Massive MIMO architecture
AssigneeNational Instruments Corporation
InventorsIan C. Wong, Karl F. Nieman, Nikhil U. Kundargi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Techniques are disclosed relating to a massive MIMO base station architecture. In some embodiments, a base station is configured to combine signals received by multiple antennas and, for at least a subset of processing elements included in the base station, each processing element is configured to operate on a different portion of the combined signals. In these embodiments, each portion includes signals from multiple antennas. In some embodiments, the portions are different time and/or frequency portions of the combined signals. In some embodiments, this distributed processing may allow the number of antennas of the base station to scale dramatically, provide dynamic re-configurability, facilitate real-time reciprocity-based precoding, etc.
Claims19
A base station, comprising:
- a plurality of antennas;
- a plurality of processing elements coupled to the plurality of antennas and configured to perform processing for wireless communications via the plurality of antennas;
- an interconnect configured to form a connection for communications between ones of the plurality of processing elements;
- wherein the base station is configured to combine signals received by multiple antennas of the plurality of antennas;
- wherein, for at least a subset of the plurality of processing elements, each processing element is configured to operate on a different portion of the combined signals in parallel, wherein each portion includes signals from multiple antennas of the plurality of antennas;
- and
- wherein the base station is configured to dynamically adjust, during operation and based on current operating conditions, the number of processing elements in the subset of processing elements configured to operate on different portions of the combined signals in parallel and wherein the base station is configured to dynamically adjust a size of the different portions of the combined signals operated on by each processing element in the subset of processing elements.
A method, comprising:
- receiving wireless signals via a plurality of antennas;
- combining the received signals;
- providing different portions of the combined signals to multiple different processing elements for processing in parallel;
- transmitting, via the plurality of antennas, signals that are generated based on processing of the portions of the combined signals by the multiple different processing elements;
- and
- dynamically adjusting, during operation and based on current operating conditions, the number of the multiple different processing elements processing the different portions of the combined signals in parallel and a size of the different portions of the combined signals provided to each of the multiple different processing elements.
A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions stored thereon that are capable of causing or configuring a computing system to perform operations comprising:
- receiving wireless signals via a plurality of antennas;
- combining the received signals;
- providing different portions of the combined signals to multiple different processing elements of a plurality of processing elements for separate processing in parallel;
- and
- transmitting, via the plurality of antennas, signals that are generated based on processing of the portions of the combined signals by the plurality of processing elements;
- and
- dynamically adjusting, during operation and based on current operating conditions, the number of the multiple different processing elements processing the different portions of the combined signals in parallel and a size of the different portions of the combined signals provided to each of the multiple different processing elements.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.