Beam Selection and Tracking for Amplify-and-Forward Repeaters

Mobile network operators constantly have to upgrade their cellular network to satisfy the public's hunger for increasing data capacity. However, regulatory limits regarding allowed electromagnetic field strength on existing cell sites often limit or prevent the installation of new cells on additional frequency bands. Further densifying the radio access infrastructure by means of new cell sites takes time because of the site acquisition, the need for permissions, and the civil construction. To this end, amplify-and-forward repeaters are a cost-efficient method to provide mobile wireless data capacity to concealed areas outdoors, inside buildings, or vehicles, where low signal levels drastically limit the achievable capacity or even prevent communication with distant base stations. Repeaters with high-gain beamforming antennas can be used to decrease the path loss and thereby offer a higher capacity than user equipment otherwise could achieve. Since those highly directional beams must be constantly adjusted, we propose methods to align and track the beam even without having access to in-band beam control mechanisms. Numerical analyses with measurement data show that such non-invasive (system data-agnostic) methods are feasible and only incur a few percent in throughput reduction.