Abstract

Radio frequency interference is an ever growing problem in the wireless community. This dissertation presents methods to reduce interference for vehicular multi-antenna devices. This document is organized into two parts: the main chapters and the appendices. The main chapters present research conducted primarily by the author. These deserve the reader's primary attention. The appendices showcase contributions made by the author serving in a supporting role to projects led by others and/or do not fit the vehicular theme. These should receive secondary attention. The main chapter contributions are summarized as follows. A device was created that provides over 105 dB of transmit to receive isolation in a full duplex printed circuit board radio. This technology can improve the effective range of vehicular radar systems and increase the bandwidth of full duplex communication schemes for vehicles. The technologies involved are compatible with existing circuit board topologies and are mindful of the size and weight requirements for vehicular use. This isolation performance pushes the state of the art for printed circuit board designs and provides greater capability for these kinds of devices. Recent system on chip computing architectures are opening new pathways for integrating phased array technologies into a single chip. The computer engineering required to configure these devices is beyond the capabilities of many vehicle systems engineers, inviting the author to use one to implement a 16 antenna adaptive beamformer for GPS. The adaptive beamformer can combat multipath bounces and malicious spoofing from ground sources. The high rate analog conversion architecture eliminates the local oscillator distribution to simplify the analog front end to an active antenna. This allows vehicular phased arrays to use smaller footprints and suggests that multi-antenna beamforming devices may be easier to deploy on small to midsized vehicles. Bench tests of the beamformer indicate it can adapt to the environment and increase the received signal strength suggesting it can improve GPS quality for active deployments. The bank of subspace projection beamformers is a popular choice for mitigating interference in digital phased array receivers. A method was discovered that maps that matrix operator into a circuit topology that is simple to implement in an analog circuit and cancels across the entire bandwidth simultaneously. This can offload computational interference mitigation from the signal processor while still allowing secondary multi-pixel digital beamforming downstream. This beamformer was analytically connected to the body of phased array literature and studied to estimate practical error bounds and design methods of calibration.

Degree

PhD

College and Department

Ira A. Fulton College of Engineering and Technology; Electrical and Computer Engineering

Rights

https://lib.byu.edu/about/copyright/

Date Submitted

2022-03-03

Document Type

Dissertation

Handle

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/etd12019

Keywords

Phased Array Antenna, Unmanned Vehicle, Full Duplex Radio, System On Chip, Hadamard Matrix, Arecibo Telescope, Aperiodic Array, Array Calibration

Language

english

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