Full-Duplex Radio Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filing activity already peaked. 2017 recorded the most filings in the set (11); by the 2022 midpoint annual filings had fallen to 3, and the trend has not recovered since.
- Digital and analog cancellation dominate the claim space. H04L and H04B classifications appear on 88 and 76 of the 102 families respectively, showing most inventive effort sits in transmission and digital signal processing rather than in RF hardware.
- Ownership is thin at the top. Only two co-assignee pairings appear in the entire set, and every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the latest year — this is a field with little recent institutional momentum to chase.
What the full-duplex radio patent record shows
Full-duplex radio lets a device transmit and receive on the same frequency at the same time, and the patent record here is built around the hard problem that makes that possible: cancelling the transmitter’s own signal before it swamps the receiver. The search set covers 102 patent families filed between 2015 and 2026 across self-interference cancellation, analog and digital cancellation, and duplexer-free radio architectures, filtered to the IPC classes that cover transmitter/receiver duplex arrangements and multi-carrier signalling.
Filings are concentrated in the United States receiving office, with smaller volumes at the EPO, in China, and through WIPO's PCT route. Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the most recent one or two years in any trend understate real activity — but even allowing for that lag, the underlying filing curve here has been declining since 2017, not accelerating.
Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 102-family dataset: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
A filing peak that has not been repeated
Annual filings rose to 11 in 2017, the high point of the whole window, then fell toward a 2022 midpoint of 3. That decline, not a plateau, is the shape of this dataset — a signal that early inventive activity in self-interference cancellation has not been followed by a second wave of filings at the same intensity.
Digital and RF transmission carry the claim load
H04L (digital information transmission) and H04B (transmission, general) appear on 88 and 76 of the 102 families respectively, confirming that most patented value sits in signal-processing and cancellation algorithms rather than in antenna or duplexer hardware. H04W (wireless networks) trails at 32, and niche classes — impedance networks, waveguides, demodulation — each carry single-digit counts, marking them as thin, specialised branches rather than contested ground.
Shares are the percentage of the 102 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Full-Duplex Radio Technology Landscape with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about full-duplex radio technology landscape and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art in this space
Self-Interference Cancellation for In-Band Full Duplex Single Antenna Communication Systems
An analog self-interference cancellation technique for In-Band Full-Duplex (IBFD) systems generates an inherent secondary self-interference (SI) signal of a circulator and uses that signal to cancel a primary SI signal leaked from a transmitter port within a communication device. The communication device manipulates the phase and angle of this secondary SI, using an adjustable Impedance Mismatch Terminal (IMT) circuit. The result is an efficient SI cancellation technique in the analog domain, which uses the circulator inherent SI signals.Filed by The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, published 2020-03-26 — illustrates the single-antenna, circulator-based route to analog cancellation.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20150043323A1 | Systems and methods for non-linear digital self-interference cancellation | 109 |
| 2 | US20100150033A1 | Software radio frequency canceller | 82 |
| 3 | US20150043685A1 | Systems and methods for frequency independent analog selfinterference cancellation | 71 |
| 4 | US20170141886A1 | Channel Quality Reporting for Full-Duplex Radio | 44 |
| 5 | US9036749B2 | Systems and methods for frequency independent analog self-interference cancellation | 42 |
| 6 | US9130747B2 | Software radio frequency canceller | 41 |
| 7 | US20180006795A1 | Digital-centric full-duplex architecture | 36 |
| 8 | US8976641B2 | Systems and methods for non-linear digital self-interference cancellation | 36 |
| 9 | US20160380653A1 | Energy efficient polynomial kernel generation in full-duplex radio communication | 25 |
| 10 | US20180123710A1 | Method for stably operating FDR mode in wireless communication system supporting FDR mode, and device for same | 24 |
Citation counts reflect influence inside this searched corpus and skew toward older filings; treat them as a map of foundational art, not a ranking of present-day importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns in this dataset matter more to a filing strategy than the raw counts on their own.
The wave has already passed its crest
Filings peaked in 2017 and had fallen to a midpoint of 3 by 2022. Combined with the roughly 18-month publication lag, this points to a technology where the core inventive claims were staked out early and have not been substantially re-contested since.
Signal processing, not hardware, is where the claims sit
The concentration in digital transmission and general transmission classes shows the patented value is in cancellation algorithms and signal architecture. Hardware-adjacent classes like H03H and H01P carry only a handful of families each — occupied ground is different from crowded ground.
Little cross-institution filing
Only two co-assignee pairings appear across the full 102-family set, both involving Korean corporate-university tie-ups. Most families here are filed by a single assignee, which suggests the field has not yet developed the joint-venture or cross-licensing filing patterns seen in more mature wireless standards work.
No assignee is currently active by this measure
Every tracked assignee, including the most historically prolific filers, shows zero filings in the latest year captured. Given publication lag this likely understates true activity somewhat, but the flat 2022 midpoint suggests genuine cooling rather than a reporting artefact.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to full-duplex radio technology landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the core claims
Ownership in this dataset is led by a small group of telecom equipment makers, chipmakers and Korean research institutions, with a long tail of single-family filers behind them.
A concentrated but not dominant top
Named leaders in the ranking include LG Electronics, Kumu Networks, National Instruments, Intel and Intel IP, alongside Korea's ETRI research institute — a mix of equipment vendors, a cancellation-technology specialist, and public research bodies rather than a single dominant assignee.
Korean university partnerships stand out
The strongest co-assignee link in the set pairs LG Electronics with Yonsei University's industry-academic cooperation arm, with a second pairing between ETRI and Handong University's equivalent group. These are the only real collaboration signals in an otherwise single-assignee-dominated dataset.
A smaller but present China filing channel
Shanghai Jiao Tong University appears among filers with non-Latin-script names, reflecting a modest but real Chinese academic interest in self-interference cancellation alongside the US-dominated filing base.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| LG Electronics | 0 | — |
| Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) | 0 | — |
| Kumu Networks | 0 | — |
| National Instruments | 0 | — |
| Intel Corporation | 0 | — |
| Intel IP Corporation | 0 | — |
| Qualcomm Incorporated | 0 | — |
| Yonsei University Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation | 0 | — |
Where to take this analysis
The dataset points to a field with declining raw filing volume but pockets of thin claim density worth checking before committing R&D spend.
Check freedom-to-operate against the most-cited art
The highest-cited records in this set, several from the 2015 filing window, still anchor much of the analog and digital cancellation claim space. Any new cancellation architecture should be checked against these before design work goes further.
Explore the citation network in EurekaTrack the under-claimed hardware branches
Circulator-based analog circuits, impedance-mismatch tuning and duplexer-free waveguide designs each carry only a handful of families. That thinness is worth verifying directly rather than assuming it reflects low commercial relevance.
Run a white-space search in EurekaWatch for the lagged 2025-2026 uptick
Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, recent-year zeros across every tracked assignee may partly reflect unpublished applications rather than a true stop in filing. Re-run this trend in six to twelve months to see whether the cooling holds.
Set a monitoring alert in EurekaCommon questions on full-duplex radio patents
In-band full-duplex radio transmits and receives on the same frequency channel at the same time, instead of splitting time or frequency between the two directions as conventional half-duplex or frequency-division systems do. The technical obstacle is self-interference: a device's own transmitted signal is far stronger than the weak signal it is trying to receive, so it must be cancelled in the analog domain, the digital domain, or both before useful reception is possible. That cancellation problem is what the patent claims in this dataset are almost entirely built around, which is why IPC classes for digital transmission (H04L) and general transmission (H04B) carry the bulk of the filings rather than antenna or RF hardware classes.
The dataset's ranking is led by a mix of telecom equipment makers, a cancellation-technology specialist, and Korean research institutions, including LG Electronics, Kumu Networks, National Instruments, Intel, Intel IP and Korea's ETRI. No single assignee dominates the field outright, and every tracked assignee shows zero filings in the most recent year captured, which points to a field with a concentrated but not runaway leadership structure and little visible recent momentum by this measure.
No — filing activity in this dataset peaked in 2017 at 11 families and had fallen to a midpoint of 3 by 2022, a declining rather than flat or growing trend. Publication lag of roughly 18 months means the very latest years are always undercounted, so some caution is warranted before concluding the field is dead. But the decline is visible well before the years most affected by lag, which suggests genuine cooling in new filing activity rather than a reporting artefact alone.
US20200099504A1, filed by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois and published in March 2020, covers an analog self-interference cancellation technique for single-antenna in-band full-duplex systems. It works by deliberately generating a secondary self-interference signal inherent to a circulator and using an adjustable impedance-mismatch terminal circuit to tune that signal's phase and cancel the primary leaked signal from the transmitter port. Anyone designing a single-antenna, circulator-based analog cancellation path should review this filing's claims closely, since it sits directly on that specific architectural approach rather than on cancellation in general.
The clearest under-claimed areas by IPC count are hardware-adjacent classes: impedance networks and filters, waveguides and microwave elements, and demodulation and frequency conversion each carry only two or three families in this 102-family dataset, compared with dozens in digital and general transmission classes. That thinness likely reflects both real engineering difficulty and lower filing interest so far, so it is worth verifying commercial relevance directly rather than assuming the gap is accidental. Multiplex channel reporting for full-duplex systems is another area with only a handful of filings despite touching directly on network-layer integration.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.