January 2010 Ralink Technology

WHITE PAPER

Transmit Beamforming

Improving Wireless System Performance in Multipath

Environments using Transmit Beamforming

1 Introduction
Multipath is often a problem in wireless systems. It causes fading as radio signals travel

over multiple paths and interfere with each other when they arrive at the receiver.
Preprocessing the wireless signal at the transmitter using a technique known as

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beamforming can overcome multipath effects to improve link throughput and robustness.

IEEE 802.11n specifies a number of MIMO (Multi-Input Multi-Output) techniques that

use multiple antennas to improve performance in a multipath environment. Transmit
Beamforming (TxBF) is one of these techniques. TxBF is an optional feature in IEEE

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802.11n, but there is growing industry demand for this feature in various wireless
applications. The Wi-Fi Alliance has listed beamforming as one of the optional features

in its 11n certification program. Ralink offers both 11n standard beamforming and a
proprietary form of beamforming that is compatible with legacy 11a/g devices. Both

methods greatly improve link robustness and throughput.

This paper gives some background on transmit beamforming and presents simulated and
measured performance data.

2 Beamforming Basics
Beamforming is a wireless transmission technique in which an array of antennas are
directed at a desired target or source by adjusting the relative gain and phase of the
Transmit Beamforming and 802.11n
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array elements. By adjusting the relative gain and phase of the elements, the antenna
pattern, or beam, can be made to point in a favored direction for receiving or transmitting
data, or to attenuate other directions in order to reduce the effect of an interference
source. Using beamforming can improve reception quality, and increase data throughput
in a Multi-In, Multi-Out (MIMO) communication system.

A basic requirement for

transmit beamforming is the use of multiple antenna elements at the transmitter, and the
use of the measured wireless channel between the transmitter and receiver.
The IEEE 802.11n standard defines several methods for MIMO transmit beamforming of
the OFDM signal. One method, referred to as explicit beamforming, requires the
downstream channel to be measured at the receiver, or beamformee, and relayed back to

the transmitter, or beamformer. The beamformer uses the measured channel information
standard is implicit beamforming.

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to derive the transmit beamforming parameters. A second technique defined in the

In this implementation, the upstream wireless

channel is measured by the beamformer, and the measurement used to derive the

parameters for subsequent downstream beamformed transmission. Implicit beamforming

has the advantage that the beamformee does not need to measure and send the channel

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state information to the beamformer. However, 11n standard implicit beamforming

requires a calibration exchange between the beamformer and beamformee, which can

complicate the transceiver design. Ralinks proprietary implicit design does not require
this exchange, making it backward compatible with existing legacy 802.11a and 802.11g

products.

The figures below illustrate the operation of transmit beamforming. Figure 1 shows a
conventional one transmitter (1T) and one-receiver (1R) system without beamforming.
In contrast, Figure 2 shows a two-transmitter (2T) one-receiver (1R) system with
beamforming. In both cases, OFDM modulation scheme is used for transmission.

Transmit Beamforming and 802.11n

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Wireless
Channel

TX
Data

OFDM
Encoder

TX

OFDM
Decoder

RX

RX
Data

Figure 1: System of single antenna at transmitter and receiver.

h1
Tx1:
a1
OFDM
Encoder

h2

TxBF
Process

OFDM
Decoder

Rx

TX
Data

RX
Data

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Tx2:
a2

Figure 2: System of 2 Tx Beamformer with 1R beamformee receiver.

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In Figure 2, beamforming is applied to a single transmit stream to produce two encoded

streams for two transmitters. These streams travel across a multipath channel to the
stream.

receiver. The receiver processes the combined streams to recover the original transmit
Assuming that the channel coefficients are known at the transmitter,

beamforming essentially allows the transmitter to phase the two transmissions so that the

signal is optimally combined at the input to the receiver, thus preventing any signal
cancellation that could occur in a random channel.
Note that the 802.11a/g/n standards all employ multi-carrier modulation using the
IFFT/FFT algorithm (OFDM). The effect of OFDM is to decompose the channel into
many orthogonal narrow-band channels in the frequency domain.

In Figure 2, the

channels hi and beamforming parameters a1 , a2 , are vectors of frequency domain

coefficients. Because the channels are orthogonal, each can be evaluated independently

Transmit Beamforming and 802.11n

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to assess the overall effect of beamforming. This idea is further developed below with a
simple numerical model and simulation of a scalar OFDM sub-channel.

2.1 Channel Model

As a simple example, we will assume that a particular channel can be modeled as having
flat fading Rayleigh multipath channel, and the transmitted signal modulation is BPSK.
As shown in Figure 2, the simplest beamforming configuration is used, with 2
transmitters and 1 receive antennas, i.e., a 2T1R system.
For a flat fading channel model means that the multipath channel has only one tap. So,
the channel operation reduces to a simple multiplication. For this simulation, the channel
experienced by each receive antenna is randomly varying in time. For the i th receive

antenna, each transmitted symbol gets multiplied by a randomly varying complex number

hi

== 0 and variance

hi

1
.
2

parts of hi are Gaussian distributed having mean

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hi . As the channel under consideration is a Rayleigh channel, the real and imaginary

In addition, it is assumed that the channel experience by each transmit antenna to receive
antenna is independent from the channel experienced by other transmit antennas, and
has the Gaussian probability density

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finally, that on each receive antenna, the noise

function with zero mean, and noise variance

2
n

N0
. As mentioned above, it is also
2

assumed that at each transmit antenna, the channel hi is known.

Note that the assumption of independence of hi , and random variation over time are not
very likely to occur in practice, but nevertheless, such a model is often used to assess new
communication technology, such as coding gains and modulation schemes.

2.2 Transmit Beamforming

On the receive antenna, the received signal is,
y = h1

h2

x
+ n = h1 + h2 x + n
x

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where y, is the received signal, hi are the channel coefficients seen from the i th transmit
antenna, x is the transmitted symbol and n is the noise at the receiver antenna. When
transmit beamforming is applied, we multiply the symbol from each transmit antenna
with a complex number corresponding to the inverse of the phase of the channel so as to
ensure that the signals add constructively at the receiver. The received signal can be
expressed as:

y = h1 h2

e-j 1
x+n,
e -j 2

and the channel coefficients further expressed as:

h1 = e - j 1 h1

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h2 = e - j 2 h2 .

To apply beamforming to this simple system, shown in Figure 2, set the two

beamforming parameters a1 = e j 1 , and a2 = e j 2 . Then the beamformed signal arriving at

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the receiver is:

y = h1 + h2 x + n .

Note that the effective channel coefficients add in-phase, so that the effect of multiple

paths is used to an advantage, ultimately improving the strength of the received signal.
Assuming zero-forcing (ZF) equalization, we need to divide the received symbol y with

the new effective channel, i.e.,

)
y=

y
h1 + h2

= x+

n
h1 + h2

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Transmit Beamforming effect on BER

A simple Matlab script is used to evaluate the benefit of beamforming in the channel
model defined above. In particular, the script performs the following procedure:
a. Generate random binary sequence of +1s and -1s.
b. Multiply the symbols with the beam steering metrics corresponding to the phase
of the channel
c. Compute ZF equalization at the receiver
d. Perform hard decision decoding (i.e., slicer) and count the bit errors
e. Repeat (a) through (d) for a range of signal to noise values of

Eb
, and plot the
N0

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resulting bit error rate (BER) results.

BER for BPSK modulation in Rayleigh channel

1tx-1rx (theory)
2tx-1rx (no beamforming-sin)
1tx-2rx(mrc-theory)
2tx-1rx(beamforming-sin)

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0.01

0.001

Bit Error Rate

0.1

1e-04

1e-05

10

15
20
Eb/No, dB

25

30

35

Figure 3: BER results comparing TxBF to MRC, and standard non-beamforming transmission.

The results are plotted in Figure 3, above. As can be seen, at a BER of 1e - 4 , transmit
beamforming provides 18 dB improvement in performance compared to nonbeamforming 1T1R or 2T1R configurations. Interestingly, adding a second transmitter
using the random channel model described above, does not add any benefit in
Transmit Beamforming and 802.11n
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performance. That is because although some random channel angles align, other random
combinations cancel, causing the average BER to remain unchanged. At the same time,
2T1R beamforming is equivalent to adding a second receiver and performing maximum
ratio combining (MRC) equalization of the two Rx paths. In both the 1T2R MRC and
2T1R TxBF cases, the transmitted signal combines constructively at the receiver, thus
guaranteeing optimal performance.
Transmit beamforming improves performance by creating a transmitted signal that adapts
to the multipath fading. As can be seen in the figures above, the performance gain is
achieved at the cost of the additional transmit chain. Because no additional analog
circuitry is required at the receiver, TxBF is a particularly effective technique for small

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handheld devices, as discussed below.

3 OFDM Beamforming Performance

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This section presents simulated and measured results for one of Ralinks newest chipsets
implementing Transmit Beamforming, RT3883. The results are for a single spatial

stream using 20MHz of bandwidth. The simulated channel is IEEE channel model B,
corresponding to a typical home or small office environment, and the packet lengths are
1.5 Kbytes, utilizing 802.11n MCS7 (65 Mbps) modulation. The 802.11n, like the earlier

802.11a and 802.11g standards, specify OFDM modulation. OFDM is a form multi-

carrier modulation that uses the FFT to break the wide band channel into multiple
narrow-band channels.

Using OFDM, the 20MHz channel is partitioned into 56

independent narrow-band channels. When TxBF is applied to OFDM, the beamforming

parameters are customized independently for each subcarrier, greatly improving the
performance of the overall reception quality.
Figure 4 shows the simulated performance of TxBF when transmitting to a device that
has one receive antenna. There are three curves. One curve indicates the packet error rate

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(PER) performance of a standard wireless link, with 1T1R configuration. The second
curve presents the performance of a link employing 802.11n STBC (space-time block
coding), and the last shows the performance of a 2T1R beamforming system.
In the case of a receiver having a single antenna, STBC using 2 transmitters has a clear
advantage over a 1T1R system, providing a 4 dB advantage at 10% PER. This
improvement can represent a 20 to 30% increase in range, for the ability to achieve
MCS7 PHY rate.
Transmit beamforming in the 2T1R configuration, as shown in Figure 4, can provide an
additional 5dB improvement over STBC in the given channel model (IEEE model B).

This benefit results due to the optimal nature of beamforming, in maximizing the SNR at

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the receiver by guaranteeing coherent combination of the channel paths, and can mean

more than a 2X range extension when transmitting MCS7 data packets.

1R Clients
IEEE B, 20MHz, RT3883

0.100

1x1 MCS7
2x1 STBC
MCS7
2x1 TxBF MCS7

PER

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1.000

0.010
16

18

20

22

24

26

28

SNR (dB)

Figure 4: PER performance comparison of 1T1R, STBC and 2T1R TxBF.

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3.1 Transmit Beamforming Turntable Test Performance

The benefit of transmit beamforming can result in extended range of increased
throughput in a wireless link. It can also enhance the robustness of the connection as
well, in varying channel conditions. A standard WLAN test to assess link robustness
conducted on a turntable, where either the transmitter or receiver is rotated on a turntable
while monitoring the link throughput. As the angle sweeps between 0 and 360 degrees,
various orientations of antenna configuration can result in signal cancellations at the
receiver.

Figure 5 depicts the Ralink RT3883 3T3R AP linked with 1T1R client station, using

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implicit beamforming and 40MHz channels, which is capable of peak throughput of

150Mbps. The client is a laptop placed on a turntable, and rotated through one full

revolution, with and without beamforming active.

Without beamforming, the throughput varies greatly, decreasing to 61 Mbps and 42 Mbps

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at several points during the rotation, as shown in Figure 6. The steep drops result when
the signals add out-of-phase at the receive antenna, due to unfavorable reflections off the
surfaces of the laptop, and the surrounding environment.

When beamforming is

activated, the peak throughput increases to 79Mbps, and stays there steadily throughout
the entire test. Beamforming improves robustness, nearly doubling throughput at several
is 42 Mbps, beamforming allows the system to maintain 79 Mbps

beamforming

angle points during the test; whereas the minimum sustained throughput without
throughout the test.

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10

GPIB Cable
Ethernet Cable
Connect with AP

Remote
Controller NB
(Control STA
and Attenuator)

Ethernet STA
Dell M4300

Cover with
Absorber
Gate

Attenuator

Antenna
RF Cable x 3
Ethernet Cable
For remote
controller

2.5m
OTA

RT2880 AP
inside the
Shielding Box

0/360
Degree

270
Degree

USB

RT3071/RT2770 extended
Put STA

180
Degree

Netebook
(Acer 5920G)
under
Turn Table

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Cable

90 Degree

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Figure 5: Turntable test set-up

90
80

60

)
s
p
b
M
(
t
u
p
h
g
u
or
h
T

Throughput (Mbps)

70

50
40
30
20

10
0

iBF off
iBF on, 0x41 0x11, 250ms update
360 degrees

20

40

60

80

100
120
Time (second)

140

160

180

200

Figure 6: TxBF turntable test using RT3883 3x3 AP

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11

4 Applications for Beamforming

4.1 Transmit Beamforming Turntable Test Performance
Transmit beamforming can be used to overcome the effect of multipath fading to
effectively improve data rate and communication range of any wireless system. In
particular, it significantly increases the robustness of a single spatial stream wireless link.
The feature allows single spatial stream devices to experience the diversity benefits of
multiple antennas at the AP. This will drive significantly higher throughputs, lower
power consumption, improved coverage range and increased network capacity.
The RT3883 can support transmit beamforming in different configurations including

2Tx1R, 2Tx2R, 3Tx2R, and 3Tx1R. There is a performance advantage for all these
systems. In particular, beamforming at the transmitter using multiple transmitters can

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achieve diversity improvement equivalent to using the same number receive chains in the
client device. This an appealing advantage for many portable devices, such as smart

phones, media players, and mobile Internet devices. These devices often have only one
radio chain and antenna due to their small form-factor and power and cost constraints.
For these applications, in multipath channels, beamforming enhances link robustness and

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can greatly extend the range of communication.

Finally, beamforming has been shown to enable the demanding application of wireless
high definition audio and video streaming.

By extending range and throughput,

beamforming can allow a single set-top box equipped with a wireless AP to distribute

multiple video sources to several locations throughout the entire home.

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12

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C
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The content (text, images) of this white paper has been carefully reviewed and is worth believing.
Whatever, this white paper is subject to update without notice. All the content cant be transferred,
reproduced, distributed or broadcasted publicly without the written agreement of Ralink.

Ralink Technology Corporation

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Jhubei City HsinChu Hsien 302,
Taiwan, R.O.C
Tel: +886-3-56 0-0868
Fax: +886-3-560-0818
www.ralinktech.com
Transmit Beamforming and 802.11n
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