CN113765537A

CN113765537A - Multi-band radio frequency circuit, frequency band adjusting method and wireless equipment

Info

Publication number: CN113765537A
Application number: CN202111091525.7A
Authority: CN
Inventors: 屈坤; 李观海
Original assignee: TP Link Technologies Co Ltd
Current assignee: TP Link Technologies Co Ltd
Priority date: 2021-09-17
Filing date: 2021-09-17
Publication date: 2021-12-07

Abstract

The application relates to the field of wireless equipment, and provides a multi-band radio frequency circuit, a frequency band adjusting method and wireless equipment, wherein the circuit comprises: a controller; a transceiver; a plurality of front end modules; a plurality of antenna units, each antenna unit having at least two resonant frequency bands; each group of matching links is in matching coupling with the corresponding antenna unit, and each group of matching links comprises matching links the number of which is the same as the number of frequency bands of each antenna unit; the controller is configured to switch the matching link accessed to the front-end module based on each first radio frequency switch so as to realize switching of frequency bands. The frequency band switching is configured based on different access devices, so that the hardware utilization efficiency is improved to the maximum extent, and the user experience is improved.

Description

Multi-band radio frequency circuit, frequency band adjusting method and wireless equipment

Technical Field

The application belongs to the technical field of radio frequency, and particularly relates to a multi-band radio frequency circuit, a frequency band adjusting method and wireless equipment.

Background

In wireless communication equipment, compared with a dual-band type, a triple-band type has one more band (frequency band) on a 5G frequency band besides a 2.4G frequency band, so that two bands can work simultaneously on the 5G frequency band. More frequency bands working simultaneously mean greater throughput, and under the condition that the use experience of each user is unchanged, larger tape-in amount can be provided. Currently, in a hardware architecture, a tri-band model adopts different radio frequency links and antennas for band1 and band 4. Limited by the structural design, if there are N spatial streams, for a three-band model, only (N/2) × (N/2) Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) band1 and (N/2) × (N/2) MIMO band4 can be achieved. Compared with a dual-band type of 5G antenna with N spatial streams, the three-band type has more band amount, but the throughput negotiation value for a single user (the highest support NSS is N) is reduced by half, and meanwhile, due to diversity gain, the coverage range of the dual-band type with N spatial streams is larger than that of the three-band type.

The current radio frequency system and communication device can support 4 × 4MIMO function of 5G signals of four preset frequency bands. The circuit board is essentially area-saving, the presetting of four frequency bands is realized, the requirements of a plurality of national operators on different frequency bands are supported, and the utilization efficiency of devices is improved. Although the method is applied to the field of wireless WiFi, the frequency bands can be switched on hardware, the switching mode is fixed, only a certain frequency band is realized at the same time, self-adaptive adjustment can not be carried out along with a user scene, limited resources are not fully utilized, and the user experience is insufficient.

Disclosure of Invention

The application aims to provide a multi-band radio frequency circuit, a frequency band adjusting method and wireless equipment, and aims to solve the problems that a traditional radio frequency system can only work in a single frequency band at the same time, limited resources cannot be fully utilized, and user experience is insufficient.

A first aspect of an embodiment of the present application provides a multiband radio frequency circuit, including:

a controller;

the transceiver is connected with the controller and used for receiving or transmitting radio frequency signals;

the front-end modules are respectively connected with the transceiver and used for transmitting, amplifying, receiving and amplifying the radio-frequency signals;

the multiband radio frequency circuit further includes:

a plurality of antenna units, each antenna unit having at least two resonant frequency bands;

each group of matching links is in matching coupling with the corresponding antenna unit, and each group of matching links comprises matching links the number of which is the same as the number of frequency bands of each antenna unit;

the controller is configured to control each first radio frequency switch to switch into the matching link of the front-end module, so as to realize frequency band switching.

The multi-band radio frequency circuit adopts the same front-end module on hardware due to different frequency bands, so that two independent links can be adopted for matching, different frequency bands are respectively matched, a radio frequency switch is used for switching according to requirements, the switching of the frequency bands is realized, the requirements of different scenes on space flow are optimized, limited resources can be fully utilized, and the user experience is improved.

In one embodiment, each of the antenna units includes at least two single-frequency antennas of different frequency bands, and each of the single-frequency antennas is connected to the first rf switch through a corresponding matching link.

In one embodiment, the antenna system further includes a plurality of second rf switches, each of the antenna units includes a multi-frequency antenna, the second rf switches are connected between the multi-frequency antenna and the matching link, and the controller is configured to control each of the first rf switches and each of the second rf switches to switch access to the matching link of the front-end module, so as to implement frequency band switching.

In one embodiment, the radio frequency module further comprises at least one 2.4G module, and the 2.4G module is connected with the controller and is used for radiating or receiving the radio frequency signal in a 2.4GHz resonance frequency band.

In an embodiment, the controller is configured to control each first radio frequency switch to switch access to the matching link of the front-end module according to a frequency band required by a percentage of actual throughput occupying a throughput supported by a current link negotiation rate and/or a number of access devices, so as to implement frequency band switching.

In one embodiment, the frequency bands include 5G band1 and 5G band 4.

In one embodiment, the number of the antenna units and the front end module is 4.

A second aspect of the embodiments of the present application provides a frequency band adjustment method based on the multiband radio frequency circuit, where the frequency band adjustment method includes:

monitoring each access device;

determining a frequency band required by each access device based on a monitoring result;

and controlling the first radio frequency switch to switch and access the matching link of the front-end module based on the frequency band required by each access device.

In one embodiment, the monitoring result includes the number of the access devices, and the percentage of the actual throughput of each access device to the throughput supported by the current link negotiation rate;

the controlling the first rf switch to switch access to the matching link of the front-end module based on the frequency band required by each of the access devices includes:

if the number of the access devices is one, controlling all the first radio frequency switches to be switched into the matching links corresponding to the frequency bands required by the access devices;

and if the number of the access devices is multiple, controlling the number of the first radio frequency switches switched to be accessed to the matching links corresponding to the frequency band required by the access devices according to the percentage of the actual throughput of each access device occupying the throughput supported by the current link negotiation rate.

The frequency band adjusting method based on the multi-band radio frequency circuit monitors the access equipment, can control the radio frequency switch according to the user scene, realizes the adaptation of the frequency band conversion to the space flow, can self-adapt to the user scene under the condition of not changing hardware, combines the advantages of single frequency or multi-band, adopts multi-band under the condition of multi-user access, and adopts single frequency band when a single user needs larger throughput.

A third aspect of the embodiments of the present application provides a wireless device, including the above multiband radio frequency circuit; or

Comprising a memory, a processor and a computer program stored in the memory and executable on the processor, wherein the processor implements the steps of the frequency band adjustment method as described above when executing the computer program.

The wireless device has the beneficial effects of the solutions provided by the first and second aspects, and details are not repeated here.

Drawings

Fig. 1 is a schematic structural diagram of a multiband radio frequency circuit according to an embodiment of the present application;

fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of a multiband rf circuit according to a second embodiment of the present application;

fig. 3 is a schematic diagram of a multiband rf circuit according to a third embodiment of the present application;

fig. 4 is a detailed flowchart of a frequency band adjustment method according to an embodiment of the present application;

FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of a wireless device provided by an embodiment of the invention;

wherein, in the figures, the reference numerals refer to:

110. a controller; 120. a transceiver; 130. a front end module; 140. an antenna unit; 150. a group matching link; 160. a first radio frequency switch; 170. a second radio frequency switch; 142. a single frequency antenna; 152 match the link.

Detailed Description

In order to make the technical problems, technical solutions and advantageous effects to be solved by the present application clearer, the present application is further described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings and embodiments. It should be understood that the specific embodiments described herein are merely illustrative of the present application and are not intended to limit the present application.

It will be understood that when an element is referred to as being "secured to" or "disposed on" another element, it can be directly on the other element or be indirectly on the other element. When an element is referred to as being "connected to" another element, it can be directly connected to the other element or be indirectly connected to the other element.

It will be understood that the terms "length," "width," "upper," "lower," "front," "rear," "left," "right," "vertical," "horizontal," "top," "bottom," "inner," "outer," and the like, refer to an orientation or positional relationship illustrated in the drawings for convenience in describing the present application and to simplify description, and do not indicate or imply that the referenced device or element must have a particular orientation, be constructed and operated in a particular orientation, and thus should not be construed as limiting the present application.

Furthermore, the terms "first", "second" and "first" are used for descriptive purposes only and are not to be construed as indicating or implying relative importance or implicitly indicating the number of technical features indicated. Thus, a feature defined as "first" or "second" may explicitly or implicitly include one or more of that feature. In the description of the present application, "a plurality" means two or more, and "several" means one or more unless specifically limited otherwise.

Referring to fig. 1, the multiband rf circuit according to the embodiment of the present invention includes a controller 110, a Transceiver 120(Transceiver), a plurality of Front-end Modules 130 (FEMs), a plurality of antenna units 140, a plurality of groups of matching links 150, and a plurality of first rf switches 160.

The controller 110 is typically the master of a device to which the present circuitry is applied, such as a network management chip, or other Central Processing Unit (CPU). The transceiver 120 is connected to the controller 110 for receiving or transmitting radio frequency signals; the front-end modules 130 are respectively connected to the transceiver 120 for transmitting and receiving rf signals.

Each antenna element 140 has at least two resonant frequency bands. For example, the antenna unit 140 takes a 5G WIFI antenna as an example, the general 5G WIFI antenna may include two common frequency bands, i.e., a 5G band1 and a 5G band4, and certainly, other resonant frequency bands adapted to different scenes or regions may also be provided, and this application will take the two common frequency bands as an example for illustration.

Each group of matching links 150 in the multiple groups of matching links 150 is coupled with the corresponding antenna unit 140 in a matching manner, and each group of matching links 150 includes matching links 152 of which the number is the same as that of the frequency bands of each antenna unit 140, so that different frequency bands can be respectively matched by using the independent matching links 152, and each antenna unit 140 can arbitrarily select radiators of different frequency bands to participate in radiation; a first rf switch 160 is connected between each front-end module 130 and each set of matching links 150, and the controller 110 is configured to switch the matching links 152 connected to the front-end module 130 based on the first rf switches 160, so as to implement the frequency band switching. Generally, the switching of the frequency band is configured based on different application scenarios, different access devices, and the percentage of the actual throughput of each access device occupying the throughput supported by the current link negotiation rate, so that the hardware utilization efficiency is maximally improved, and the user experience is improved.

Referring to fig. 2, in an embodiment, the antenna further includes a plurality of second rf switches 170, each antenna unit 140 includes a multi-frequency antenna, such as a dual-frequency antenna capable of resonating at 5G band1 and 5G band4, the second rf switches 170 are connected between the multi-frequency antenna and the matching link 152, and the controller 110 is configured to switch the matching link 152 connected to the front-end module 130 based on each first rf switch 160 and each second rf switch 170, so as to implement frequency band switching. Specifically, the first rf switch 160 is mainly used for switching the matching link 152, and the second rf switch 170 is used for switching the feeding form of the multi-frequency antenna, or impedance matching, or power matching, so as to implement frequency band switching.

Referring to fig. 3, in an embodiment, each antenna unit 140 includes at least two single-frequency antennas 142 of different frequency bands, and each single-frequency antenna 142 is connected to the first rf switch 160 through a corresponding matching link 152. For example, each antenna unit 140 includes a 5G band1 single-frequency antenna 142 and a 5G band4 single-frequency antenna 142, and compared with the previous embodiment, the antenna unit 140 uses the single-frequency antenna 142, so that the insertion loss introduced by one radio frequency switch is reduced while the different frequency isolation is better.

Generally, the multiband radio frequency circuit applied to the wireless device further includes at least one 2.4G module (not shown), and the 2.4G module is connected to the controller 110 for radiating or receiving a radio frequency signal at a resonant frequency band of 2.4 GHz. Therefore, with the above-mentioned 5G antenna, under the control of the controller 110 based on the rf switch, adaptive adjustment of spatial streams in different frequency bands is achieved, and the respective advantages of dual-frequency and tri-frequency are taken into account, thereby improving user experience.

In one embodiment, the number of antenna elements 140 and the front end module 130 is N, such as 4. That is, the antenna unit 140 is an N MIMO antenna, and the whole multiband rf circuit can implement N × NMIMO diversity.

The following will illustrate the operation of a wireless device to which the present application is applied, using a single access device (STA) and a multi-STA scenario.

Scene 1: the number of NSS supported by a single STA is Nsta, the maximum number of antennas of the device is N, and the number of spatial streams of 5G band1 is N/2, and the number of spatial streams of 5G band4 is N/2. When the actual throughput of the STA approaches to the theoretical upper limit of the throughput of the negotiated rate at that time, the network is jammed or delayed, and the following conditions are specifically analyzed:

if the STA accesses 5G band1 or 5G band4 and Nsta is less than or equal to N/2, and the STA negotiates the highest protocol rate, the space flow of the STA is increased or the diversity gain is improved, and the performance of the STA cannot be improved;

if the STA accesses 5G band1 or 5G band4, and Nsta is not more than or equal to N/2, and the STA does not negotiate the highest rate of the protocol, the control switch switches to increase the spatial stream of the STA at the moment, although the actual spatial stream of the STA cannot be improved, the diversity gain can be improved, the STA negotiates a higher rate, and the performance of the STA is improved;

if the STA accesses 5G band1 or 5G band4 and Nsta is greater than N/2, the switch is controlled to switch to increase the spatial stream of the STA, which not only improves the actual spatial stream of the STA, but also improves the diversity gain, so that the NSS number and rate actually negotiated by the STA can be improved, the hardware utilization rate is increased, and the performance of the STA is improved.

Scene 2: the multiple-STA access equipment sorts the STAs from large to small according to actual throughput, the numbers of the STAs are STA1 and STA2 …, the number of NSSs correspondingly supported by the STAs is Nsta1, Nsta2, Nsta3 …,5G band1 and 5G band4 default spatial streams are respectively N/2, and specific analysis is carried out on the following situations aiming at the scene:

STA1 accesses 5G band1, and other STAs access 5G band4, at this time, the actual throughput values of STA1 and other STAs are both smaller than the actual negotiated rate throughput value, the spatial stream distribution is reasonable, and the spatial stream distribution is not adjusted;

STA1 accesses 5G band1, and the rest STAs access 5G band4, at this time, the actual throughput of STA1 exceeds 80% of the maximum throughput of the negotiated rate, and the actual throughput of the other STAs is less than 20% of the actual throughput of the negotiated rate, and at this time, the NSS number Nsta1 supported by STA1 is greater than N/2 or the negotiated rate does not reach the highest rate, and 5G band1 spatial stream is allocated as M1, and 5G band4 spatial stream is M2, where M1 is greater than N/2, M1+ M2 is N, after adjustment, STA1 not only increases the spatial stream, but also increases the negotiated rate due to a larger diversity gain, but also needs to ensure that the actual total throughput of the rest STAs does not exceed 80% of the actual throughput of the negotiated rate, so that while meeting the access of the other STAs, the throughput of STA1 is also increased, the hardware performance is fully achieved, and the user experience is improved.

Referring to fig. 4, a second aspect of the present application provides a frequency band adjustment method based on the multiband radio frequency circuit, where the frequency band adjustment method includes:

step S110, monitoring each access device.

Specifically, the system will monitor the number of access devices and the percentage of the current actual throughput of each access device to the theoretical throughput of the current negotiated rate.

Step S120, determining the frequency band required by each access device based on the monitoring result;

for example, if only one access device is monitored, as in the above scenario 1, the frequency band required by the access device may be considered to be any frequency band; for another example, if a plurality of access devices are monitored, as in scenario 2, different devices need to be allocated with different or the same frequency bands of different antenna units 140 according to the requirement of the spatial stream.

Step S130, based on the frequency band required by each access device, the first rf switch 160 is controlled to switch to the matching link 152 of the front-end module 130.

In one embodiment, the monitoring result includes the number of access devices, and the percentage of the current actual throughput of each access device occupying the theoretical throughput of the current negotiated rate;

the step S130 includes:

if there is one access device, all the first rf switches 160 are controlled to switch to the matching link 152 corresponding to the frequency band required by the access device, where the frequency band required by the access device is the same frequency band. As shown in the foregoing scenario 1, it may be considered that the frequency band required by the access device is a certain frequency band corresponding to the matching link 152, and all the first rf switches 160 switch to access the matching link 152 corresponding to the same frequency band, so that the N spatial streams are all accessed to the access device, thereby providing the maximum throughput.

If there are a plurality of access devices, the number of the matching links 152 switched and accessed to the frequency band required by the access device by each first rf switch 160 is controlled according to the percentage of the current actual throughput of each access device occupying the throughput supported by the current link negotiation rate.

Specifically, the current actual throughput of the access device is compared with the throughput supported by the current link negotiation rate, if the actual throughput exceeds 80% of the theoretical throughput of the current negotiation rate, it is determined that the access device has a requirement for higher throughput at this time, the first radio frequency switch 160 is controlled to allocate more spatial streams (more antenna units 140 are operated in frequency bands communicated with the access device), and meanwhile, more spatial streams also have higher diversity gain, so that the upper limit of the theoretical maximum throughput of the access device is improved, and if the actual throughput is less than 20% of the theoretical value, it is considered that the access device does not need so many spatial streams, the first radio frequency switch 160 is controlled to reduce the spatial streams of the access device, and the spatial streams are allocated to other devices requiring spatial streams, so that the hardware utilization rate is improved.

As shown in the above scenario 2, the requirements of the access device for spatial streams, network delays, and throughput are determined according to the percentage of the current actual throughput of the channel occupying the throughput supported by the current link negotiation rate, if the requirements are large, more antenna units 140 are matched to operate in one frequency band for the access device, and if the requirements are not large, the remaining antenna units 140 operate in another frequency band for accessing the access device with small demand, so that the user scenario can be adapted without changing hardware, and in combination with the advantages of single frequency or multiple frequency bands, in the case of multi-user access, multiple frequency bands are adopted, and in the case of single user requiring larger throughput, single frequency bands are adopted.

Fig. 5 is a schematic diagram of a wireless device according to an embodiment of the present application. As shown in fig. 5, the wireless device 5 of this embodiment includes: a processor 50, a memory 51 and a computer program 52 stored in said memory 51 and executable on said processor 50. The processor 50, when executing the computer program 52, implements the steps in the above-mentioned frequency band adjustment method based on the multiband rf circuit, such as the steps S110 to S130 shown in fig. 4. Alternatively, the processor 50 implements the functions of the modules/units in the above-described device embodiments when executing the computer program 52.

Illustratively, the computer program 52 may be partitioned into one or more modules/units, which are stored in the memory 51 and executed by the processor 50 to accomplish the present application. The one or more modules/units may be a series of computer program instruction segments capable of performing specific functions, which are used to describe the execution of the computer program 52 in the wireless device 5.

The wireless device 5 may be a desktop computer, a notebook, a palm computer, a cloud server, or other computing devices. The wireless device 5 may include, but is not limited to, a processor 50, a memory 51. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that fig. 5 is merely an example of a wireless device 5 and does not constitute a limitation of the wireless device 5 and may include more or less components than those shown, or some components in combination, or different components, e.g., the wireless device 5 may also include input output devices, network access devices, buses, etc.

The Processor 50 may be a Central Processing Unit (CPU), other general purpose Processor, a Digital Signal Processor (DSP), an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), an off-the-shelf Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) or other Programmable logic device, discrete Gate or transistor logic, discrete hardware components, etc. A general purpose processor may be a microprocessor or the processor may be any conventional processor or the like.

The memory 51 may be an internal storage unit of the wireless device 5, such as a hard disk or a memory of the wireless device 5. The memory 51 may also be an external storage device of the wireless device 5, such as a plug-in hard disk, a Smart Media Card (SMC), a Secure Digital (SD) Card, a Flash memory Card (Flash Card), and the like, provided on the wireless device 5. Further, the memory 51 may also include both an internal storage unit and an external storage device of the wireless device 5. The memory 51 is used for storing the computer programs and other programs and data required by the wireless device 5. The memory 51 may also be used to temporarily store data that has been output or is to be output.

The above-mentioned embodiments are only used for illustrating the technical solutions of the present application, and not for limiting the same; although the present application has been described in detail with reference to the foregoing embodiments, it should be understood by those of ordinary skill in the art that: the technical solutions described in the foregoing embodiments may still be modified, or some technical features may be equivalently replaced; such modifications and substitutions do not substantially depart from the spirit and scope of the embodiments of the present application and are intended to be included within the scope of the present application.

Claims

1. A multi-band radio frequency circuit, comprising:

a controller;

wherein the multiband radio frequency circuit further comprises:

2. The multiband radio frequency circuit of claim 1, wherein each of said antenna units comprises at least two different frequency band single frequency antennas, each of said single frequency antennas being connected to said first radio frequency switch through a corresponding one of said matching links, respectively.

3. The multiband radio frequency circuit of claim 1, further comprising a plurality of second radio frequency switches, each of the antenna units comprising a multiband antenna, the second radio frequency switches being connected between the multiband antenna and the matching link, the controller being configured to control each of the first radio frequency switches and each of the second radio frequency switches to switch access to the matching link of the front-end module to implement frequency band switching.

4. The multiband radio frequency circuit of any one of claims 1 to 3, further comprising at least one 2.4G module, said 2.4G module being connected to said controller for radiating or receiving said radio frequency signal at a resonant frequency band of 2.4 GHz.

5. The multiband radio frequency circuit of any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the controller is configured to control each of the first radio frequency switches to switch access to the matching link of the front-end module according to a percentage of actual throughput to a supported throughput of a current link negotiation rate and/or a frequency band required by a number of access devices to realize frequency band switching.

6. The multiband radio frequency circuit of any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein the frequency bands include 5G band1 and 5G band 4.

7. The multiband radio frequency circuit of any one of claims 1 to 3, wherein said antenna element and said front end module are 4 in number.

8. A method for adjusting a frequency band of a multiband radio frequency circuit according to any one of claims 1 to 7, wherein the method for adjusting a frequency band comprises:

monitoring each access device;

9. The method for adjusting frequency bands according to claim 8, wherein the monitoring result includes the number of the access devices, and a percentage of actual throughput of each of the access devices to throughput supported by a current link negotiation rate;

if the number of the access devices is one, controlling all the first radio frequency switches to switch into the matching links corresponding to the frequency bands required by the access devices, wherein the frequency bands required by the access devices are the same frequency band;

10. A wireless device comprising the multiband radio frequency circuit of any one of claims 1 to 6; or

Comprising a memory, a processor and a computer program stored in said memory and executable on said processor, wherein said processor implements the steps of the frequency band adjustment method according to claim 8 or 9 when executing said computer program.