This technology is a reconfigurable and scalable architecture for efficient detection of direction-of-arrival of an interference signal.
Unmet Need: Reducing tradeoff in interference sensing due to the Nyquist sampling theorem
Current methods in direction-of-arrival (DOA) sensing rely on conventional delay-and-sum beamformers (CBFs). While CBF is widely used, it has significant drawbacks, namely scan time, resolution and energy consumption due to the Nyquist sampling theorem. Because detection of a signal requires the placement of several spatial antennas, relying on CBF will require many sum angles and intensive calculations. Thus, in a CBF system, sampling time and performance are tradeoffs when detecting the DOA of an interferer.
The Technology: Reconfigurable and scalable direct space-to-information converters for rapid DOA sensing
This technology is a direct space-to-information converter (DSIC) that unifies conventional beamformers (CBFs) with compressed sampling of DOA into a single reconfigurable and scalable receiver-array architecture. This technology reduces the number of scans required and has increased detection efficiencies compared to CBF. DSIC can rapidly find the DOA of a certain number of emitters by converting an incoming wavefront to spatial information. It then generates only a few compressed sensing measurements by forming random projections of the spatial signal consecutively in time. This technology has been shown to consume 16× less energy than a CBF. In addition, DSIC offers a wide-range of reconfigurability and scalability advantages when compared to CBF, especially when the number of interferers is unknown.
Applications:
- Efficient direction-of-arrival sensing
- Cellular communication or GPS interference mitigation
- Vehicular radar systems (LIDAR)
- Ultrasound imaging
- Unmanned aerial vehicle detection
Advantages:
- Reconfigurable and scalable architecture for signal detection and sensing
- Faster and lower energy interference signal locating
- Reduced overhead costs in performance and sampling time
Lab Director:
Peter Kinget, Ph.D.
Patent Information:
Patent Issued
Related Publications:
Bajor M, Haque T, Han G, Zhang C, Wright J, Kinget PR. “A Flexible Phased-Array Architecture for Reception and Rapid Direction-of-Arrival Finding Utilizing Pseudo-Random Antenna Weight Modulation and Compressive Sampling” IEEE J Solid-State Circ. 2019 Mar 27; 54(5):1315-1328.
Bajor M, Haque T, Han G, Zhang C, Wright J, Kinget PR. “An 8-Element, 1-3GHz Direct Space-to-Information Converter for Rapid, Compressive-Sampling Direction-of-Arrival Finding Utilizing Pseudo-Random Antenna-Weight Modulation” 2018 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium. 2018 Aug 9.
Haque T, Bojar M, Zhang Y, Zhu J, Jacobs ZA, Kettlewell RB, Wright J, Kinget PR. “A Reconfigurable Architecture Using a Flexible LO Modulator to Unify High-Sensitivity Signal Reception and Compressed-Sampling Wideband Signal Detection” IEEE J Solid-State Circ. 2018 Mar 7; 53(6):1577-1591.
Bajor M, Haque T, Wright J, Kinget PR. “Theory and Design of a Direct Space-to-Information Converter for Rapid Detection of Interferer DoA” 2017 IEEE 86th Vehicular Technology Conference. 2018 Feb 12.
Haque T, Bajor M, Zhang Y, Zhu J, Jacobs Z, Kettlewell R, Wright J, Kinget PR. “A Direct RF-to-Information Converter for reception and wideband interferer detection employing pseudo-random LO modulation” 2017 IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium. 2017 Jul 7.
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