Guided Wireless Technology for Near-Field Communication

TL;DR

This paper introduces a guided wireless communication approach that combines guided wave benefits with wireless flexibility, modeling near-field channels with long arrays, and demonstrating interference mitigation and improved spectral efficiency.

Contribution

It presents a circuit model for long array guided wireless channels and demonstrates adaptive beamforming to enhance near-field communication performance.

Findings

Standing wave phenomena confirmed by spectral efficiency oscillations.

LMMSE beamformer effectively mitigates interference.

Adaptive power allocation improves user rate balance.

Abstract

Guided wireless technology is an innovative approach that combines the strengths of guided waves and wireless communication. In traditional wireless systems, signals propagate through the air, where they are vulnerable to interference, attenuation, and jamming. Guided communication, in contrast, confines signals within a physical medium, significantly reducing interference and supporting higher data rates over longer distances. Guided wireless technology harnesses these benefits by creating guided wireless channels and offering a controlled pathway for electromagnetic waves. This work harnesses these benefits by focusing on the modeling of near-field communication through long connected arrays deployed in linear-cell environments. We derive a circuit model for long array as an infinitely long dipole with multiple periodic feed points before approximating it with a finite array through open circuiting. Through our simulations, we show how the standing wave phenomenon is confirmed by the oscillations in spectral efficiency. We also demonstrate the capability of the LMMSE transmit beamformer in mitigating interference and minimizing the mean square error by adaptively allocating more power to the user experiencing the most severe channel attenuation, resulting in a more balanced variation of achievable rates across users.