Distributed Beamforming Techniques for Flexible Communications Networks

WISCANet: A Rapid Development Platform for Beyond 5G and 6G Radio System Prototyping

“…We added an optional genie channel subsystem to WISCANet in [73]. A genie channel, or perfect (near) instantaneous feedback channel, provides a mechanism to pass around information without concerns for constraints or the feasibility of a communications link.…”

“…To demonstrate that WISCANet enables these capabilities, we prepared several over-the-air demonstration applications that showcase the capabilities and ease-of-use described in the previous section. We executed these applications on the large WISCANet deployment that we maintain in the WISCA laboratory [27,30,73], which is pictured in Figure 2 and depicted in Figure 9. As a frame of reference compared to standard solutions (ASICs, FPGAs, RFSoCs, SDRs, etc.…”

“…In a previous study [73], we demonstrated a novel, distributed, multi-stage beamforming technique for distributed mesh relay networks. A simple example system that executes this technique is depicted in Figure 10.…”

“…In this particular configuration, two mesh relay networks A and B execute the multi-stage beamforming technique to relay communications between a simple transmitter and receiver. Given N a and M b nodes in meshes A and B, this technique increases the received SNR realized at the receiver by as much as N 2 a M b [73,76]. To quickly validate this system concept and performance bound, we implemented this system on WISCANet using Ettus X310 products.…”

“…To quickly validate this system concept and performance bound, we implemented this system on WISCANet using Ettus X310 products. Doing so allowed us to quickly (<2 weeks) validate the system concept over-the-air before committing to a multi-million dollar research program to transition the technology to an embedded solution [73].…”