Beamforming Weight Estimation Using Wideband Multipath Direction of Arrival Analysis

摘要

Techniques are provided for computing downlink beamforming weights based on the received data at a base station from a mobile station in a MIMO communication system. An uplink transmission is received at a plurality of antennas at a first communication device from a second communication device, where the uplink transmission comprises a plurality of uplink subbands. The uplink spatial signature is estimated for each of the plurality of uplink subbands. The uplink spatial signature is decomposed into a plurality of direction of arrival (DOA) components for each uplink subband using a transform. Data representing multiple propagation paths between the first communication device and the second communication device is computed for each DOA component. A plurality of direction of departure (DOD) components for each of a plurality of downlink subbands is computed based on the data representing the multiple propagation paths. A downlink spatial signature for each downlink subband from the plurality of DOD components is computed using an inverse of the transform. Downlink beamforming weights are computed for each of the plurality of downlink subbands based on the downlink spatial signature, where the downlink beamforming weights are for use by the first communication device when beamforming a downlink transmission via the plurality of antennas of the first communication device to the second communication device.