Array beamforming with wide nulls

A wireless communication system, comprising:

• a plurality of antennas forming a directional antenna array;
• and
• a beamformer coupled to the plurality of antennas, the beamformer comprising a plurality of multipliers, wherein each of the plurality of antennas has an associated multiplier from the plurality of multipliers, each multiplier responsive to receiving a signal from the associated antenna and multiplying the signal by a weighting factor, and an adder/splitter coupled to the plurality of multipliers, the adder/splitter configured to add the multiplied signals received from the plurality of multipliers and to split signals sent to the plurality of multipliers;
• wherein the wireless communication system is configured to exchanging wireless signals between at least one remote client and the directional antenna array;
• wherein the wireless communication system is responsive to exchanging wireless signals between the at least one remote client and the directional antenna array to locating angles associated with directions of arrival for wireless signals from the at least one remote client with respect to the antenna array;
• wherein the wireless communication system is responsive to locating angles with the at least one remote client to determining values for the weighting factors for the multipliers for each of the plurality of antenna elements, so as to create predetermined phase differences between the signals of the plurality of antenna elements, wherein the determining values for the weighting factors comprises sampling baseband signals from each antenna element, so as to obtain a representation of sampled signals from a particular client, wherein the sampled signals are used to build up a covariance matrix R;
• wherein the wireless communication system is configured to performing an eigen-decomposition upon the covariance matrix for determining the dominant eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors of the matrix upon building up the covariance matrix of sampled values from the client signal;
• and
• wherein the wireless communication system is configured to using the predetermined phase differences to direct at least one null toward at least one source of interference, so as to avoid signal interference;
• and
• wherein the sampled signals X have vector components x0, x1, x2 . . . xn that are expressed in matrix form such that X={x0 x1 x2 . . . xn}, and wherein the wireless communication system is configured so that the covariance matrix R is built up such that R=XXH where R is the direct product of X, and XH is the Hermitian matrix of X.

A system of wireless communication comprising:

• means for exchanging wireless signals between at least one remote client and a directional antenna array associated with a wireless network, wherein the directional antenna array includes a plurality of antenna elements;
• means for locating angles associated with directions of arrival for wireless signals from each client with respect to the antenna array;
• means for determining values for weighting factors of wireless signals for each of the respective plurality of antenna elements, so as to create predetermined phase differences between the signals of the plurality of antenna elements, wherein the determining values for the weighting factors comprises sampling baseband signals from each antenna element, so as to obtain a representation of sampled signals from a particular client;
• means for using the predetermined phase differences to direct at least one null toward at least one source of interference, so as to avoid signal interference;
• wherein the sampled signals are used to build up a covariance matrix R;
• and
• wherein the sampled signals X have vector components x0, x1, x2 . . . xn that are expressed in matrix form such that X={x0 x1 x2 . . . xn}, and wherein the covariance matrix R is built up such that R=XXH where R is the direct product of X and XH is the Hermitian matrix of X.

A system for wireless communication comprising:

• means for exchanging wireless signals between at least one remote client and a directional antenna array associated with a wireless network, wherein the directional antenna array includes a plurality of antenna elements;
• means for locating angles associated with directions of arrival for wireless signals from each client with respect to the antenna array;
• means for determining values for weighting factors of wireless signals for each of the respective plurality of antenna elements, so as to create predetermined phase differences between the signals of the plurality of antenna elements, wherein the determining values for the weighting factors comprises sampling baseband signals from each antenna element, so as to obtain a representation of sampled signals from a particular client, wherein the sampled signals are used to build up a covariance matrix R;
• means for performing an eigen-decomposition upon the covariance matrix for determining the dominant eigenvalues and the corresponding eigenvectors of the matrix upon building up the covariance matrix of sampled values from the client signal;
• and
• means for using the predetermined phase differences to direct at least one null toward at least one source of interference, so as to avoid signal interference;
• wherein the sampled signals X have vector components x0, x1, x2 . . . xn that are expressed in matrix form such that X={x0 x1 x2 . . . xn}, and wherein the covariance matrix R is built up such that R=XXH where R is the direct product of X, and XH is the Hermitian matrix of X.