Direct space-to-information converter for efficient interference sensing

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.

Tech Ventures Reference:

• IR CU17085, CU18364

• Licensing Contact: Greg Maskel