Fully-digital beamforming demonstration with Pi-Radio mmWave SDR platform

Abstract

Pi-Radio's vision is to democratize wireless research by providing advanced mmWave Software Defined Radio (SDR) platforms to the community at plainly affordable price points. Pi-Radio's v1 SDR features a 4-channel fully-digital transceiver that operates in the 57-64 GHz band. Fully-digital (a.k.a. MIMO) transceiver architectures enable multiple simultaneous TX/RX beams, standing in stark contrast with phased arrays featuring analog beamformers that are capable of transmitting/receiving only one beam at a time. This opens up a whole set of research problems to work on, across virtually every layer of the protocol stack. In this demo, the team will: (1) prove the correct formation of different TX/RX beams by applying geometrically determined beamforming weights, and (2) prove the benefits of fully-digital beamforming by transmitting four independent streams of data with an OFDM-based physical layer.