Adaptive DDS-PLL Beamsteering Architecture based on Real-Time Angle-of-Arrival Estimation

When dealing with millimeter wave communications, one way to mitigate the path loss contribution involves the use of beam steering and beamforming techniques, which allow to improve the gain of the antenna system. Particularly interesting is the case of adaptive beamformers, which are able to steer the antenna radiation pattern towards the position of a given target in real-time. In this work, we propose a novel architecture for adaptive beam steering based on real-time Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) estimation. The phase shift is introduced in the Local Oscillator (LO) path thanks to a modified DDS-PLL structure. The main equations are presented, along with a validation campaign involving Hardware-in-the-Loop (HiL) simulations.