Experimental validation of a robust beam alignment algorithm in an indoor environment

The steadily increasing demand for higher data rate in mobile communications has recently attracted attention to frequencies above some 10 GHz also known as millimeter wave (mmW) communications. However, to compensate the higher path loss antenna arrays are mandatory so that efficient beam alignment algorithms are important to make mmW communication feasible in practice. Furthermore, to keep cost and complexity within acceptable limits, imperfections of analog beam forming have to be handled with appropriate signal processing in digital baseband. To address this scenario we describe a robust beam alignment algorithm and illustrate its performance both by simulation and experiments using a real-time prototype system operating at 60 GHz.