Enhanced Collection Methodology for Distributed Wireless Antenna Systems

In this paper, the unique nature of power management in a wireless distributed antenna system is presented. The primary objective is to create a power efficient methodology to steer the beam to the target in order to enhance collection. This paper will present two competing methods of power management. Both methods use a least mean squares (LMS) adaptive beamforming algorithm to allow for beam steering. The first method selects a subset of sensors from afield of randomly placed sensor elements and uses data exclusively from these elements. The second method selects a new subset of sensors from the sensor field for each iteration. The second method is observed to provide better power management across the sensor network. Additionally, it will be shown that the latter technique also yields a substantially better antenna beamwidth with reduced sidelobes for all of the frequencies tested in the simulation.