BeamSync: Over-The-Air Carrier Synchronization in Distributed RadioWeaves

TL;DR

This paper introduces BeamSync, an over-the-air protocol for carrier frequency synchronization in distributed RadioWeave systems, demonstrating improved performance through directional beamforming of synchronization signals.

Contribution

Proposes a novel over-the-air synchronization protocol, BeamSync, optimized with directional beamforming for distributed RadioWeave panels, enhancing synchronization accuracy.

Findings

BeamSync outperforms traditional methods in synchronization accuracy.

Directional beamforming of synchronization signals is optimal.

Significant performance improvements in distributed RadioWeave systems.

Abstract

In a distributed multi-antenna system, multiple geographically separated transmit nodes communicate simultaneously to a receive node. Synchronization of these nodes is essential to achieve a good performance at the receiver. RadioWeaves is a new paradigm of cell-free massive MIMO array deployment using distributed multi-antenna panels in indoor environments. In this paper, we study the carrier frequency synchronization problem in distributed RadioWeave panels. We propose a novel, over-the-air synchronization protocol, which we call as BeamSync, to synchronize all the different multi-antenna transmit panels. We also show that beamforming the synchronization signal in the dominant direction of the channel between the panels is optimal and the synchronization performance is significantly better than traditional beamforming techniques.