Spherical harmonic covariance and magnitude function encodings for beamformer design

Microphone and speaker array designs have increasingly diverged from simple topologies due to diversity of physical host geometries and use cases. Effective beamformer design must now account for variation in the array’s acoustic radiation pattern, spatial distribution of target and noise sources, and intended beampattern directivity. Relevant tasks such as representing complex pressure fields, specifying spatial priors, and composing beampatterns can be efficiently synthesized using spherical harmonic (SH) basis functions. This paper extends the expansion of common stationary covariance functions onto the SHs and proposes models for encoding magnitude functions on a sphere. Conventional beamformer designs are reformulated in terms of magnitude density functions and beampatterns along SH bases. Applications to speaker far-field response fitting, cross-talk cancelation design, and microphone beampattern fitting are presented.

Beamformer Design and Optimization for Full-Duplex Joint Communication and Sensing at mm-Waves

In this article, we study the joint communication and sensing (JCAS) paradigm in the context of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) mobile communication networks. We specifically address the JCAS challenges stemming from the full-duplex operation and from the co-existence of multiple simultaneous beams for communications and sensing purposes. To this end, we first formulate and solve beamforming optimization problems for hybrid beamforming based multiuser multiple-input and multiple-output JCAS systems. The cost function to be maximized is the beamformed power at the sensing direction while constraining the beamformed power at the communications directions, suppressing interuser interference and cancelling full-duplexing related self-interference (SI). We then also propose new transmitter and receiver beamforming solutions for purely analog beamforming based JCAS systems that maximize the beamforming gain at the sensing direction while controlling the beamformed power at the communications direction(s), cancelling the SI as well as eliminating the potential reflection from the communication direction and optimizing the combined radar pattern (CRP). Both closed-form and numerical optimization based formulations are provided. We analyze and evaluate the performance through extensive simulations, and show that substantial gains and benefits in terms of radar transmit gain, CRP, and SI suppression can be achieved with the proposed beamforming methods.

Beamformer Design and Optimization for Full-Duplex Joint Communication and Sensing at mm-Waves

In this article, we study the joint communication and sensing (JCAS) paradigm in the context of millimeter-wave (mm-wave) mobile communication networks. We specifically address the JCAS challenges stemming from the full-duplex operation and from the co-existence of multiple simultaneous beams for communications and sensing purposes. To this end, we first formulate and solve beamforming optimization problems for hybrid beamforming based multiuser multiple-input and multiple-output JCAS systems. The cost function to be maximized is the beamformed power at the sensing direction while constraining the beamformed power at the communications directions, suppressing interuser interference and cancelling full-duplexing related self-interference (SI). We then also propose new transmitter and receiver beamforming solutions for purely analog beamforming based JCAS systems that maximize the beamforming gain at the sensing direction while controlling the beamformed power at the communications direction(s), cancelling the SI as well as eliminating the potential reflection from the communication direction and optimizing the combined radar pattern (CRP). Both closed-form and numerical optimization based formulations are provided. We analyze and evaluate the performance through extensive simulations, and show that substantial gains and benefits in terms of radar transmit gain, CRP, and SI suppression can be achieved with the proposed beamforming methods.