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Wireless communications system having a space-time architecture employing multi-element antennas at both the transmitter and receiver

Assignee: Nokia of America Corp
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Filing: 1999-04-07
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Granted: —
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Expires: 2019-04-07
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Abstract

Abstract The bit rate at which a digital wireless communications system communicates data may be significantly increased by using multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver and by decomposing the channel into m subchannels that operate in the same frequency band. The system transmits m one dimensional signals and maximizes the minimum signal-to-noise ratio of the receiver detection process.

Inventors

  • 👤 Gerard Joseph Foschini
  • 👤 Glenn David Golden

Bibliographic Details

Application Number —
Jurisdiction EP
Data Source google_patents
Last Synchronized 2026-11-04 19:48
CPC Classifications
H; H01; H01Q; H01Q3/00; H01Q3/26; H04; H04B; H04B7/00; H04B7/14; H04B7/15; H04B7/204; H01Q3/2605; H01Q3/2611; H04L; H04L1/00; H04L1/02; H04L1/06; H04L1/0618

Claims Analysis

Total Claims: 17
Claim 1
Independent Claim 252 words
A communications system comprising a transmitter having k antennas, said transmitter responsive to receipt of an m-dimensional transmit symbol vector from a source, components of said transmit symbol vector comprising QAM symbols, said transmit symbol vector being transmitted over m of the k antennas using a predetermined modulation technique, where k ≥ m > 1, and CHARACTERIZED BY a receiver having n antennas for receiving signals from said transmitter as n-dimensional received signal vectors, where n ≥ m, each of said received signal vectors comprising a linear combination of symbols from said transmitter and additive noise, wherein said receiver further comprises a detection processor that processes the n-dimensional received signal vector to form an estimate of the m-dimensional transmit symbol vector, the detector further comprises a processor that (a) determines a preferred permutation of integers 1, 2, ... m, which define an order in which said m components of said transmit symbol vector are estimated, and in which the preferred permutation is a function of the signal-to-noise ratios of the m components, and (b) in the order defined by said preferred permutation then estimates the (i)-th ordered component of the transmit symbol vector by nulling out from the received signal vector contributions due to transmit symbol vector components (i+1 ), (i+2),..... (m) which have not yet been estimated, and canceling out from the received signal vector contributions due to transmit symbol vector components (1), (2),... (i-1 ) which have already been estimated, where (i) denotes the ith element of the preferred permutation.
Claim 2
Dependent Claim 45 words
The communications system of claim 1 wherein the detection processor is arranged to repeatedly process received training signals characterizing the signal propagation environment to generate a set of m spatially matched filter vectors, offering the best Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for detecting the m transmitted symbols.
Claim 3
Dependent Claim 27 words
The communications system of claim 1 wherein the order for detecting the m transmitted symbols maximizes the minimum of the m signal-to-noise ratios of the detection process.
Claim 4
Dependent Claim 27 words
The communications system of claim 1 wherein the selection of the transmitter antennas is randomly changed prior to the transmission of a group of transmit vector symbols.
Claim 5
Dependent Claim 44 words
The communications system of claim 1 further comprising a feedback channel from the receiver to the transmitter and wherein the selection of the transmitter antennas is optimized based on signal propagation environment information that the receiver supplies to the transmitter via the feedback channel.
Claim 6
Dependent Claim 68 words
The communications system of claim 1 further comprising a feedback channel from the receiver to the transmitter and wherein the transmitter transmits substreams of a demultiplexed stream of symbols supplied by a source over respective ones of a predetermined set of transmit antennas and changes the selection of antennas forming the set of antennas based on signal propagation environment information supplied by the receiver via the feedback channel.
Claim 7
Dependent Claim 53 words
The communications system of claim 1 further comprising a feedback channel from the receiver to the transmitter and wherein the transmitter transmits a vector symbol over a subset of the k transmitter antennas, in which the subset is selected based on signal propagation environment information supplied by the receiver via a feedback channel.
Claim 8
Dependent Claim 48 words
The communications system of claim 1 wherein the receiver has an arbitrary number of receive antennas greater than n and wherein the n antennas that are used to receive signals from said transmitter as n-dimensional received signal vectors is a subset of the arbitrary number of receive antennas.
Claim 9
Dependent Claim 71 words
The communications system of claim 1 wherein the rate at which symbols may be received accurately at the receiver is proportional to the number of transmit antennas used to transmit the symbols and logarithmic in the level of transmitted power so that the level of power at which symbols may be transmitted at the transmitter may be substantially decreased by increasing the number of transmit antennas by a relatively small number.
Claim 10
Dependent Claim 53 words
A wireless transmitter comprising a source of a stream of symbols, a plurality of transmitter antennas, and CHARACTERIZED BY a transmitter processor which demultiplexes the symbol stream into m substreams of symbols and which then transmits each substream of symbols over a selected one of the transmitter antennas using a predetermined modulation technique.
Claim 11
Dependent Claim 38 words
The transmitter of claim 10 wherein said plurality of transmitter antennas is greater than m antennas, where m > 1, and wherein selection of the m transmitter antennas used to transmit the m substreams of symbols is arbitrary.
Claim 12
Dependent Claim 24 words
The transmitter of claim 10 wherein the selection of the transmitter antennas is randomly changed prior to the transmission of a group of symbols.
Claim 13
Dependent Claim 53 words
The transmitter of claim 10 further comprising a receiver for receiving the transmitted symbols, and a feedback channel from the receiver to the transmitter and wherein the transmitter processor optimizes the selection of the transmitter antennas based on signal propagation environment information that the receiver supplies to the transmitter via the feedback channel.
Claim 14
Dependent Claim 57 words
The system of claim 10 further comprising a feedback channel from a receiver of the transmitted symbols to the transmitter and wherein the transmitter transmits a vector symbol over a subset of the plurality of transmitter antennas, in which the subset is selected based on signal propagation environment information received from the receiver via the feedback channel.
Claim 15
Dependent Claim 175 words
A wireless receiver comprising a plurality of receiver antennas for respectively receiving a plurality of n signal components forming a received signal vector, where n > 1, and CHARACTERIZED BY a processor that stores a received signal vector in memory with other received signal vectors forming a burst of signal vectors, and a detection processor which processes the stored received signal vector to determine components of a transmitted signal vector in an order determined as a function of respective signal-to-noise ratios determined for particular decision statistics so that (a) interference stemming from transmitted symbol vector components that have been processed are canceled out of a signal vector that is currently being processed, (b) interference stemming from transmitted symbol vector components that have not yet been processed is nulled out of the signal vector that is currently being processed by projecting the signal vector orthogonal to a space occupied by the latter interference, and then processing the projected signal vector in accordance with a predetermined demodulation technique to identify the components of the transmitted symbol vector.
Claim 16
Dependent Claim 42 words
The receiver of claim 15 wherein the detection processor includes repeatedly processing data characterizing the transmission environment to generate a set of m spatially matched filter vectors offering the best Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) for detecting the components of the transmitted symbol vector.
Claim 17
Dependent Claim 28 words
The receiver of claim 15 wherein the order for detecting the components of the transmitted symbol vector is to maximize the minimum signal-to-noise ratio of the detection process.

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