Robustness of Distributed Multi‑User Beamforming: An Experimental Evaluation
Published in IEEE 12th Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop (SAM), 2022
In this paper, we study the robustness of distributed beamforming in the presence of hardware imperfections. In particular, we characterize the impact of carrier frequency offset (CFO) between distributed antennas on multi-user receive beamforming. We characterize the performance of distributed beamforming in the presence of CFO using a massive MIMO platform. Using datasets collected from the platform, we measure and compare the beamforming performance in the presence and absence of CFO. Further, we study the effect of variation in CFO among beamforming antennas on the performance through simulations. Interestingly, we observe that this drop in performance is higher as more distributed antennas are included in beamforming. Our results can be used to determine the optimal number of antennas in distributed beamforming systems.
Recommended citation: R. Doost-Mohammady, M. Zafari and A. Sabharwal, "Robustness of Distributed Multi-User Beamforming: An Experimental Evaluation," 2022 IEEE 12th Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop (SAM), Trondheim, Norway, 2022, pp. 146-150, doi: 10.1109/SAM53842.2022.9827783.