Sony Corporation

Sony Group Corporation

Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation

Sony Corpotation

As-international Association E.v.

Sony Europe Limited

Sony Europe B.v.

Thomas Handte

Dana Ciochina

Nabil Sven Loghin

Felix Fellhauer

Daniel Schneider

Ben Eitel

Lothar Stadelmeier

Stefan Uhlich

Reka Inovan

Fares Zenaidi

Dana Ciochina-kar

Daniel Verenzuela

Kazuyuki Sakoda

Hiromasa Uchiyama

Yusuke Tanaka

Mohamed Abouelseoud

Kosuke Aio

Jan Zoellner

Liangxiao Xin

Ken Tanaka

Stephen Tiedemann

Ryuichi Hirata

Qing Xia

Altfried Dilly

Matthias Breuninger

Mohamed Aboulseoud

Hanns Thilo Hagmeyer

Jonas Lassen

Maximilian Arnold

Dr-Ing Ben Eitel

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

A first communication device that is configured to transmit data to a second communication device comprises circuitry configured to generate a second number of mutually orthogonal sequences; generate a third number of one or more spatial streams, each spatial stream carrying pay load data; generate a fourth number of transmission training sequences, each comprising, in addition to a distinct orthogonal sequence of said mutually orthogonal sequences, one or more zeros and/or a subset of said distinct orthogonal sequence; generate a training field by mapping the transmission training sequences into a first number of training symbols, each training symbol spanning a plurality of tones; and arrange the training field before and/or between the payload of the spatial streams to enable channel estimation by the second communication device.

First and second communication devices and methods

A first communication device that is configured to transmit data to a second communication device comprises circuitry configured to generate a second number of mutually orthogonal sequences; generate a third number of one or more spatial streams, each spatial stream carrying payload data; split each of a first number of training symbols into a fourth number of tone sets, each training symbol spanning a plurality of tones; split each orthogonal sequence elements of the corresponding portion of the orthogonal sequences onto the tone sets of the training symbols; and arrange the training field before and/or between the payload data of the spatial streams to enable channel estimation by the second communication device.

A first communication device comprising circuitry configured to exchange data with one or more second communication devices on a first communication channel, and transmit collision information on a second communication channel that is a different channel than the first communication channel, wherein the circuitry is configured to transmit said collision information if there is a collision on the first communication channel or if the first communication channel is occupied by data transmission of a second communication device, said collision information indicating that there is a collision on the first communication channel or that the first communication channel is occupied.

Communication devices and methods

In communication devices and methods configured to communicate with each other, bits of a continuous bit stream are allocated to resource units of different sizes. Various options are disclosed that differ in both implementation complexity and diversity achieved. Furthermore, exemplary implementations are provided that consider the definition of resource units of IEEE802.11ax as a baseline and outline the operation of the bit allocation for combination of resource units of various sizes.

An approach is presented, by which an access point can identify and trigger stations with stringent latency requirements or with periodic traffic to transmit to their corresponding access points, simultaneously with uplink traffic from its own service set. The existing spatial reuse is improved to take into account receive beamforming capabilities at the access points. Furthermore, an approach is presented to gather the channel information in an efficient manner and enhance the triggering procedures to allow stations from overlapping cells to access the channel, during the transmit opportunities or resource units allocated to other users.

Access points, station and corresponding methods

A first access point comprises circuitry configured to perform a sounding procedure with one or more first stations associated with the first access point and configured to communicate with the first access point over a respective channel to determine resource unit allocation and beamforming configuration for use in subsequent communication with respective first stations, and to transmit a training data unit containing signaling information related to the determined resource unit allocation and related to the determined beamforming configuration, wherein the training data unit is transmitted with a beamforming configuration derived from the determined resource unit allocation and the determined beamforming configuration.

Communication device for transmitting data to another communication device, the communication device comprising circuitry configured to obtain a truncation notification indicating that an ongoing transmission of a data unit is to be truncated; in response to the truncation notification, determine, based on the number of unprocessed modulation input bits of the data unit, a remaining bit length of a modulation input block, and perform padding to add a number of modulation padding bits corresponding to the determined remaining bit length of a modulation input block to the unprocessed modulation input bits to obtain a complete modulation input block; modulate the complete modulation input block to obtain a modulation output block; and transmit a transmit data stream containing the obtained modulation output block.

Communication device comprising circuitry configured to measure a first phase of a first measurement signal transmitted by a first node to a second node, measure a second phase of a second measurement signal transmitted by the second node to the first node, repeat the measurements of the first and second phases one or more times, receive phase information from the first node and/or the second node, the phase information including third phase information acquired by the second node from measurements of a third phase of the first measurement signals and/or fourth phase information acquired by the first node from measurements of a fourth phase of the second measurement signals, and estimate a distance difference using the measured first and second phases and the received phase information.

Communication device and method

A first communication device comprises circuitry configured to exchange control information with one or more second communication devices on a primary communication channel, exchange data with one or more second communication devices on one or more secondary communication channels and/or the primary communication channel, receive an access request to access the primary communication channel and/or one or more secondary communication channels by a second communication device on an access channel that is a different channel than the primary communication channel, the access request indicating one or more parameters of the desired communication, and transmit an access response on the access channel, the access response including time information indicating information regarding the time of desired communication and channel information indicating parameters of the communication channels of the desired communication.

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.

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.

A communication device for RF-based communication with another communication device comprises digital beamforming circuitry configured to perform digital beamforming based on digital beamforming information to obtain RF data streams, and analog beamforming circuitry configured to perform analog beamforming for the obtained RF data streams. The analog beamforming circuitry is configured to perform analog beamforming training with the other communication device enabling the other communication device to compute the digital beamforming information corresponding to one or more combinations of analog beams used in said analog beamforming training. The digital beamforming circuitry is configured to receive the computed digital beamforming information and to use it for performing the digital beamforming.

Communication devices and methods with hybrid beamforming

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.

Growing community of inventors

Stuttgart, Germany

Thomas Handte