Transmit Beamforming Design Based on Multi-Receiver Power Suppression for STAR Digital Array

Sensors (Basel). 2024 Jan 18;24(2):622. doi: 10.3390/s24020622.

Abstract

The simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) array system provides higher radiation gain and data rate compared to traditional radio system. Because of the various mutual couplings between each pair of transmit and receive elements, it is a great challenge to suppress the incident self-interference power at multiple receive elements, which is usually much higher than the desired signal of interest (SoI) power and causes the saturation of receive links and the distortion of the digital SoI. In this paper, we propose an optimized method for transmit beamforming based on radiation power constraints and transmit power control. Through adaptive transmit beamforming, high isolation between the transmit array and each receive link is achieved, minimizing the self-interference power at each receiving element. This method effectively reduces the self-interference power, avoiding distortion of the SoI digital signal caused by limited-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). Simulation results demonstrate that this optimized transmit beamforming method can achieve more than 100 dB effective isotropic isolation (EII) on a 32-element two-dimensional phased array designed in HFSS, reducing the maximum incident self-interference power at the receive channels by approximately 35 dB, while effectively controlling the attenuation of the transmit gain. We also present the advantages in receive subarray isolation and lower ADCs digits under the transmit ABF method.

Keywords: multiple receivers; phased array; power amplifier; radiant power; simultaneous transmit and receive; transmit beamforming.