled in the art, the technical solutions of the embodiments of the present disclosure will be clearly and completely described below with reference to the accompanying drawings.

It should be noted that the terms "comprises" and "comprising," and any variations thereof, are intended to cover a non-exclusive inclusion, such that a process, method, system, article, or apparatus that comprises a list of steps or modules or elements is not necessarily limited to those steps or modules or elements expressly listed, but may include other steps or modules or elements not expressly listed or inherent to such process, method, article, or apparatus.

Directional antenna array: a Directional antenna (Directional antenna) is an antenna that emits and receives electromagnetic waves in one or more specific directions with a particularly strong intensity, and emits and receives electromagnetic waves in other directions with a null or minimum intensity. An array of multiple directional antennas is called a directional antenna array.

The beam forming technology comprises the following steps: beamforming (BF) techniques can be divided into adaptive beamforming, fixed Beam and switched beamforming techniques. The fixed beam, i.e., the antenna pattern, IS fixed, dividing the three 120 sectors in IS-95 into fixed beams. The switched beam is an extension of the fixed beam, each 120 ° sector is subdivided into a plurality of smaller sectors, each sector has a fixed beam, and when a user moves within a sector, the switched beam mechanism can automatically switch the beam to the sector containing the strongest signal, but the fatal weakness of the switched beam mechanism is that the ideal signal and the interference signal cannot be distinguished.

The intelligent antenna: the intelligent antenna is also called self-adaptive array antenna, and is composed of antenna array, beam forming network and beam forming algorithm. The method adjusts the weighted amplitude and phase of each array element signal by an algorithm meeting a certain criterion, thereby adjusting the directional diagram shape of the antenna array to achieve the purpose of enhancing the required signal and suppressing the interference signal. The smart antenna technology is suitable for a Time Division Duplex (TDD) CDMA system, and can suppress multi-user interference and improve system capacity to a greater extent.

A power divider: a power divider (power divider) is a device that divides one path of input signal energy into two or more paths to output equal or unequal energy, and may also combine multiple paths of signal energy into one path to output, which may be referred to as a combiner.

Fig. 1 is a schematic circuit diagram of a smart beam switching antenna implementing multi-beam coexistence according to an embodiment of the present disclosure, and the smart beam switching antenna includes a smart antenna array 10 and a reconfigurable power divider 12, as shown in fig. 1. The smart antenna array in the present disclosure may have two beams in different directions simultaneously with respect to other antenna arrays, thereby enabling communication with airplanes from different directions. In addition, a reconfigurable power divider 12 is designed, which comprises 3 power divider chips (SKY 16406), 2 SP3T switch chips (BGS 13PN 10), 8 SPDT switch chips (BGS 12PN 10) and 9 interfaces. The system controls the intelligent antenna array to switch the beam direction by controlling the on-off of the switch chip.

Fig. 2 is a schematic structural diagram of a smart beam switching antenna for implementing multi-beam coexistence according to an embodiment of the present disclosure. With reference to fig. 1 and 2, the smart antenna array 10 includes eight antenna units 102-1 to 102-8, two adjacent antenna units form a single beam, which can form seven single beams in different directions, and the 180-degree range can be uniformly covered, and nine different dual-beam combinations can be formed. By adopting the intelligent antenna array with eight antenna units, antenna beams can uniformly cover a 180-degree range, so that the coverage area is wide. Besides, the intelligent antenna array realizes seven single beams in different directions and nine different double-beam combinations, and can simultaneously communicate with airplanes from different directions. In addition, the structure enables the intelligent antenna array system to be simple in structure, convenient to install, low in manufacturing cost and suitable for batch production.

The reconfigurable power splitter 12 includes a power splitter 122, a control block 124, and a probe antenna 126, where the control block 124 includes a plurality of switching chips. The power splitter 122 is configured to split the energy of the input signal into two or more paths and provide it to a respective one or more of the switch chips. A control module 124 configured to input the input signal to the power divider 122 and control the switch chip through the power divider 122 to implement switching of the mode of the smart beam switching antenna. The probe antenna 126 is configured to detect respective beam directions of multiple target access points.

The reconfigurable power splitter 12 is in one exemplary embodiment a 1:8 reconfigurable power splitter. The switching of modes is realized by controlling the on-off of a switch, the modes 1-7 respectively correspond to single beams 1-7 of the intelligent antenna array, and the modes 8-16 respectively correspond to 9 different double-beam combinations. The intelligent antenna array is connected to the power divider through eight SMA cables, the direction of a Wi-Fi signal is obtained through detection of the detection antenna, and then switching of the wave beam is achieved by controlling on and off of the switch.

The switch chip comprises a plurality of SP3T switch chips and a plurality of SPDT switch chips, and the control module controls the plurality of SP3T switch chips and the plurality of SPDT switch chips to switch the mode of the smart beam switching antenna, so that the main beam direction of the smart antenna array points to the corresponding Wi-Fi signal source directions of a plurality of target access points respectively.

The schematic diagram of the reconfigurable power divider 12 is shown in fig. 3, and the reconfigurable power divider includes 9 ports, one port is an input port 121, and the other eight ports are output ports 123 respectively used for connecting each antenna unit of the antenna array. The reconfigurable power divider 12 further comprises 3 power dividers (SKY 16406) 122 (122-1 to 122-3), 2 SP3T switch chips (BGS 13PN 10) 125 (125-1 to 125-3) and 8 SPDT switch chips (BGS 12PN 10) 127 (127-1 to 127-8), and the beam direction of the antenna array is controlled by controlling the on and off of the switch chips.

When two pins of the SP3T125-1 switch are 00 respectively, the SPDT127-1 switch is connected; respectively 01, the power distributor is communicated; when the voltage is respectively 10, the SPDT127-4 switch is connected. Port 1 is connected when 1 pin of the SPDT127-1 switch is 0, and port 3 is connected when 1 pin is 1. And other similar reasons, the MCU can set the high and low levels of all the switch pins to switch to different beams. For example, when mode 1, i.e., single beam 1, is required, the high and low levels of the switch pins may be controlled so that SP3T125-1 is connected to SP3T127-1 and then to port 1, and SP3T125-2 is connected to SP3T127-8 and then to port 2. When mode 8 is required, i.e., dual beam 1, the high and low levels of the switch pins can be controlled so that SP3T125-1 communicates with the power divider and SPDT127-2 communicates with port 1 and SPDT127-3 communicates with port 5, and sp3t125-2 communicates with the power divider and SPDT127-7 communicates with port 2 and SPDT127-6 communicates with port 6.

The code for setting the switch pin according to different working modes of the antenna is as follows:

the low cost antenna array and controller in the disclosed embodiments utilize beamforming techniques to mitigate interference from other Wi-Fi systems. The intelligent beam switching antenna can generate seven independent signal beams, and the 180-degree range can be uniformly covered. It can also produce nine different combinations of dual beams to cover two different directions. The antenna array points to a certain direction according to the position of the terminal signal to generate a space directional beam, so that the main beam of the antenna points to the direction of the terminal signal, side lobes in other directions are reduced, the terminal signal is fully utilized, and the interference of other surrounding APs is reduced or inhibited. Therefore, when the signal transmission power of the AP is at the same level, the smart antenna has a higher signal strength in a specific direction compared to other antennas, thereby reducing interference in other directions.

In addition, under the condition of not increasing the complexity of the system, the intelligent antenna technology can improve the data transmission service quality and the network capacity between the airplane and the ground, and can be well suitable for the current airport wireless network.

In other test scenarios where the variables are fixed, the difference in signal strength will directly affect the data transmission rate in the wireless network. Generally, the transmission rate can be increased by increasing the signal strength of an Access Point (AP). The intelligent antenna points to a certain direction according to the position of the terminal signal, generates a space directional beam, and enables the space directional beam to point to the direction of the terminal signal, so that the terminal signal can be fully utilized, and the interference of other surrounding APs can be reduced or inhibited.

The intelligent antenna system provided by the embodiment of the disclosure has the characteristics of low cost, convenient equipment installation, existence of beams in different directions and the like, can be widely applied to airport environment, and is mainly used for reducing the interference of other AP signals.

The intelligent beam switching antenna in the embodiment of the disclosure points to a certain direction according to the position of the terminal signal, generates a space directional beam, and makes the space directional beam point to the direction of the terminal signal, thereby fully utilizing the terminal signal and reducing or suppressing the interference of other surrounding APs.

An exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure also provides an electronic device for communicating with a plurality of incoming and outgoing airplanes in an airport, the electronic device including a smart antenna.

Two main types of smart antennas include switched beam smart antennas and adaptive array smart antennas. Adaptive arrays allow the antenna to estimate the beam direction using a direction of arrival (DOA) estimation method, steering the beam to any direction of interest, while nulling the interfering signal. Switched beam antennas provide excellent gain performance with extremely low side lobe levels. They have extremely fast beam switching capabilities, making these antennas suitable for use in complex nodal networks in tactical communications.

Switched beam antennas can be further divided into two groups: single beam and multi-beam directional antennas. In a single beam directional antenna system, only one beam is active at a given time. Simultaneous transmission is not allowed because in this system there is only one transceiver. A multi-beam directional antenna system, on the other hand, is an example of a Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) system. Here, each directional antenna may be used and allowed to transmit at the same time and frequency. The number of beams is equal to the number of transceivers.

Adaptive array smart antennas use a direction of arrival (DoA) algorithm to determine the direction of a signal received from a user. In this way, continuous tracking of the user can be achieved. Also, the detection of interferers may be added to these systems to cancel interference by adjusting radiation pattern nulls to increase signal-to-interference ratio (SIR). It is clear that adaptive beamforming is more complex than switched beam systems. There are two types of adaptive beamforming: in single-user beamforming, the antenna beams are adjusted to track the users and cancel interference. In this case, one transceiver may be sufficient in the case where only one user is active at a given time. In multi-user beamforming, there are different beam patterns and each beam tracks one user. Thus, simultaneous transmission is allowed and SDMA is achieved.

In one exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, a switched beam antenna is employed that forms multiple beams with enhanced sensitivity in a particular direction. These antennas detect signal strength, select one of several predetermined fixed beams, and switch from one beam to another as the mobile station moves throughout the sector.

Rather than shaping the directional antenna pattern with the metallic nature and physical design of a single element, switched beam antennas combine the outputs of multiple antennas in a variety of ways to form a directional beam that is more spatially selective than a conventional single beam.

Switched beam antennas use fixed directional beams of multiple narrow beams, and simple algorithms can be used for beam selection without the need for complex algorithms. It requires only modest interaction between the mobile unit and the base station, as compared to an adaptive array system. And therefore has lower cost and complexity. It can significantly increase coverage and capacity compared to conventional antenna-based systems. The switched beam antenna should be designed to have multiple fixed beam patterns. The control element within the antenna may then select the most appropriate control element for the detected condition. The antenna consists of a plurality of fixed beams, one of which is open towards the desired signal or steered from one beam towards the desired signal.

Smart antenna arrays consist of printed antenna elements with certain width and length depending on their type (patches, slots, etc.), which are arranged with horizontal and vertical spacing. These two dimensions will affect the generated side lobes. Typically, the spacing between these two elements is designed to be one-half of the operating wavelength. The printed antenna element is placed on a dielectric substrate. The edge of the substrate extends from the edge of the antenna element.

The ground plane is in an intermediate layer between the feed structure and the antenna. The antenna is placed on a dielectric substrate and the feeding microstrip line is placed on another substrate. The two substrates are separated by a GND plane. Another way of feeding the antenna elements is through connection lines, the feeding microstrip line on the bottom layer will feed the antenna elements on the top layer through the slots in the ground plane, through the vias of the two dielectric layers.

In another exemplary embodiment of the present disclosure, an adaptive array smart antenna is employed. The adaptive array smart antenna employs closed-loop adaptive signal processing operations for antenna weight calculation and signal combining. Multiple antennas may receive or transmit signals. The signal is amplified in an amplifier. The outputs of the amplifiers are down-converted in respective down-converters. Each down-converter multiplies the output of a respective amplifier by a local oscillator in-phase signal (LOI) and a local oscillator quadrature-phase signal (LOQ) in a respective multiplier.

The resulting signals are applied to respective Low Pass Filters (LPFs) in an automatic gain control loop that normalizes the signal levels prior to the MRC algorithm. The variable gain amplifiers are applied to the respective outputs of the LPFs. In the output of the variable gain amplifier, a power detector is applied to sum the signal power of all antennas and compare the signal power to a threshold. The difference between the signal power of all antennas and the threshold may be integrated to maintain the signal level at the same level and may be used to adjust the gain of the variable gain amplifier. Thus, in this embodiment, the MRC algorithm can operate at different input signal levels.

The beamforming process of the adaptive array smart antenna performs real-time adaptive signal processing to achieve maximum signal-to-noise ratio. The antenna weights are used to align the phases of the multiple antenna signals received from the antennas and also scale the signals proportional to the square root of the signal-to-noise ratio. The signal envelope is used as an approximation to scale the signal, which is proportional to the square root of the signal-to-noise ratio in each individual channel. This approximation is accurate, provided that the noise in each channel is the same and the SNR is high enough to be accurately approximated by the signal plus noise in each channel.

Beamforming can also be achieved by combining elements in a phased array. A phased array is an antenna array in which the relative phases of the individual signals feeding the antennas are steered in a manner that enhances the effective radiation pattern of the array in a desired manner and suppressed in undesired directions. Thus, signals at certain angles will produce constructive interference, while other angles will experience destructive interference.

In this embodiment, the storage medium may include, but is not limited to: a U-disk, a Read-Only Memory (ROM), a Random Access Memory (RAM), a removable hard disk, a magnetic or optical disk, and other various media capable of storing program codes.

In the several embodiments provided in the present disclosure, it should be understood that the disclosed technology can be implemented in other ways. The above-described apparatus embodiments are merely illustrative, and for example, the division of the units or modules is only one logical division, and other divisions may be realized in practice, for example, a plurality of units or modules or components may be combined or integrated into another system, or some features may be omitted or not executed. In addition, the shown or discussed mutual coupling or direct coupling or communication connection may be an indirect coupling or communication connection of modules or units through some interfaces, and may be in an electrical or other form.

The units or modules described as separate parts may or may not be physically separate, and parts displayed as units or modules may or may not be physical units or modules, may be located in one place, or may be distributed on a plurality of network units or modules. Some or all of the units or modules may be selected according to actual needs to achieve the purpose of the embodiment.

In addition, each functional unit or module in the embodiments of the present disclosure may be integrated into one processing unit or module, each unit or module may exist alone physically, or two or more units or modules may be integrated into one unit or module. The integrated unit or module may be implemented in the form of hardware, or may also be implemented in the form of a software functional unit or module.

The integrated unit, if implemented in the form of a software functional unit and sold or used as a stand-alone product, may be stored in a computer readable storage medium. Based on such understanding, the technical solution of the present disclosure may be embodied in the form of a software product, which is stored in a storage medium and includes several instructions for causing a computer device (which may be a personal computer, a server, or a network device) to execute all or part of the steps of the method according to the embodiments of the present disclosure. And the aforementioned storage medium includes: a U-disk, a Read-Only Memory (ROM), a Random Access Memory (RAM), a removable hard disk, a magnetic disk, or an optical disk, and various media capable of storing program codes.

The foregoing is merely a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure, and it should be noted that modifications and embellishments could be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the principle of the present disclosure, and these should also be considered as the protection scope of the present disclosure.

Claims

1. A smart beam switching antenna, comprising:

a smart antenna array configured to generate main beams of at least two different directions;

a reconfigurable power divider configured to detect respective beam directions of a plurality of target access points and to change a mode of the smart antenna array based on the detection such that a main beam direction of the smart antenna array points to the respective beam directions of the plurality of target access points, respectively.

2. The smart beam switching antenna of claim 1, wherein the smart antenna array comprises a plurality of antenna elements, two adjacent antenna elements forming a single beam to form a plurality of single beams in different directions and/or forming a plurality of different dual beam combinations.

3. The smart beam switching antenna of claim 1, wherein the reconfigurable power splitter comprises:

a control module including a switch chip, the control module configured to input an input signal to the power divider;

the power divider is configured to divide energy of the input signal into two or more paths and provide the two or more paths to corresponding one or more of the switch chips, so as to implement switching of a mode of the smart beam switching antenna by controlling the switch chips.

4. The smart beam switching antenna of claim 3, the switch chip comprising a plurality of SP3T switch chips and a plurality of SPDT switch chips, the control module controlling the plurality of SP3T switch chips and the plurality of SPDT switch chips to switch the mode of the smart beam switching antenna so that the main beam direction of the smart antenna array points to the corresponding Wi-Fi signal source directions of the plurality of target access points, respectively.

5. The smart beam switching antenna of claim 3, wherein the reconfigurable power splitter further comprises a sounding antenna configured to detect respective beam directions of a plurality of target access points.

6. The smart beam switching antenna of claim 3, wherein the pattern of the smart antenna array comprises a plurality of patterns, a portion of the plurality of patterns corresponding to a single beam pattern and another portion of the plurality of patterns corresponding to a dual beam pattern.

7. The smart beam switching antenna of claim 3, wherein the reconfigurable power splitter includes an input port and a plurality of output ports, each for connecting a respective one of a plurality of antenna elements of the smart antenna array.

8. The smart beam switching antenna of any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the smart antenna array is connected to the power splitter by a plurality of SMA cables.

9. An electronic device, characterized in that the electronic device comprises a smart beam switching antenna according to any of claims 1 to 8.

10. The electronic device of claim 9, wherein the electronic device is configured for use in an airport in communication with a plurality of aircraft.