Frequency Band Extrapolation Beamforming Weight Computation for Wireless Communications

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of antennas;
• a transmitter coupled to the plurality of antennas, wherein the transmitter is configured to apply beamforming weights to a transmit signal to generate corresponding ones of a plurality of weighted signals that are supplied to respective ones of the plurality of antennas;
• a controller coupled to the transmitter configured to:
• store data representing reception of a transmission sent by another communication device and received at the plurality of antennas, wherein the transmission uses some but not all frequency subbands within a frequency band space and wherein the data represents baseband signals carried in the frequency subbands of the received transmission;
• compute a channel covariance matrix from data representing the baseband signals in the frequency subbands with respect to the plurality of antennas of the first communication device;
• compute uplink beamforming weights from the baseband signals in the frequency subband from the channel covariance matrix;
• compute a spatial projection of the uplink beamforming weights;
• compute a downlink spatial projection for a given frequency subband from the spatial projection of the uplink beamforming weights;
• and
• compute downlink beamforming weights from the downlink spatial projection, wherein the downlink beamforming weights are for use by the first communication device when beamforming a downlink transmission via the plurality of antennas of the first communication device to the second communication device.

Logic encoded in one or more tangible media for execution and when executed operable to:

• store data representing reception of a transmission sent by a second communication device and received at a plurality of antennas of a first communication device, wherein the transmission uses some but not all frequency subbands within a frequency band space and wherein the data represents baseband signals carried in the frequency subbands of the received transmission;
• compute a channel covariance matrix from data representing the baseband signals in the frequency subbands with respect to the plurality of antennas of the first communication device;
• compute uplink beamforming weights from the baseband signals in the frequency subband from the channel covariance matrix;
• compute a spatial projection of the uplink beamforming weights;
• compute a downlink spatial projection for a given frequency subband from the frequency domain variations and the spatial projection of the uplink beamforming weights;
• and
• compute downlink beamforming weights from the downlink spatial projection, wherein the downlink beamforming weights are for use by the first communication device when beamforming a downlink transmission via the plurality of antennas of the first communication device to the second communication device.