Speaker: James Krieger
Affiliation: Signals, Information, and Algorithms Laboratory, RLE, MIT
Title: Architectures and System Design for Digitally-Enhanced Antenna Arrays
Abstract: Recent progress in millimeter wave and low-terahertz circuit technology holds the promise of enabling low-cost, high-performance portable antenna arrays for a host of exciting new applications.
However, realizing this potential will require, in addition, the development of new, appropriately-tailored system architectures. In this talk, we describe two approaches to this architecture design problem. Both can be viewed as digitally-enhanced phased array architectures featuring judicious analog-digital co-design, but are otherwise very different.
The first is the Dense Delta-Sigma Array. This architecture involves the use of a densely spaced array of antennas combined with inexpensive, low-resolution (2-bit) phase shifters, in contrast to a traditional half-wavelength spaced array with high-resolution phase shifters. This architecture features inter-element interaction that is the spatial counterpart of temporal processing used in delta-sigma data conversion.
The second is the Sparse Multi-Coset Array. This architecture involves the use of a sparsely spaced antenna
array with periodic nonuniform (i.e., multi-coset) structure. When combined with suitably designed
array processing, we show such arrays can be used to efficiently and accurately reconstruct correspondingly
sparse scenes to full resolution. Our development leverages valuable perspectives from the field of compressive sensing.
In the talk, we will develop the associated systems designs, starting from the underlying mathematical principles and concepts, and taking into account key engineering considerations. As we will describe, our
analysis shows that the resulting designs offer some attractive performance characteristics and engineering
tradeoffs.