The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 02, 2004
Filed:
Jun. 21, 2000
Ming-Ju Ho, Alpharetta, GA (US);
Michael Scott Rawles, Acworth, GA (US);
Raymond R. Thomas, Atlanta, GA (US);
Wen-Kai Yen, Alpharetta, GA (US);
Agere Systems Inc., Allentown, PA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus are disclosed for beam selection in a non-stationary subscriber radio unit having a multi-beam antenna array. The disclosed multi-beam antenna array acts in an omni-directional manner whenever signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance is sufficient, and excludes individual branches, as necessary, on the basis of SNR performance. A multi-mode approach is used to select appropriate antennas in the multi-beam antenna array. A given mode is established on the basis of the SNR of the received signal. Generally, if the SNR of the received signal satisfies predefined criteria, the non-stationary subscriber radio unit will operate the multi-beam antenna array in an omni-directional-like manner, by equally combining the received signal from each individual narrow-beam antenna branch. If the SNR of the received signal fails to satisfy the predefined criteria, the non-stationary subscriber radio unit will operate the multi-beam antenna array in a flex-beam manner that excludes those branches that have exhibited degraded SNR performance. A branch ordering table lists the branches in the multi-beam antenna array in order of their SNR performance. A flex_counter indicates the number of branches that are currently excluded in a flex operating mode due to poor degraded SNR performance. Thus, during the flex mode, the power is redistributed into the remaining transmitting branches (those in the first part of the branch ordering table), until the SNR performance recovers.