Collaborative Beamfocusing Radios (COBRA): a Reciprocity

Based Distributed Beamforming System

Jeremy P. Rode, Kris Gregorian, Jeremy Ward, and Anis Husain
Ziva Corporation, 6440 Lusk Blvd. Suite D-107 San Diego, CA 92121, USA
Abstract

Collaborative Beamfocusing Radios

(COBRA) enables an ad-hoc collection of distributed
commercial off-the-shelf software defined radios to
coherently time align and beamform to a remote radio
through dynamic RF channels associated with movement.
COBRA uses reciprocal buffering, a causal implementation
of the Time Reversal (TR) algorithm; leveraging RF channel
reciprocity to cancel out channel impairments synchronizing
a set of distributed transmitters into a phase coherent array
to obtain N2 gain at a intended target. COBRA has been
demonstrated aligning multiple commercial software-defined
radios at up to 5.6 GHz carriers, using only quartz
oscillators.
Index Terms Distributed beamforming, distributed
antenna array, collaborative beamforming, time reversal,
MIMO.

I. INTRODUCTION

Implemented directly, TR is non-causal; needing to

transmit data prior to reception. This precludes the direct
use of TR for signals with modulation, as unlike CW
waves used in optical phase conjugation systems,
modulated signals carrying useful information are not
forward predictable.
To maintain causality, COBRA uses an implementation
of TR called reciprocal buffering. Reciprocal buffering
adds a delay to the retransmission of the time reversed
signal. To preserve reciprocity during the buffer delay, the
delays need to be symmetrically aligned about a common
time, called the TR symmetry time. COBRA uses a
master/slave time synchronization process to align the
array's reciprocal buffering across the TR symmetry time,
such that the record and playback intervals are
symmetrical in time, about an axis. This process is shown
below in Fig. 1:

Distributed coherence offers huge advantages to

communication systems in the form of massive link
budget gains, proportional to the square of the number of
nodes (N) collaborating and forming a distributed array.
The N2 gain derives from both the additive effect of an
increased number of transmitters, combined in free space
with an aperture formed by the distributed transmitters.
COBRA opens up new capabilities on systems with
constrained power, size, or collective ad-hoc arrangements
of systems. Distributed beamforming opens up entire new
collaborative application spaces when coupled with small
sensor networks, unmanned aerial systems (UAS), or
other severely size-constrained platforms, where several
systems can collaboratively communicate where not
otherwise possible.
II. COBRA OPERATION
COBRA [1] utilizes Time Reversal (TR), a process of
recording a sounding pulse emitted from an intended
beamforming target, and playback of the recorded signal,
backwards in time. The record and playback of TR
implements the functionality of an optical phase conjugate
mirror, but operating with modulated RF signals. TR
leverages the electromagnetic reciprocity of RF channels,
inverting time to invert the propagation direction of a
wavefront, in essence reflecting a received beam back
upon itself [2]-[5].

Fig. 1. Timing diagram of 3-Node COBRA operation; first

agreeing upon a TR symmetry time, subsequently recording the
signal from the intended RX, and finally retrodirective playback.

When properly aligned by the time synchronization

process, the reciprocal buffering automatically inverts the
propagation (including any channel multipath), and
focuses the signal energy back at the intended RX. This
process is very robust to noise, as the signal can be below
the noise floor, as the signals need only to be recorded in
the dynamic range of the receiver. Furthermore, as the
recording and playback process needs little computation,

the retrodirection can be performed with very low latency.

Due to this low latency, COBRA can operate in dynamic
channels with low coherence times from either node or
target movement/Doppler shift.
III. COHERENCY EVALUATION
Evaluating coherency performance in distributed arrays
relative to that of an ideally coherent system necessitates
measuring the energy of the coherently combined signal
along with the energy from each of the individual nodes in
the array, as each node has an entirely different channel.
Accurately evaluating performance in movement further
requires the elapsed time between the measurements to be
within the channel coherence time.
To rapidly evaluate beamforming performance of
COBRA, the individual nodes are programmed to repeat
the retrodirected signal twice, once simultaneously
coherent, and the others individually and sequentially. The
ideal beamforming performance can then be directly
calculated by summing the individual soundings and then
compared to the coherency period. This is illustrated
below in Fig 2:

experimental data. The car was instrumented with a GPS

recorder, and then driven at increasing rates of speed at
the COBRA array, after which the car was driven to a
hotpot to extract the target data. The experiment was
limited to 130 km/hr by the acceleration capabilities of the
vehicle. The experimental setup is documented in Fig. 3.
in Fig. 1:

Fig. 3. Setup for the 2.6 GHz dynamic COBRA experiment:

Top left, target antenna on vehicle; Top right, velocity data from
GPS logger; Bottom, satellite photograph with GPS spatial data.

The experiment was repeated at increasing velocities,

and all of the evaluated COBRA performance was around
1 dB from ideal, for the 4-node array. The experiment
with the fastest measured velocity is documented in Fig. 4.

Fig. 2. Diagram of the coherency evaluation technique. The

retrodirected signals are repeated both simultaneously and
sequentially to enable evaluation of coherent performance
relative to an ideal beamforming system.

Typically an autocorrelation sequence is used as the

repeated signal along with matched filter detection to aide
in signal presence detection and to reject noise from the
performance evaluation process.
IV. 2.6 GHZ COBRA DYNAMIC MEASUREMENT
To test the performance of COBRA in highly dynamic
channels, a four node COBRA array was setup on both
sides of a high speed street. The target node was setup
inside of a vehicle, with a magnetically mounted antenna
placed upon the car, with a WiFi link to transfer

Fig. 4. COBRA performance data: Top energy over time from

matched filter detection for COBRA, each individual radio node,
and calculated ideal COBRA performance. Bottom, COBRA
performance relative to calculated ideal.

Here, COBRA's mean performance was only 0.62 dB

from the ideal performance, and showed no degradations
in performance at varying peak experimental speeds as
measured by the GPS from 109 km/h to 130 km/h.

VI. 5.6 GHZ COBRA WITH COHERENT DATA

The COBRA system was upgraded to include a binary
phase shift keying (BPSK) modulator, where instead of
retrodirecting an identical copy of the target's sounding
signal using a TR buffer, the array members use the
sounding pulse to calculate a dynamic pulse shaping filter
(PSF). This PSF is subsequently used in the transmission
of a packet of modulated BPSK data.
A two-node COBRA array was setup indoors in an
office park with a 128-bit a priori shared data packet, and
set to vary the attenuation on the transmitters. As in
previous experiments, the nodes were setup to repeat the
packet, such that the target would receive three packets:
one coherent, and one apiece individually from each of the
other nodes. Bit Error Rate (BER) analysis was performed
on the three packet streams, and is shown in Fig. 5.

transmit coherent data to a remote highly mobile radio.

COBRA achieves coherence though the use of reciprocal
buffering which uses RF channel reciprocity combined
with temporal symmetry, eliminating the need for high
latency,
computationally
expensive,
closed-loop
beamforming techniques.
The ability of the COBRA technique to cohere multiple
separate radios or disparate physically separated arrays
opens up a host of new applications not only in wireless
communication, but in precision timing, sensing and
localization applications.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by DARPA with Ziva
Corporation under contracts W15P7T-12-C-5021 and
FA8750-13-C-0235.
DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT
DISTRIBUTION A. Approved for public release:
distribution unlimited.
DISCLAIMER
The views, opinions, and/or findings contained in this
paper are those of the authors and should not be
interpreted as representing the official views or policies of
the Department of Defense or the U.S. Government.

Fig. 5. BER data from a COBRA data experiment, showing

the BER improvement from 2-node coherent data transmission.

As the master and slave node had almost identical channel

powers, the BER data shows the expected 6 dB shift
corresponding to an ideal power gain of 4X from 2-node
coherent signal combining. The BER curves do not
exhibit the roll-off that would be expected with a
Gaussian channel, as this experiment was operating in the
presence of interference from neighboring wireless
systems.
VII. CONCLUSION
Ziva has expanded the demonstrated operational space
of COBRA, the first (to our knowledge) reciprocity based,
open-loop beamforming system enabling an ad-hoc
collection of off-the-shelf radios to coherently align and

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