Fully Digital Beamforming Receiver With a Real-Time Calibration for 5G Mobile Communication

Abstract

This paper presents a fully digital beamforming receiver (FDBR) using a method that calibrates the signals of all chains in real time, and is targeted for 5G mobile communication. In the real-time calibration method, the received signals of all chains are adjusted to correct the errors of phase and amplitude using the in-band signal other than operating frequency for calibration. The proposed FDBR with real-time calibration is designed and fabricated. The FDBR consists of eight chains of the tapered slot antenna (TSA) element, low noise block (LNB), and software defined radios (SDRs). The $1 \times 8$ array TSA with the directional coupler and the 1:8 divider is designed to send eight uniform calibration signals along with the received signal of all the chains. In SDR, the digital phase shifter and the real-time calibration blocks are implemented to realize digital beamforming. The digital phase shifter has an extremely high resolution of 0.72°. After using the real-time calibration method, the average of measured phase and amplitude error between each chain is less than 0.9° and 0.5 dB, respectively. To verify the beamforming performance of the FDBR, the simulation radiation pattern and the measurement radiation pattern are compared for 0°, ±15°, ±30°, and ±45° beam angles. The simulation results are in good agreement with the measured results. An excellent beamforming performance is achieved in the $1 \times 8$ array FDBR using the real-time calibration.