Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays Research Articles

Vortex Electromagnetic Radar Imaging and Adaptive Resource Scheduling Based on Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays

Vortex Electromagnetic Radar Imaging and Adaptive Resource Scheduling Based on Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays

A note on the design of frequency-invariant beamforming with uniform concentric circular microphone array

Compared to the frequency-invariant beamformer (FIB) with uniform circular microphone arrays, the FIB with uniform concentric circular microphone arrays (UCCAs) can mitigate the deep nulls problem in the white noise gain (WNG) and the directivity factor (DF). The WNG of the FIB-UCCAs can be improved by increasing the number of microphones. However, certain Jacobi-Anger expansion based methods for FIB-UCCAs utilize a linearly transformed version of the beamformer coefficients to optimize the WNG, which may result in severe beampattern distortion at high frequencies. In this paper, we present a beamformer design method that is based on the Jacobi-Anger expansion but optimizes the WNG directly. We analyze the effect of the truncation error of Jacobi-Anger expansion and demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively reduce the beampattern distortion. Computer simulations illustrate the performance advantages of the developed method in terms of the DF and WNG.

Design of frequency-invariant uniform concentric circular arrays with first-order directional microphones

Most of the existing frequency-invariant beamformers (FIBs) with circular arrays are implemented with omnidirectional microphones, where uniform circular arrays (UCAs) and uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCAs) have been widely utilized. However, the resulting FIB usually suffers from the deep nulls problem in the white noise gain (WNG) and the white noise amplification problem at low frequencies even if the order of the target beampattern is one. Due to its simple implementation, first-order directional microphones are adopted to improve the robustness of the FIB with UCCAs (FIB-UCCAs) in this paper. We exploit the circular harmonics decomposition rather than the Jacobi–Anger expansion to approximate the beampattern of the FIB-UCCAs with first-order directional microphones, because the directivity pattern of directional microphones is related to the direction of the signal. We show that the FIB-UCCAs can completely avoid the deep nulls problem in the WNG as long as the ring with the largest radius utilizes first-order directional microphones. In addition, the white noise amplification problem at low frequencies can be greatly alleviated if first-order directional microphones are utilized. Specifically, we show that the inherent white noise amplification problem at low frequencies can be completely circumvented when the order of the desired beampattern is one.

A novel optimized conical antenna array structure for back lobe cancellation of uniform concentric circular antenna arrays

A novel optimized conical antenna array structure for back lobe cancellation of uniform concentric circular antenna arrays

Joint Spatial Division and Coaxial Multiplexing for Downlink Multi-User OAM Wireless Backhaul

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) at radio frequency (RF) provides a novel approach of multiplexing a set of orthogonal modes on the same frequency channel to achieve high spectral efficiencies (SEs). However, the existing research on OAM wireless communications is mainly focused on point-to-point transmission in the line-of-sight (LoS) scenario. In this paper, we propose an overall scheme of the downlink multi-user OAM (MU-OAM) wireless backhaul based on uniform circular arrays (UCAs) for broadcasting networks, which can achieve the joint spatial division and coaxial multiplexing (JSDCM). A salient feature of the proposed downlink MU-OAM wireless backhaul systems is that the channel matrices are completely characterized by the position of each small base station (SBS), independent of the numbers of subcarriers and antennas, which avoids estimating large channel matrices required by the traditional downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) wireless backhaul systems. Thereafter, we propose an OAM-based multi-user distance and angle of arrival (AoA) estimation method, which is able to simultaneously estimate the positions of multiple SBSs with a flexible number of training symbols. With the estimated distances and AoAs, a MU-OAM preprocessing scheme is applied to eliminate the co-mode and inter-mode interferences in the downlink MU-OAM channel. At last, the proposed methods are extended to the downlink MU-OAM-MIMO wireless backhaul system equipped with uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCAs), for which much higher spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) than traditional MU-MIMO systems can be achieved. Both mathematical analysis and simulation results validate that the proposed scheme can effectively eliminate both interferences of the practical downlink MU-OAM channel and approaches the performance of the ideal MU-OAM channel.

UCA-Based OAM Non-Orthogonal Multi-Mode Multiplexing

Electromagnetic waves carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM) can improve the spectral efficiency of communication systems by multiplexing a number of OAM modes. However, since being not able to perform water-filling power allocation and adaptive modulation for each sub-channel like closed-loop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, the traditional orthogonal multi-mode OAM multiplexing system usually has poor bit error rate (BER) performance due to the inherent large divergence angle of high-order orthogonal OAM beams. Therefore, in this article we propose a non-orthogonal OAM (NO-OAM) multi-mode multiplexing scheme based on uniform circular array (UCA), which regulates the divergence angles of all non-orthogonal OAM beams to be the same, circumventing the problem that large beam divergence of high-order orthogonal OAM modes results in low received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receive UCA with a fixed aperture. Mathematical analysis and numerical simulations show that in contrast to the existing uniform concentric circular array (UCCA) beam adjustment scheme, the proposed NO-OAM scheme has slightly better beam adjustment effect but with only one UCA. Moreover, in contrast to the traditional orthogonal OAM multi-mode transmission, the proposed NO-OAM multi-mode multiplexing scheme has asymptotically equivalent channel capacity and much lower BER.

On the Design of 3D Steerable Beamformers With Uniform Concentric Circular Microphone Arrays

Circular microphone arrays (CMAs) and concentric CMAs (CCMAs) have been used in a wide range of applications such as smartspeakers and teleconferencing systems because of their flexible steering ability. Although many efforts have been devoted to beamforming with CCMAs, most existing methods consider only the 2-dimensional (2D) case and assume that the sound sources of interest are in the same plane as the sensor array (generally the horizontal plane), which often does not hold true in practical applications. This paper deals with the problem of beamforming with uniform CCMAs (UCCMAs) in the 3-dimensional (3D) space to control the steering of the spatial response and meanwhile form frequency-invariant beampatterns for processing broadband acoustic and speech signals. The major contributions of this work are summarized as follows: 1) it presents an analysis based on the spherical harmonics decomposition about the $N$ th-order optimal and steerable directivity patterns; 2) a beamforming method is developed in which the beamformer's coefficients are identified by solving a linear system of equations formed by approximating the $N$ th-order optimal target beampattern with the beamformer's beampattern while the resulting beampattern can be steered flexibly in the 3D space; 3) the sufficient and necessary condition on the array geometry and sensors’ placement are given to ensure that the beamformer exists and is unique; and 4) the analytical forms of the directivity factor (DF) and white noise gain (WNG) of the resulting beamformer is given and discussion is presented on what conditions irregularities (deep nulls) in WNG and DF may occur. Simulations are provided to illustrate the property of the developed beamforming methods.

Multi-Mode OAM Radio Waves: Generation, Angle of Arrival Estimation and Reception With UCAs

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) at radio frequency (RF) provides a novel approach of multiplexing a set of orthogonal modes on the same frequency channel to achieve high spectrum efficiencies. However, there are still big challenges in the multi-mode OAM generation, OAM antenna alignment and OAM signal reception. To solve these problems, we propose an overall scheme of the line-of-sight multi-carrier and multi-mode OAM (LoS MCMM-OAM) communication based on uniform circular arrays (UCAs). First, we verify that UCA can generate multi-mode OAM radio beam with both the RF analog synthesis method and the baseband digital synthesis method. Then, for the considered UCA-based LoS MCMM-OAM communication system, a distance and AoA estimation method is proposed based on the two-dimensional ESPRIT (2-D ESPRIT) algorithm. A salient feature of the proposed LoS MCMM-OAM and LoS MCMM-OAM-MIMO systems is that the channel matrices are completely characterized by three parameters, namely, the azimuth angle, the elevation angle and the distance, independent of the numbers of subcarriers and antennas, which significantly reduces the burden by avoiding estimating large channel matrices, as traditional MIMO-OFDM systems. After that, we propose an OAM reception scheme including the beam steering with the estimated AoA and the amplitude detection with the estimated distance. At last, the proposed methods are extended to the LoS MCMM-OAM-MIMO system equipped with uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCAs). Both mathematical analysis and simulation results validate that the proposed OAM reception scheme can eliminate the effect of the misalignment error of a practical OAM channel and approaches the performance of an ideally aligned OAM channel.

Performance comparison of UCA and UCCA based real-time sound source localization systems using circular harmonics SRP method

Many sound source localization (SSL) algorithms based on circular microphone array (CMA), including uniform circular array (UCA) and uniform concentric circular array (UCCA), have been well developed and verified via computer simulations and offline processing. On the other hand, beamforming in the harmonic domain has been shown to be a very efficient tool for broadband sound source localization due to its frequency-invariant properties. In this paper, design, implementation, and performance of a real-time sound source localization system are discussed. Specifically, we analyze the effect of parameter settings and compare the performance between UCA and UCCA through real-time experiments in a real room. The proposed method shows significant improvement by using UCCA instead of UCA.

DoA-Based Event Localization Using Uniform Concentric Circular Array in the IoT Environment

Abstract Response and recovery are the two most crucial aspects associated with post disaster management. Both these operations need real-time data and location at which the event occurs. These operations require event-based collection of data at critical times. The events may occur at any place and the data may be needed from either or all of the events for strategic planning and event handling. It is a challenging task to process the events whose locations are uncertain. In this view, there is a need to know the real-time location of events occurring in the surrounding. Moreover, there is a possibility of huge amount of signal processing among the devices deployed in the terrain. In this context, an event localization algorithm is proposed based on the Direction of Arrival estimation technique in the Internet of Things environment. It estimates the location of events by mapping the deployed devices using concentric circular array in the region. Further, the Cramer–Rao bound for the proposed algorithm is derived and compared with the existing schemes for efficacy. The algorithm is implemented on real test bed and presented with comparative evaluation to validate the work.

Improved OAM-Based Radar Targets Detection Using Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays

Without any relative moves or beam scanning, the novel Orbital-Angular-Momentum- (OAM-) based radar targets detection technique using uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCAs) shows the azimuthal estimation ability, which provides new perspective for radar system design. However, the main estimation method, that is, Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), under this scheme suffers from low resolution. As a solution, this paper rebuilds the OAM-based radar targets detection model and introduces the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm to improve the resolution for detecting targets within the main lobes. The spatial smoothing technique is proposed to tackle the coherent problem brought by the proposed model. Analytical study and simulation demonstrate the superresolution estimation capacity the MUSIC algorithm can achieve for detecting targets within the main lobes. The performance of the MUSIC algorithm to detect targets not illuminated by the main lobes is further evaluated. Despite the fact that MUSIC algorithm loses the resolution advantage under this case, its estimation is more robust than that of the FFT method. Overall, the proposed MUSIC algorithm for the OAM-based radar system demonstrates the superresolution ability for detecting targets within the main lobes and good robustness for targets out of the main lobes.

UNIFORM AND CONCENTRIC CIRCULAR ANTENNA ARRAYS SYNTHESIS FOR SMART ANTENNA SYSTEMS USING ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORK ALGORITHM

Recently, researchers were interested in neural algorithms for optimization problems for several communication systems. This paper shows a novel algorithm based on neural technique presented to enhance the performance analysis of beam-forming in smart antenna technology using N elements for Uniform Circular Array (UCA) and Concentric Circular Array (CCA) geometries. To demonstrate the effectiveness and reliability of the proposed approach, simulation results are carried out in MATLAB. The radiators are considered isotropic, and hence mutual coupling effects are ignored. The proposed array shows a considerable improvement against the existing structures in terms of 3-D scanning, size, directivity, HPBW and SLL reduction. The results show that multilayer feed-forward neural networks are robust and can solve complex antenna problems. However, artificial neural network (ANN) is able to generate very fast the results of synthesis by using generalization with early stopping method. Important gain in the running time and memory used is obtained using this latter method for improving generalization (called early stopping). To validate this work, several examples are shown.

Performance of Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays in a Three-Dimensional Spatial Fading Channel Model

In this paper, the performance of uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCA) for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) receiver in a three-dimensional (3D) multi-path channel is investigated. Firstl...

Performance of High-Altitude Platforms Cellular Communications using Hamming-Tapered Concentric Circular Arrays

In this paper, the performance of cellular communications based on the ambitious technology of High- Altitude Platforms (HAPs) is discussed when using tapered concentric circular arrays. The coverage cell will be described and designed with an efficient beamforming technique where the Hamming window is proposed as a tapering function and applied to the uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCA) for sidelobe reduction. Based on establishing some mapping curves, this novel tapering window is optimized in its parameters to have the lowest possible sidelobe level that can be 45 dB below the main lobe level. The optimum weights of Hamming window are found to be function of the number of elements of the innermost ring and the number of rings in the array. The cell power pattern is also discussed where the out-of-cell radiation is greatly reduced which in turns reduces the co-channel interference and improves the Carrier-to-Interference Ratio (CIR).

Joint DOA-polarization estimation based on uniform concentric circular array

A joint estimation method for direction of arrival (DOA) and polarization based on uniform concentric circular array is proposed in this paper. According to the array, manifold vector relationship between electric dipoles and magnetic loops, the least squares solution to the signal polarization parameters, and DOA are given. By maximum likelihood-estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance techniques method, the space-polarization matrix is obtained from signal subspace by decoupling data covariance matrix. The eigenvalue of space-polarization matrix is used to estimate polarization parameter and the corresponding eigenvector is the steering vector of the whole array. The phase differences between two array elements on inner circle is acquired from the steering vectors of inner circle, which can be used to give rough but unambiguous estimates of DOA; they are used as coarse references to disambiguate the cyclic phase ambiguities in phase differences between two array elements on outer ring circle. Without spectral peak searching and parameter matching, this method has advantages of the small amount of calculation and high precision. Finally, simulation results verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.

Frequency Invariant Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays with Directional Elements

A new approach for designing frequency invariant (FI) uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCAs) with directional elements is proposed, and their applications to direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation and adaptive beamforming are studied. By treating the sensors along the radial direction of the UCCA as linear subarrays and using appropriately designed beamformers, each subarray is transformed to a virtual element with appropriate directivity. Consequently, the whole UCCA can be viewed as a virtual uniform circular array (UCA) with desired element directivity for broadband processing. By extending the approach for designing FI-UCAs, the frequency dependency of the phase modes of the virtual UCA is compensated to facilitate broadband DOA and adaptive beamforming. Both the linear array beamformers (LABFs) and compensation filters can be designed separately using second- order cone programming (SOCP). Moreover, a new method to tackle the possible noise amplification problem in such large arrays by imposing additional norm constraints on the design of the compensation filters is proposed. The advantages of this decoupled approach are 1) the complicated design problem of large UCCAs can be decoupled into simpler problems of designing the LABFs and compensation filters, and 2) directional elements, which are frequently encountered, can be treated readily under the proposed framework. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and improvement of the proposed methods in DOA estimation, adaptive beamforming, and elevation control over the conventional FI-UCCA design method.

Simplified Sidelobe Reduction Techniques for Concentric Ring Arrays

In this paper, a simplified sidelobe reduction technique for uniform concentric circular antenna arrays (UCCA) is proposed. This technique is based on modifying some conventional windows to control the amplitude feeding instead of using adaptive techniques which require excessive processing and calculations and suffer from the lack of practical application especially for UCCA. The modified windows are applied to individual rings of the array that will taper the corresponding current amplitudes. The resulted sidelobe level, beamwidth and stability for amplitude errors are discussed for the different proposed windows where it shows a sidelobe reduction to about 49 dB as in the case of Binomial UCCA while the Hamming window shows the most immunity to tapered amplitude errors.

Thinning of concentric two-ring circular array antenna using fire fly algorithm

The paper describes the application of novel meta-heuristics of the fire fly algorithm for reduction of the maximum Side Lobe Level (SLL) with specific First Null Beam Width (FNBW) of thinned two-ring Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays (UCCA) of isotropic elements. The effect of thinning is analyzed in the four subsequent examples using uniform and non-uniform excitations for different FNBW. Optimization is carried out without and with prefixing the value of the percentage of thinning. The UCCA containing 35 and 70 elements in the two successive concentric rings is optimized using FFA. The example using non-uniform excitation is proved more efficient to reduce SLL for same FNBW. Simulation results show the SLL performance improves as we chose the FNBW wider in the designing problem. Fixing the percentage of thinning at a higher value increases the power efficiency of the feeding network with little compromise on the design specifications. The non-uniformly excited thinned concentric array is again optimized using two more state-of-the-art algorithms, namely, Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Differential Evolution (DE) to compare the effectiveness of each algorithm in a statistically meaningful way. Design results using fire fly algorithm shows better performances compared to PSO and DE provided the same number of function evaluation has been considered for all the algorithms.

Tapered beamforming for concentric ring arrays

Abstract In this paper, some conventional filtering windows are modified and applied to uniform concentric circular antenna arrays (UCCA) for spatial smoothing and sidelobe reduction. The modified windows are applied to individual rings of the array that will taper the corresponding current amplitudes. The resulted sidelobe level, beamwidth and stability for amplitude errors are discussed for the different proposed tapering windows where it shows a sidelobe reduction to about 49 dB as in the case of Binomial UCCA while the Hamming window shows the most immunity to tapered amplitude errors.

Adaptive Beamforming Using Frequency Invariant Uniform Concentric Circular Arrays

This paper proposes new adaptive beamforming algorithms for a class of uniform concentric circular arrays (UCCAs) having near-frequency invariant characteristics. The basic principle of the UCCA frequency invariant beamformer (FIB) is to transform the received signals to the phase mode representation and remove the frequency dependence of individual phase modes through the use of a digital beamforming or compensation network. As a result, the far field pattern of the array is electronic steerable and is approximately invariant over a wider range of frequencies than the uniform circular arrays (UCAs). The beampattern is governed by a small set of variable beamformer weights. Based on the minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR) and generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) methods, new recursive adaptive beamforming algorithms for UCCA-FIB are proposed. In addition, robust versions of these adaptive beamforming algorithms for mitigating direction-of-arrival (DOA) and sensor position errors are developed. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive UCCA-FIBs converge much faster and reach a considerable lower steady-state error than conventional broadband UCCA beamformers without using the compensation network. Since fewer variable multipliers are required in the proposed algorithms, it also leads to lower arithmetic complexity and faster tracking performance than conventional methods.