Quasi-optical planar arrays with FETs and slots

This work describes the design concept and experimental results for prototypes of two-dimensional quasi-optical power-combining arrays. Several different quasi-optical circuits were used to obtain the fundamental data for this study. How to incorporate the antenna input impedance into the active antenna circuit and how to analyze the strong coupling condition with two operating modes are addressed using large-signal analysis. Several circuit configurations are demonstrated, including a single active antenna operating at 9.3 and 24.0 GHz, a six-element linear power-combining array operating at 15.6 GHz, and four-element and sixteen-element two-dimensional power combining arrays operating at 10.4 and 7.8 GHz. Important characteristics such as antenna patterns and tuning ranges are discussed. The prospects for a two-dimensional monolithic quasi-optical power-combining array are discussed     

Performance of short- and long-range meteor burst communicationsystems with different antennas

The performance of meteor burst communication at different ranges for a number of antenna configurations is analyzed. Characteristics of ideal antenna patterns for short- and long-range meteor scatter communication are described. An ideal antenna configuration matches its illumination pattern to the spatial arrival pattern of meteor trails. The analysis is used to compare the performance of several commonly used antenna configurations. It will be demonstrated that the characteristics of antennas which perform well at short ranges are different than those that perform well at long ranges     

Investigation of Simulated annealing, ant-colony optimization, and genetic algorithms for self-structuring antennas

A self-structuring antenna (SSA) is capable of arranging itself into a large number of configurations. Because the properties of the configurations are generally unknown at the onset of operation, efficient search algorithms are required to find suitable configurations for a given set of environmental and operational conditions. This paper investigates the use of ant-colony optimization, simulated annealing, and genetic algorithms for finding suitable antenna states. The implementation of each algorithm for SSA searches is described, and the performance of each algorithm is compared to a random search.     

Comparison of MIMO antenna configurations in picocell and microcell environments

This paper presents the results achieved with a dual-polarized multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) measurement system in the 2 GHz range. Results from continuous measurement routes were used in evaluating and comparing different MIMO antenna configurations. Different pattern and polarization diversity possibilities were studied using two methods: elements were selected from the antenna arrays used in measurements, and as another option, in the mobile station the incident waves were estimated and used in different dipole antenna arrays. The capacity limit seems to be higher in an indoor picocell than in an outdoor microcell environment. At the mobile station, directive elements result in 35% higher average capacities than those of the omnidirectional elements; however, the capacity of the directive elements also depends on the azimuth direction of arrival of the incident field. Dual-polarized antenna configurations have approximately 14% higher capacities than copolarized configurations. Increasing the number of mobile antenna elements increases the capacity in those environments where the angular spread of the incident field is large. Increasing the distance between elements at the fixed station increases the capacity - especially in microcells where signals arrive from specific directions.     

Polarization properties of the axial mode helix antenna

The helix is considered as a surface wave antenna. A network model of the infinite structure provides a simple vehicle to view the fields behavior. The far-field polarization properties are examined in detail, and it is shown how they depend on the surface wave structure and the open and feed end configurations. By suitably arranging the antenna ends, perfect endfire polarization purity can be produced independent of antenna length (i.e., number of turns). Inclusion of a dielectric core decreases the cross polarized radiation in off-axis directions. Theoretical and experimental patterns illustrate these results.     

Applications of the Talbot Array Illuminator in the Millimeter-Wave Band

We propose and experimentally examine several novel millimeter-wave applications of the Talbot effect. First, several different millimeter-wave Talbot array illuminator (TAIL) configurations are examined. The TAILs are formed by combining a lens and a phase grating with different antenna array layers. Subsequently, a second phase grating is introduced at an appropriate location beyond the array layer to arrive at an architecture that is suitable for use as an active transmit antenna. Finally, with the addition of a second lens to collect the energy beyond the transmit structure, a spatial power amplification architecture is presented.     

Hybrid-coupled broadband triangular microstrip antennas

Two broadband configurations consisting of three hybrid-coupled equilateral and isosceles triangular microstrip antennas have been proposed. Both configurations yield more than four times the bandwidth as compared with the corresponding single triangular microstrip antenna. The radiation pattern of a hybrid-coupled isosceles triangular microstrip antenna is in the broadside direction with very small variation over the entire bandwidth. In addition, this antenna has wide half power beamwidth, making it suitable as an element for the large scan broadband antenna array.     

Efficient detection in uniform linear and planar arrays MIMO systems under spatial correlated channels

In this paper, the efficiency of various multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) detectors was analyzed from the perspective of highly correlated channels, where MIMO systems have a lack of performance, besides in some cases, an increasing complexity. Considering this hard but a useful scenario, various MIMO detection schemes were accurately evaluated concerning complexity and bit error rate performance. Specifically, successive interference cancellation, lattice reduction, and the combination of them were associated with conventional linear MIMO detection techniques. To demonstrate effectiveness, a wide range of the number of antennas and modulation formats have been considered aiming to verify the potential of such MIMO detection techniques according to their performance‐complexity trade‐off. We have also studied the correlation effect when both transmit and receiver sides are equipped with uniform linear array and uniform planar array antenna configurations. The performance of different detectors is carefully compared when both antenna array configurations are deployed considering a different number of antennas and modulation order, especially under near‐massive MIMO condition. We have also discussed the relationship between the array factor and the bit error rate performance of both antenna array structures.     

Capacity Enhancement Using MIMO Antenna Arrays in Realistic Macro-Cellular Urban Environment

In MIMO systems the antenna array configuration in the BS and MS has a large influence on the available channel capacity. In this paper, we first introduce a new Frequency Selective (FS) MIMO framework for macro-cells in a realistic urban environment. The MIMO channel is built over a previously developed directional channel model, which considers the terrain and clutter information in the cluster, line-of-sight and link loss calculations. Next, MIMO configuration characteristics are investigated in order to maximize capacity, mainly the number of antennas, inter-antenna spacing and SNR impact. Channel and capacity simulation results are presented for the city of Lisbon, Portugal, using different antenna configurations. Two power allocations schemes are considered, uniform distribution and FS spatial water-filling. The results suggest optimized MIMO configurations, considering the antenna array size limitations, specially at the MS side.     

Hybrid Amplitude Control Antenna Array System for Energy Efficient W-CDMA Network with Adaptive Coverage and Capacity

This paper introduces a novel technique and mathematical formulation of two dimensional elastic footprint variations and adaptive sector configuration variations by using a hybrid adaptive amplitude control antenna array system. The antenna array system can control the elevation beam-widths from 6.84° to 13° and the azimuth beam-widths from 33° to 93° for obtaining the adaptive capacity and coverage. The work illustrates the application of the antenna array system in the energy efficient W-CDMA network. The antenna array half-power beam width variation is achieved by using the antenna array amplitude control and co-located multiple antenna array switching. The Node-Bs can adaptively switch to three, four, five, six and non uniform sector configurations with the antenna array beam width control and adaptive neighbor relations. Sector configurations will vary according to the pre-defined specific traffic loading percentages out of Node-B’s total channel capacity to reduce the energy consumption of the entire network. The paper introduces an adaptive footprint overlaps shifting technique, where the sector with less traffic load will expand its footprint towards the sector with higher traffic load and the sector with higher traffic load will shrink its footprint by maintaining a fixed footprint overlaps to improve the coverage and the capacity of the network. The footprints overlap shifting is applicable only for the active sector antennas facing each other. The results confirm that the proposed antenna array system outperforms the automatic tilt optimization and can control coverage, capacity and improve the energy efficiency of the W-CDMA network.     

Radiation Characteristics and Mutual Coupling of a Dual: Band Antenna Array Structure

In this paper, an antenna array structure consisting of a reflector plate and a number of printed dipole radiation elements is investigated. This antenna array implementation is suitable for the globally available 2.4 and 5?GHz ISM frequency band facilitating a variety of wireless applications. S-parameters and radiation characteristics are simulated and measured in details. The impact of the plane reflector on radiation patterns and the reflection coefficient are also investigated. Furthermore, mutual coupling effects between adjacent elements and the corresponding radiation patterns are studied for different antenna array configurations. Both simulated and measurement results are useful in antenna array design and antenna applications in wireless communications.     

Selecting array configurations for MIMO systems: an evolutionary computation approach

This paper presents an antenna selection method for multiple-input multiple-output wireless systems. By exploitation of the channel transfer matrix, the antenna selection criterion is the maximization of the instantaneous capacity achieved using a specific number of transmitting and receiving antenna array elements. For each environment, the proposed method applies a genetic algorithm which seeks the most advantageous subset of antenna elements. The results are based on measured and simulated channels and show that the proposed method selects array configurations that yield superior performance compared to the arrays usually employed. Furthermore, comparative analysis results are presented, with respect to a state-of-the-art algorithm.     

Performance Analysis of Multiuser Diversity in MIMO Systems with Antenna Selection

In this paper, a framework is presented to analyze the performance of multiuser diversity (MUD) in multiuser point-to-multipoint (PMP) MIMO systems with antenna selection. Based on this framework, the tight closed-form expressions of outage capacity and average symbol error rate are derived for the multiuser transmit antenna selection with maximal-ratio combining (TAS/MRC) system, by which we show how and with what characteristics antenna selection gains, MIMO antenna configurations and fading gains impact on the system performance, with an emphasis on the study of multiuser diversity influence. From both theoretical and simulation results, our study shows that in multiuser PMP TAS/MRC systems an diversity order equals to the product of the number of transmit antennas, number of receive antennas and number of users can be achieved; what's more, users plays a key role in the system performance and can be viewed as equivalent 'virtual" transmit antennas, which is the source of the multiuser diversity inherent exists in the multiuser system. This kind of diversity can be efficiently extracted in the design of multiantenna systems.     

分布式MIMO数字阵列雷达阵元优化配置

为了合理分配相参增益和空间分集增益在分布式多输入多输出(MIMO)数字阵列雷达系统中的比重,研究了其阵元的优化配置问题。首先,根据MIMO雷达信号模型将阵元配置问题转化为目标散射系数矩阵的分块划分问题;然后,依据子块内信号相参处理,子块间信号非相参处理的方式推导了似然比检测器;最后,分别从检测概率最大、探测距离最远和总的阵元数最少三个方面给出了阵元优化配置的表达式并进行了仿真分析。研究结果表明:应首先利用相参增益将回波信噪比提高到一定值后才能利用空间分集增益;分置接收天线比分置发射天线牺牲的相参增益少;当检测概率大于0.8时,分置两个收发共用的相控阵天线可使系统阵元总数最少,否则无需天线分置。     

Influence of antenna configuration on achievable throughput in real indoor propagation environment for 2-by-2 single-user MIMO in LTE-advanced uplink

This paper clarifies the influence of the antenna configuration on the achievable throughput in a real indoor propagation environment for 2-by-2 single-user (SU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) in the Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced uplink using single carrier-based radio access. In indoor experiments conducted in an office at walking speed, we consider four antenna configurations: co-polarized antennas with a long or small separation, cross-polarized antenna, and a distributed antenna arrangement. The experimental results show that when rank-2 MIMO spatial multiplexing is applied, the cross-polarized antenna configuration achieves a higher user throughput than the other antenna configurations. Furthermore, we show that when closed-loop rank-1 precoding is applied, the cross-polarized antenna configuration is effective in stably achieving a relatively high throughput regardless of the tilt angle of the mobile station transmitter antenna, although the other antenna configurations indicate better throughput under ideal antenna-tilt angle conditions.     

Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in Mobile Networks with Distributed Antenna Transmission

This paper address the energy conservation issues in wireless downlink of mobile networks with distributed antenna transmission. From the basic information theory for MIMO channels, we derived a simple energy efficiency defined as number of bits per Watt. we then identified three approaches to improve the optimal energy efficiency with a higher capacity, which include alleviating channel fading loss, mitigating the interference, and increasing the number of antennas. We considered the scenario of a single cell with distributed antennas to jointly investigate above three factors. We first proposed a beamforming based energy-efficient resource allocation algorithm, which can achieve the optimal energy efficiency with a higher capacity through adaptively allocating resources and managing interferences. Due to the computational complexity of this algorithm and real-time processing requirement, we further proposed a low-complexity antenna-selection based resource allocation algorithm, which is more tractable and only with slightly performance loss. Finally, we compared different network configurations with these algorithms by extensive simulations, the results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms in distributed antenna configurations achieve better energy efficiency at a high operational throughput point.     

Diversity gain from a single-port adaptive antenna using switchedparasitic elements illustrated with a wire and monopole prototype

A new concept in single-port adaptive antennas using parasitic elements with switched terminating impedances is presented including results from a concept prototype. Each parasitic element can be effectively terminated in three impedance values. The antenna concept provides multiple radiation patterns with a single RF signal port without the need for RF switches or phase shifters in the direct RF signal path. Impedance variations in the active antenna element are minimized by use of only rotationally symmetric configurations. Measured patterns are used to demonstrate the performance improvement expected using switched diversity combining in a simulated uniform scattering scenario. The concept prototype having one active element and four parasitic elements, is shown to have equivalent diversity performance to between three and four uncorrelated branches     

A self-steering planar array antenna for satellite broadcastreception

The active planar array antenna offers a number of advantages, including use as a portable antenna for easy reception of direct Ku-band satellite television broadcasts. This paper presents a newly developed active planar array antenna which provides electronic beam-tracking without mechanical tracking equipment. The features of the antenna are: (1) use of a series-parallel fed microstrip array, (2) electromagnetically excited array by a coplanar patch connected to the coplanar waveguide, and (3) low noise down-converters and self-phasing units incorporated into the feed circuits for electronic beam-tracking. The paper discusses the design of the coplanar waveguide fed coplanar patch and the configuration of a self-phasing active planar array antenna. The measured gain of the experimental 9-element unit array antenna without active devices is 13.4 dBi at 11.85 GHz. Experimental results for a 216-element self-steering planar array of size 147×220.5 mm are also presented     

Precision of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation using novel three dimensional array geometries

Numerous methods for direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, used in smart antennas have been already reported in previous studies. The precision of DOA estimation depends on the choice of the algorithm and the geometrical configuration of the antenna array. In this work, the performance of new geometrical configurations, i.e. 2D with equal area and 3D with equal volume including circular, square, triangular, hexagonal and star geometries, with equal number of antenna elements, are examined and compared to each other to find the most proper geometry. Monte-Carlo simulations are performed to evaluate the DOA precision of the proposed arrays using the MUSIC algorithm. It is shown that in three cases of comparison including 2D geometries, 3D geometries and 3D rotated geometries, with the star and triangular configurations one achieves better resolution in DOA estimation. It is also revealed that the rotated configurations show lower estimation error compared to normal configurations.