Frequency tuning varactor-loaded reconfigurable antenna for m-WiMAX and WLAN applications

A design approach for a microstrip patch antenna to achieve the reconfigurable dual-band operation with a tunable device is presented in this work. The approach uses a BB833 varactor diode in the middle of a slotted patch antenna which which is able to produce dual-band resonant frequencies. The reconfigurable antenna is designed and simulated in CST Microwave Studio® software and is later, fabricated on a FR-4 substrate with a dielectric constant, εr of 4.5, loss tangent, tan δ of 0.019 and thickness, h of 1.6 mm. By changing the DC voltages of the varactor diode, different capacitance values of the varactor diode are obtained which dictate the specific resonant frequencies. From the simulation results, the capacitance value of 0.5 pF with a bias voltage of 2.0 V is chosen as it produces the required dual-band resonant frequencies at 3.38 GHz and 5.37 GHz for desired applications in the m-WiMAX and WLAN bands

Frequency reconfiguration mechanism of a PIN diode on a reconfigurable antenna for LTE and WLAN Applications

Microstrip patch antennas are increasingly gaining popularity for usage in portable wireless system applications due to their light weight, low profile structure, low cost of production and robust nature. The patch is generally made of a conducting material such as copper or gold and can take any possible shapes, but rectangular shapes are generally used to simplify analysis and performance prediction. Microstrip patch antenna radiates due to the fringing fields between the patch edge and ground plane. In this work, a frequency reconfigurable antenna with a BAR63-02V Positive-Intrinsic-Negative (PIN) diode is designed, simulated and fabricated. The antenna operates at 2.686GHz for Long-Term Evolution (LTE2500) and 5.164GHz for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) applications. In the OFF state, the antenna operates at 5.302GHz, which is also suitable for WLAN application. The proposed antenna is fabricated on a FR-4 substrate with a relative dielectric constant, εr of 4.5, thickness, h of 1.6mm and loss tangent, tan δ of 0.019. The fabrication process is carried out at the Advanced Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design Laboratory in UTHM

A demand-based spectrum orthogonalisation scheme for interference avoidance in LTE-Advanced heterogeneous networks

Successful deployment of femtocells within a macrocell coverage area would be hindered if cross-layer and co-layer interference in such heterogeneous networks (HetNets) is not properly mitigated. Through spectrum management, cross-layer interference between macrocell and femtocell network layers can be avoided by assigning the network layers with orthogonal spectrum bands. However, the orthogonal spectrum assignments in prior works are no longer effective because they may not guarantee the variation of users' traffic demand in HetNets to be satisfied all the time. Therefore, a centralised and dynamic orthogonal spectrum assignment called demand-based spectrum orthogonalisation (DeBaSO) is proposed in this paper to address the interference issues in downlink of LTE-Advanced HetNets. In our proposed scheme, the problem of orthogonal spectrum assignment is formulated with the objective to maximise the overall system throughput based on the requirement of physical spectral resources to satisfy the users' traffic demand. Additionally, the co-layer interference among femtocells is avoided by grouping the adjacent femtocells into different femtocell clusters. To do so, typical model of spatial frequency reuse is exploited in this paper. In this way, femtocells that are grouped within the same cluster can universally reuse the assigned spectrum resource without creating co-layer interference among them. Numerical results indicate that the proposed scheme achieves a remarkable performance in terms of overall system throughput and spectrum efficiency because the cross-layer and co-layer interference is entirely avoided. The achievements prove that DeBaSO scheme overcomes the limitations found in other orthogonal spectrum assignments, which were previously proposed in the literature

Joint power allocation strategy in comp (JP) transmission

Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) has been proposed as a promising way to enhance cell-edge performance in terms of throughput and coverage. Significant performance gain can be achieved in LTE-A through base station (eNB) coordination by exchanging information such as user data, channel state information (CSI) and scheduling decision. Multiple antennas technique (e.g., MIMO) on the other hand exploits antenna diversity which allows multiple simultaneous transmissions to a group of active users to enhance network performance. Therefore, user selection is important in maximizing system performance. Besides, system resources (e.g., power, bandwidth, transmission rate) in MIMO system must be managed efficiently. Optimal resource utilization should be used without performance compromise. In this paper we propose a joint approach of MIMO user selection strategy and optimal water filling (WF) power allocation in CoMP (JP) transmission. Simulation study shows that our proposed approach outperformed traditional CoMP with and without water filling power allocation