21. Wireless Coverage Without Beamforming

The latest wireless technologies rely heavily on beamformed data transmissions, implemented using antenna arrays. Since the signals are spatially directed towards the location of the receiver, the transmitter needs to know where to point the beam. Before the wireless link has been established, the transmitter will not have such knowledge. Hence, the geographical coverage of a network is determined by how we can transmit in the absence of beamforming gains. In this episode, Emil Björnson and Erik G. Larsson discuss how to achieve wide-area coverage in wireless networks without beamforming. The conversation covers deployment fundamentals, pathloss characteristics, beam sweeping, spatial diversity, and space-time codes. To learn more, you can read the textbook “Space-Time Block Coding for Wireless Communications” (https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511550065). Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/