Interferometric Receiver Architecture for Multifunction Wireless Systems

In this paper, an interferometric receiver architecture suitable for integrated multifunctional large-scale wireless systems is devised and presented. The receiver inherits the technical merits of multi-port interferometric receivers, while it can simultaneously receive data, and detect both Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) and polarization of incoming signals. A theoretical foundation with modeling of different functions, namely data communication, AoA estimation, and polarization detection is described in detail. To validate the proposed multifunction receiver architecture, an experimental prototype is developed and fabricated at Ka-band for fifth generation (5G) applications and beyond. Simulated and measured results support the feasibility of this innovative multifunction interferometric receiver architecture for simultaneous data reception, AoA estimation, and polarization detection.