US 12,335,003 B2
Distributed digital beamforming
Emmanouil Frantzeskakis, Athens (GR); Georgios Sfikas, Athens (GR); and Konstantinos Vryssas, Athens (GR)
Assigned to Argo Semiconductors SA, Hellinikon (GR)
Filed by Argo Semiconductors SA, Hellinikon (GR)
Filed on Aug. 31, 2022, as Appl. No. 17/823,855.
Claims priority of provisional application 63/243,158, filed on Sep. 12, 2021.
Prior Publication US 2023/0080401 A1, Mar. 16, 2023
Int. Cl. H04B 7/06 (2006.01); H04B 7/0413 (2017.01); H04B 7/08 (2006.01)
CPC H04B 7/0617 (2013.01) [H04B 7/0413 (2013.01); H04B 7/0897 (2013.01)] 19 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A radio unit for massive multiple input and multiple output (mMIMO) communications, comprising:
M antenna branches;
a plurality of partial digital beamforming (PDBF) processors, each of the partial digital beamforming processors receiving a transmit vector comprising values for each of L data layers, to be transmitted for a time t from the radio unit via the antenna branches, wherein each of the plurality of partial digital beamforming processors performs a beamforming operation on the transmit vector by multiplying the transmit vector with each of a plurality of respective weight vectors, the weight vectors each being a subset of a received weight array, to produce a plurality of scalar values, each of the scalar values corresponding to one of the weight vectors and being supplied to a respective one of the antenna branches; and
a plurality of N upper physical layer (PHY) processors, N being an integer greater than one, the upper PHY processors being arranged to effectively communicate with each other as if configured in a complete mesh, each upper PHY processor initially receiving less than all of the data layers of the transmit vector and communicating with at least one other of the upper PHY processors so as to collect the entirety of the transmit vector which is supplied to a plurality of PDBF processors;
wherein a number of the plurality of scalar values produced by any particular one of the partial digital beamforming processors is equal to a number of the plurality of weight vectors by which the transmit vector is multiplied in the particular one of the partial digital beamforming processors and a total number of scalar values produced is equal to M; and
wherein L and M are each an integer greater than one.