With usable spectrum becoming increasingly more congested, the need for robust, adaptive communications to take advantage of spatially-separated signal sources is apparent. Traditional phased array beamforming techniques used for interference removal rely on perfect calibration between elements and precise knowledge of the array configuration; however, if the exact array configuration is not known (unknown or imperfect assumption of element locations, unknown mutual coupling between elements, etc.), these traditional beamforming techniques are not viable, so a blind beamforming approach is required. A novel blind beamforming approach is proposed to address complex narrow-band interference environments where the precise array configuration is unknown. The received signal is decomposed into orthogonal narrow-band partitions using a polyphase filter-bank channelizer, and a rank-reduced version of the received matrix on each sub-channel is computed through reconstruction by retaining a subset of its singular values. The wideband spectrum is synthesized through a near-perfect polyphase reconstruction filter, and a composite wideband spectrum is obtained from the maximum eigenvector of the resulting covariance matrix.The resulting process is shown to suppress numerous interference sources (in special cases even with more than the degrees of freedom of the array), all without any knowledge of the primary signal of interest. Results are validated with both simulation and wireless laboratory over-the-air experimentation. / M.S. / As the number of devices using wireless communications increase, the amount of usable radio frequency spectrum becomes increasingly congested. As a result, the need for robust, adaptive communications to improve spectral efficiency and ensure reliable communication in the presence of interference is apparent. One solution is using beamforming techniques on digital phased array receivers to maximize the energy in a desired direction and steer nulls to remove interference. However, traditional phased array beamforming techniques used for interference removal rely on perfect calibration between antenna elements and precise knowledge of the array configuration. Consequently, if the exact array configuration is not known (unknown or imperfect assumption of element locations, unknown mutual coupling between elements, etc.), these traditional beamforming techniques are not viable, so a beamforming approach with relaxed requirements (blind beamforming) is required. This thesis proposes a novel blind beamforming approach to address complex narrow-band interference in spectrally congested environments where the precise array configuration is unknown. The resulting process is shown to suppress numerous interference sources, all without any knowledge of the primary signal of interest. Results are validated with both simulation and wireless laboratory experimentation conducted with a two-element array, verifying that proposed beamforming approach achieves a similar performance to the theoretical performance bound of receiving packets in AWGN with no interference present.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/115190 |
| Date | 05 May 2023 |
| Creators | Lusk, Lauren O. |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Gaeddert, Joseph D., Beex, A. A. (Louis), Ellingson, Steven W. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ |
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