Rotatable Antenna Array-Enhanced Null Steering: Performance Analysis and Optimization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wen, Yingqi, Mei, Weidong, Xie, Yike, Zheng, Beixiong, Chen, Zhi, Ning, Boyu
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Wen, Yingqi
Mei, Weidong
Xie, Yike
Zheng, Beixiong
Chen, Zhi
Ning, Boyu
author_facet Wen, Yingqi
Mei, Weidong
Xie, Yike
Zheng, Beixiong
Chen, Zhi
Ning, Boyu
contents Conventional fixed-orientation antenna (FOA) arrays offer limited degrees of freedom (DoF) for flexible beamforming such as null steering. To address this limitation, we propose a new rotatable antenna array (RAA) architecture in this paper, which enables three-dimensional (3D) rotational control of an antenna array to provide enhanced spatial flexibility for null steering. To characterize its performance, we aim to jointly optimize the 3D rotational angles of the RAA, to maximize the beam gain over a given desired direction, while nulling those over multiple interference directions under zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming. However, this problem is non-convex and challenging to tackle due to the highly nonlinear expression of the beam gain in terms of the rotational angles. To gain insights, we first examine several special cases including both isotropic and directional antenna radiation patterns, deriving the conditions under which full beam gain can be achieved over the desired direction while meeting the nulling constraints for interference directions. These conditions clearly indicate that compared with FOA arrays, RAAs can significantly relax the angular separation requirement for achieving effective null steering. For other general cases, we propose a sequential update algorithm, that iteratively refines the 3D rotational angles by discretizing the 3D angular search space. To avoid undesired local optimum, a Gibbs sampling (GS) procedure is also employed between two consecutive rounds of sequential update for solution exploration. Simulation results verify our analytical results and show superior null-steering performance of RAAs to FOA arrays.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_12204
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rotatable Antenna Array-Enhanced Null Steering: Performance Analysis and Optimization
Wen, Yingqi
Mei, Weidong
Xie, Yike
Zheng, Beixiong
Chen, Zhi
Ning, Boyu
Signal Processing
Conventional fixed-orientation antenna (FOA) arrays offer limited degrees of freedom (DoF) for flexible beamforming such as null steering. To address this limitation, we propose a new rotatable antenna array (RAA) architecture in this paper, which enables three-dimensional (3D) rotational control of an antenna array to provide enhanced spatial flexibility for null steering. To characterize its performance, we aim to jointly optimize the 3D rotational angles of the RAA, to maximize the beam gain over a given desired direction, while nulling those over multiple interference directions under zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming. However, this problem is non-convex and challenging to tackle due to the highly nonlinear expression of the beam gain in terms of the rotational angles. To gain insights, we first examine several special cases including both isotropic and directional antenna radiation patterns, deriving the conditions under which full beam gain can be achieved over the desired direction while meeting the nulling constraints for interference directions. These conditions clearly indicate that compared with FOA arrays, RAAs can significantly relax the angular separation requirement for achieving effective null steering. For other general cases, we propose a sequential update algorithm, that iteratively refines the 3D rotational angles by discretizing the 3D angular search space. To avoid undesired local optimum, a Gibbs sampling (GS) procedure is also employed between two consecutive rounds of sequential update for solution exploration. Simulation results verify our analytical results and show superior null-steering performance of RAAs to FOA arrays.
title Rotatable Antenna Array-Enhanced Null Steering: Performance Analysis and Optimization
topic Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.12204