Orthogonal Beamforming for Multiuser Wireless Communications: Achieving higher received signal strength and throughput than with conventional beamforming

Abstract

For multiuser communications, a base station (BS) simultaneously transmits data to a number of users who employ the same frequency. This can be accomplished with the help of feedback or a channel to maintain the accuracy of received data; however, what results is a high complexity system. Therefore, this article proposes an alternative beamforming method for multiuser communications called orthogonal beamforming (OBFM). A number of beams are formed in predefined directions at the same time with all beams employing the same frequency. To avoid interference from other users operating at the same frequency, all beams are orthogonal to one another. The system performance of the proposed concept is compared to the zero-forcing (ZF) algorithm. A constructed prototype is tested in a real environment, confirming that the proposed OBFM provides a higher received signal strength and a higher throughput compared with conventional beamforming. Also, the proposed systems provide a lower bit error rate (BER).