M. Sc. Li Yueheng

The beamforming technology is widely used due to the advantage of higher antenna gain which leads to the increase of desired signal power, therefore better system performance. However, beamforming technology makes the beam narrower than isotropic antenna pattern. Thus, assuming a mobile communication scenario, pre-knowledge about the position of the user is required. As a solution, channel estimation for the correct direction of arrival (DOA) or direction of departure (DOD) can be utilized.

The simplest algorithm for channel estimation is called exhaustive search. It is operated by simply sweep the narrow beam over the possible area of the user and detect the peak of signal quality. Unfortunately, a large amount time is required while sweeping the beam over a certain range. As a solution, we can firstly scan with a broad beam, and implement narrow beam scan only in the peak region derived from the broad beam estimation. In this case, the number of scanning steps is reduced and shorter time is taken for user position determination.

The metasurface designed by METABEAM project is able to generate narrow and broad beams, which potentially supports the smarter broad bam channel estimation mentioned above. The goal of this thesis will be the realization of this algorithm and investigate its practical performance.

Working steps and challenges:

1. Understanding the basic concepts of channel estimation starting with MATLAB simulation.
2. Understanding, practicing and implementing the current online signal processing codes and measurement setup. It is important to measure the broad beam quality of the metasruface.
3. Codes writing using the GNU Radio software overlay for broad beam channel estimation purpose.
4. Check the practical performance of the system. Since the find peak algorithms have to be implemented several times for broad beam channel estimation, we need to check if it is really faster.
5. Further improvement of the system an investigation algorithms.

Preferable basic knowledge:

1. Communication technology background such as beamforming system, digital signal processing and basics of radio frequency system.
2. Familiar usage of Matlab, basics of Python or C++ program basics.
3. Interest of hardware measurements and patience of solve practical troubles.
4. Some mathematic formulations may be required in this work.