Angle of arrival and/or range estimation within a wireless communication device

摘要

Angle of arrival and/or range estimation within a wireless communication device. Appropriate processing of communications received by a wireless communication device is performed to determine the angle of arrival of the communication (e.g., with respect to some coordinate basis of the wireless communication device). Also, appropriate processing of the communications may be performed in accordance with range estimation as performed by the wireless communication device to determine the distance between the transmitting and receiving wireless communication devices. There are two separate modes of packet processing operations that may be performed: (1) when contents of the received packet are known, and (2) when contents of the received packet are unknown. The wireless communication device includes a number of antenna, and a switching mechanism switches from among the various antennae capitalizing on the spatial diversity of the antennae to generate a multi-antenna signal.

主权项

1. A wireless communication device comprising:
a communication interface; and a processor, coupled to the communication interface, that is configured to:
receive, via the communication interface, a signal from another wireless communication device;characterize contents of the signal as being known or unknown based on comparison of the contents of the signal to a predetermined sequence of bits;when contents of the signal are characterized as unknown, process the signal using a first operational mode that includes to process the contents of the signal that are characterized as known to generate an estimate of an angle of arrival of the signal received from the another wireless communication device; andwhen contents of the signal are characterized as known, process the signal using a second operational mode including to:
process the contents of the signal to learn the contents of the signal;transmit, via the communication interface, a negative acknowledgement to the another wireless communication device to request a retransmission of the signal to the wireless communication device;receive, via the communication interface and in response to the negative acknowledgement, the retransmission of the signal from the another wireless communication device, wherein the retransmission of the signal includes a copy of the contents of the signal learned by the wireless communication device based on processing of the contents of the signal; andprocess the copy of the contents within the retransmission of the signal to generate another estimate of another angle of arrival of the retransmission of the signal received from the another wireless communication device.