Efficient Beam Selection for Increased Overall Wireless Network Capacity

Antenna beamforming is an increasingly utilized technology in various wireless systems, particularly in the realm of cellular telecommunications, such as 5G. By manipulating the spacing and phases of the antennas within an array, the direction and shape of the beam can be controlled. The principal goal of beamforming is to direct a wireless signal towards a specific receiving device instead of dispersing it in all directions from the transmitting antenna. This targeted approach enables the delivery of a higher quality signal to the intended receiver, resulting in faster and more reliable information transfer with reduced errors. For modelling a communication system, the beam pattern can be discretized into rays in angular and gain dimensions. Ray-tracing plays a crucial role in evaluating different beamforming techniques by accurately predicting signal strength, coverage, and quality at various locations within the environment. This analysis helps to select optimal beamforming parameters, including antenna placement, beam steering angles, and beamforming weights, to achieve the desired performance objectives. By effectively modeling the interaction between signals and objects/surfaces, ray-tracing aids in optimizing beamforming algorithms, improving signal quality, and maximizing overall system performance in wireless communication systems. The primary aim of this research is to determine, from a codebook, the ideal beam for each transmitter and receiver that maximizes the total channel capacity. However, due to the complexity and large number of angles, finding the best angles becomes challenging, time-consuming, and nearly impossible. Therefore, this study investigates various optimization methods to efficiently discover the optimal angles within a shorter timeframe. The accuracy and speed of different optimization techniques for identifying the best angles for achieving maximum total channel capacity are compared.