Application of Motion Sensors for Beam-Tracking of Mobile Stations in mmWave Communication Systems

Sensors

Duk-Sun Shim¹  Cheol-Kwan Yang¹  Jae Hwan Kim¹  Joo Pyo Han¹ 

[1] School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Chung-Ang University, Seoul 156-756, Korea;

关键词: motion sensor;    accelerometer;    gyroscope;    geo-magnetic sensor;    MEMS;    rotation;    displacement;    mmWave;    beam-tracking;    blockage;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s141019622

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

In a millimeter wave (mmWave) communication system with transmit/receive (Tx/Rx) beamforming antennas, small variation in device behavior or an environmental change can destroy beam alignment, resulting in power loss in the received signal. In this situation, the beam-tracking technique purely based on the received signal is not effective because both behavioral changes (rotation, displacement) and environmental changes (blockage) result in power loss in the received signal. In this paper, a motion sensor based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) as well as an electrical signal is used for beam tracking to identify the cause of beam error, and an efficient beam-tracking technique is proposed. The motion sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, and geo-magnetic sensor are composed of an attitude heading reference system (AHRS) and a zero-velocity detector (ZVD). The AHRS estimates the rotation angle and the ZVD detects whether the device moves. The proposed technique tracks a beam by handling the specific situation depending on the cause of beam error, minimizing the tracking overhead. The performance of the proposed beam-tracking technique is evaluated by simulations in three typical scenarios.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.