Sony Corporation

Sony Group Corporation

Sony Europe Limited

Sony Europe B.v.

Felix Fellhauer

Dana Ciochina

Nabil Sven Loghin

Thomas Handte

Daniel Schneider

Stefan Uhlich

Stephen Tiedemann

Ben Eitel

Fares Zenaidi

Sven Seiler

Jonas Lassen

Reem Abdel-Rahman

Maximilian Arnold

A communication device, e.g. an access point, for RF-based communication with another communication device, e.g. a station, comprises antenna circuitry configured to transmit and receive RF signals and beamforming circuitry configured to perform beamforming. The beamforming circuitry controls the antenna circuitry to transmit data, in a beacon transmission phase prior to the beamforming training phase, using a set of third directive transmit beams in subsequent time slots and to listen, in the beamforming training phase, using a set of first directive receive beams in subsequent time slots that is different from the set of third directive transmit beams.

Communication devices and methods with beamforming training

To enable fast beam tracking and/or low latency a first communication device comprising a motion information circuitry configured to obtain motion information representing motion of the first communication device, a communication circuitry configured to communicate with a second communication device, and a parametrization circuitry configured to set one or more communication parameters of the communication performed by the communication circuitry based on the motion information.

Communication devices and methods

To enable fast beam tracking and/or low latency a first communication device comprising a sensing circuitry configured to sense motion of the first communication device and to generate motion information representing the sensed motion, the motion information comprising rotation information indicating rotation and/or orientation of the first communication device, and a communication circuitry configured to transmit the motion information to a second communication device within a layer of a hierarchical layer model lower than a transport layer. A second communication device comprises a communication circuitry configured to receive motion information from a first communication device within a layer of a hierarchical layer model lower than a transport layer.

A communication device for RF based communication with another communication device, said communication device comprising circuitry configured to apply a fine timing measurement, FTM, procedure. The circuitry is configured to determine an FTM mode out of at least two different FTM modes, and to perform an FTM procedure to determine the round trip time, RTT, between the communication device and the other communication device, wherein the RTT is determined by evaluating a time information of a tap of the channel impulse response, wherein the tap used for the evaluation depends on the determined FTM mode.

Communication device and method

A first communication device that simultaneously transmits to a group of two or more second communication devices using multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) communication performs beamforming training with a selected second communication device of said group of second communication devices by transmitting one or more training units, wherein an analog beamforming training matrix and/or a digital beamforming training matrix adapted for beamforming training with the selected second communication device are applied on the one or more training units, receiving from the selected second communication device feedback in response to the transmitted transmit packets, and determining, for use in the simultaneous transmission of data to a group of two or more second communication devices including the selected second communication device, an updated analog beamforming matrix and/or an updated digital beamforming matrix based at least on the received feedback.

The improved beamforming devices for communication systems operating in the mm-wave spectrum are particularly designed for antenna architectures consisting of antenna arrays, comprising multiple antenna array elements. The disclosed approaches comprise intelligent two stage searches, wherein information from the first stage is used in the second stage. This significantly reduces the computational complexity compared to the known approaches, with minimal loss in performance.

Beamforming device for antenna arrays

A receiving device for use in a wireless OFDM communication system comprises two or more receive antennas for receiving OFDM signals received over a channel from a transmission device having two or more transmit antennas and applying transmit beamforming, and circuitry configured to perform channel estimation to estimate the channel, generate transmit beamforming information based on the channel estimation, the transmit beamforming information comprising beamforming information per subcarrier or time domain tap, determine a reduced set of transmit beamforming information from the transmit beamforming information, wherein the reduced set comprises beamforming information for a reduced set of subcarriers in the frequency domain or for a reduced set of taps in the time domain, wherein the subcarriers of the reduced set or the taps of the reduced set are determined based on an error criterion, and feed back the reduced set of transmit beamforming information to the transmission device.

Receiving device and transmission device for wireless communication

Transmitter having multiple transmit antennas for transmitting two or more streams. The transmitter comprises an encoding circuitry configured to perform space-time block encoding to obtain for at least one of the two or more streams a pair of space-time encoded streams. Further, a mapping circuitry is configured to assign each stream of each pair of space-time encoded streams to a transmit antenna of the multiple transmit antennas for wirelessly transmitting the two or more streams. Finally, a control circuitry is configured to adjust one or more parameters of the mapping circuitry in order to achieve a defined channel characteristic between the transmitter and a receiver.

Multiple stream space-time block coding

A position estimation device for estimating the position of an initiator communication device comprises data obtaining circuitry configured to obtain path data of two or more paths of RF signals transmitted by a responder communication device, wherein RF signals of at least one path are reflected at a scatterer, said path data comprising, per path of an RF signal: path length information indicating the length of the propagation path of an RF signal from the responder communication device via a scatterer to the initiator communication device, angle of departure information indicating the angle of departure of an RF signal from the responder communication device, and angle of arrival information indicating the angle of arrival of an RF signal at the initiator communication device. The device further comprises processing circuitry configured to determine the position of the initiator communication device on the basis of the obtained path data.

Position estimation device and communication device

Communication devices and corresponding methods for RF-based communication and position determination are disclosed. An initiator communication device () comprises an antenna unit () configured to transmit and receive RF signals, a beamforming unit () configured to perform beamforming and to control the antenna unit to transmit and/or receive RF signals using one or more selected beams, a control unit () configured to control the beamforming unit () in a training phase to perform beamforming for determining an initiator line of sight, LOS, beam to a responder communication device (), and a processing unit () configured to determine the initiator LOS beam and/or initiator angular information of the initiator LOS beam and to determine the position of said communication device using the determined initiator LOS beam and/or initiator angular information in a measurement phase.

Communication devices and methods for RF-based communication and position determination

A coding and modulation apparatus and method are presented. The apparatus comprises an encoder that encodes input data into cell words, and a modulator that modulates said cell words into constellation values of a non-uniform constellation. The modulator is configured to use, based on the total number M of constellation points of the constellation, the signal-to-noise ratio SNR and the number n of the dimension of the constellation, an n-dimensional non-uniform constellation from a group of constellations, wherein each constellation point of an n-dimensional constellation diagram is defined by an n-tupel of constellation values, said n-tupel of constellation values defining parameter settings of a transmission parameter used by a transmission apparatus for transmitting a transmission stream obtained by conversion of said constellation values.

Coding and modulation apparatus using multi-dimensional non-uniform constellation

A receiving device for use in a wireless OFDM communication system comprises two or more receive antennas for receiving OFDM signals received over a channel from a transmission device having two or more transmit antennas and applying transmit beamforming, and circuitry configured to perform channel estimation to estimate the channel, generate transmit beamforming information based on the channel estimation, said transmit beamforming information comprising beamforming information per subcarrier or time domain tap, determine a reduced set of transmit beamforming information from said transmit beamforming information, wherein said reduced set comprises beamforming information for a reduced set of subcarriers in the frequency domain or for a reduced set of taps in the time domain, wherein the subcarriers of said reduced set or the taps of said reduced set are determined based on an error criterion, and feed back the reduced set of transmit beamforming information to the transmission device.

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Stuttgart, Germany

Felix Fellhauer