Self-Focusing Receive Beamforming Through Multi-Carrier Information Embedding

This work presents a novel low-power self-focusing receive beamforming architecture for Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. By using non-linear self-mixing of incoming multi-carrier RF signals, the receiver directly generates intermediate-frequency (IF) signals that carry embedded information – eliminating the need of local oscillators or angle-of-arrival (AoA) estimation. The result is a beamforming gain independent of signal direction, achieved with simple circuitry. Both system and circuit level simulations confirm that the approach maintains reliable link performance with significantly reduced hardware complexity and power consumption.