MIMO‐UWB smart antenna communication characteristics for different antenna arrays of transmitters

The channel capacity of indoor multiple‐input multiple‐output ultra‐wide band (MIMO‐UWB) transmission for smart antenna is presented. The genetic algorithm (GA) is used to synthesize the radiation pattern of the directional antenna array to maximize the capacity performance in indoor MIMO‐UWB communication system. Three types of antenna arrays such as circular shape, L shape and Y shape arrays are used in the transmitter and their corresponding capacity on several paths in the indoor environment are calculated. The UWB impulse responses of the indoor channel for any transmitter‐receiver location are computed by applying shooting and bouncing ray/image (SBR/image) techniques, inverse fast Fourier transform and Hermitian processing. By using the calculated frequency response, the capacity performance of the synthesized antenna pattern on MIMO‐UWB system can be computed. Based on the topography of the antenna array and the capacity formula, the array pattern synthesis problem can be reformulated into an optimization problem and solved by the GA algorithm. The GA algorithm optimization is applied to a high order nonlinear optimization problem. The novelties of our approach is not only choosing capacity as the cost function instead of sidelobe level of the antenna pattern, but also considering the antenna feed length effect of each array element. The cost function for the problem is nonsmooth and discontinuous with respect to the antenna pattern. It is difficult to solve by gradient methods, since the derivative is hard to derive. The GA algorithm is employed to optimize the excitation voltages and feed lengths for these antenna arrays to increase the capacity. The strong point of the GA is that it can find out the solution even if the performance index cannot be formulated by simple equations. Numerical results show that the synthesized antenna array pattern is effective to focus maximum gain to the LOS path for these antenna arrays. In other words, the receiver can increase the received signal energy to noise ratio. The synthesized array pattern also can mitigate severe multipath fading in complex propagation environment. As a result, the capacity can be increased substantially in indoor MIMO‐UWB communication system. The investigated results can help communication engineers improve their planning and design of indoor wireless communication. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2013.