US 12647176 B2 / Jun 2, 2026

Method and apparatus for beam-group steering

A beamforming method (700) and apparatus (10) disclosed herein use an advantageous approach to beamforming involving the application of beamforming weights (24) that define respective beams (72) of a beam group (70) as spatially non-overlapping and having fixed spatial relationships within the beam group (70), and the application of beam-group steering weights (28) that steer the respective beams (72) of the beam group (70) in a common direction. The arrangement allows, for example, limiting the beamforming structure of the beamformer (12) to that needed for defining the beam group (70), with beam-group steering then used to point the beam group (70) in various directions to provide greater signal coverage over time.