Partial beamforming to reduce ADC power consumption in antenna array systems

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a receiver setup with fewer analog to digital convertors (ADCpsilas) than antennas. An analog preprocessing network (APN) is placed before the ADCpsilas to reduce power consumption in the receiver. A set of low resolution beamformers is used to design the APN and cancel contributions of interfering users. Simulation results show that introduction of such APN design algorithms for a narrowband channel with 3 to 4 interfering users, 6 antennas and 3 ADCs results in a reduction of the total consumed receiver power by 15%.