The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is conducting research to develop antennas that can enhance 6G technology, enabling efficient Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication. In a recent study, Debdeep Sarkar, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, led a team that demonstrated how self-interference in full-duplex communication antennas could be minimised.
This could result in faster movement of signals across the communication network and increased bandwidth efficiency. "Such full-duplex antennas are particularly helpful for applications that require almost instantaneous relay of commands, like driverless cars", Bengaluru-based IISc said in a statement on Friday, March 24 as reported by PTI.
Full-duplex antennas comprise both a transmitter and a receiver, enabling them to transmit and receive radio signals simultaneously. In contrast, traditional radio transceivers are typically half duplex, meaning they either use different frequencies for transmitting and receiving or there is a time delay between the transmission and reception of signals.
This delay is necessary to prevent interference, as the signals should not intersect with each other, analogous to two people having a conversation without stopping to listen to each other stated a report by PTI.
However, this compromise of signal transfer efficiency and speed can be overcome with the use of full-duplex systems. These systems allow the transmitter and receiver to operate signals of the same frequency simultaneously, resulting in much faster and more efficient data transmission. The key challenge for such systems is the elimination of self-interference. Over the past few years, Sarkar and his postdoctoral fellow, Jogesh Chandra Dash, at IoE-IISc have been focusing on addressing this challenge, as stated in the report.
"The broad objective of the research is that we want to eliminate the signal that is coming as self-interference," says Sarkar. There are two ways to cancel self-interference passive and active stated the report by PTI.
Passive cancellation can be achieved simply by designing the circuit in a specific manner, such as by increasing the distance between the two antennas, without requiring any additional instruments. On the other hand, active cancellation involves using additional components, such as signal processing units, to eliminate self-interference. However, incorporating these components can make the antenna large and costly. Therefore, what is required is a compact and cost-effective antenna that can be easily integrated into the circuitry of any device.
Sarkar and Dash have created an antenna that utilises passive interference, allowing it to function as a full-duplex system. The antenna includes two ports that can act as both a transmitter and a receiver. These ports are separated by metallic vias, electromagnetic tools that create holes in the metal surface of the antenna to disrupt the electric field. By using this approach, the team was able to achieve effective self-interference cancellation passively while also developing a compact and cost-effective design as reported by PTI.
