Design and Evaluation of Compact Multi-antennas for Efficient MIMO Communications

The use of multi-antenna systems with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology will play a key role in providing high spectrum efficiency for next generation mobile communication systems. This thesis offers valuable insights on the design of compact multi-antennas for efficient MIMO communications. In the course of the thesis work, several novel six-port antenna designs have been proposed to simultaneously exploit all six possible degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) by means of various antenna diversity mechanisms (Paper I & II). Moreover, the thesis also examines the potential of using uncoupled matching networks to adaptively optimize compact multi-antenna systems to their dynamic usage environments (Paper III). Furthermore, a simple and intuitive metric is proposed for evaluating the performance of MIMO antennas when operating in the spatial multiplexing mode (Paper IV). Last but not least, cooperation among multi-antenna systems at all three sectors of a given cellular base station is shown to deliver significant benefit at sector edges (Paper V). The thesis with five included research papers extend the understanding of MIMO systems from an antenna and propagation perspective. It provides important guidelines in designing compact and efficient MIMO antennas in their usage environments. In Paper I, a fundamental question on the number of effective DOFs in a wireless channel is explored using two co-located six-port antenna arrays. The antenna elements of both arrays closely reproduce the desired characteristics of fundamental electric and magnetic dipoles, which can efficiently extract angle and polarization diversities from the wireless channel. In particular, one of the two array designs is by far the most electrically compact six-port antenna structure in the literature. Analysis of measured channel eigenvalues in a rich multi-path scattering environment shows that six eigenchannels are successfully attained for the purpose of spatial multiplexing. To study the potential of implementing different diversity mechanisms on a practical multi-port antenna, Paper II builds on an existing dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) to provide a compact six-port DRA array that jointly utilizes space, polarization and angle diversities. In order to fully substantiate the practicality of the DRA array for indoor MIMO applications, the compact DRA array together with two reference but much larger arrays were evaluated in an office scenario. The use of the compact DRA array at the receiver is shown to achieve comparable performance to that of the reference monopole array due to the DRA array's rich diversity characteristics. In Paper III, the study of uncoupled matching networks to counteract mutual coupling effects in multi-antenna systems is extended by allowing for unbalanced matching impedances. Numerical studies suggest that the unbalanced matching is especially effective for array topologies whose effective apertures can vary significantly with respect to the propagation channel. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that the unbalanced matching is capable of adapting the radiation patterns of the array elements to the dynamic propagation environment. Paper IV introduces multiplexing efficiency as a performance metric which defines the loss of efficiency in decibel when using a multi-antenna prototype under test to achieve the same multiplexing performance as that of an ideal array in the same propagation environment. Its unique features are both its simplicity and the valuable insights it offers with respect to the performance impacts of different antenna impairments in multi-antenna systems. In Paper V, intrasite cooperation among three 120°-sector, each with a cross-polarized antenna pair, is investigated in a measured urban macrocellular environment. The single-user capacity improvement is found to exceed 40% at the sector edges, where improvements are most needed. In addition, a simple simulation model is developed to analyze the respective impact of antennas and specific propagation mechanisms on the measured cooperative gain

Antenna matching for performance optimization in compact MIMO systems

The implementation of MIMO technology on compact mobile terminal devices poses a unique challenge for system designers. This is because it requires that multiple antennas be closely separated in a confined volume, which results in strong mutual coupling among the antennas and high spatial correlation for the signals. In this paper, we present a review on the latest developments of using uncoupled impedance matching networks to counteract performance degradation due to the aforesaid effects. Then, we extend our previous study of utilizing identical uncoupled matching networks to optimize performance by allowing them to be different across the antennas. The numerical examples reveal that the enlarged optimization search space is effective in improving the received power and correlation, whereas only a modest gain in channel capacity is observed

Uncoupled antenna matching for performance optimization in compact MIMO systems using unbalanced load impedance

Some MIMO applications require antennas to be closely spaced, which result in mutual coupling among antennas and high spatial correlation for signals. In order to compensate for the performance degradation due to correlation and coupling, impedance matching networks may be used. Recently, it was shown that uncoupled matching networks could be optimized against a given performance metric with the constraint of similar matching impedance for all antennas, i.e., balanced matching. In this paper, we investigate the use of uncoupled matching networks with both balanced and unbalanced load impedances, where either the received power or the channel capacity is optimized. For two- and three-element dipole arrays, we show numerically that a significant performance improvement can be achieved by introducing unbalanced matching. Observations suggest that the achieved improvement varies with array geometry and propagation environment. For example, a large capacity gain of up to 23% is realized when matching a uniform linear array to propagation environments that are asymmetrical about the array broadside, whereas the symmetrical environments do not benefit as much from unbalanced matching

Degree-of-freedom evaluation of six-port antenna arrays in a rich scattering environment

It has been proposed that six co-located antennas, namely three electric and three magnetic dipoles, can offer up to a six-fold capacity increase in wireless channels, relative to that of single antennas. In other words, six degrees of freedom (DOFs) can be supported by co-located six-port transmit and receive antenna arrays. However, due to the complexity in designing and measuring such a six-port antenna, to our knowledge, no experimental verification has yet been successfully performed. In this paper, the six DOFs hypothesis is experimentally verified at the 300 MHz band. The experiment involved the design and fabrication of two six-port arrays, and MIMO channel measurements in a rich scattering environment with these arrays

Study concept drift in 150-year english literature

The meaning of a concept or a word changes over time. Such concept drift reects the change of the social consensus as well. Studying concept drift over time is valuable for researchers who are interested in language or culture evolution. Recent word embedding technologies inspire us to automatically detect concept drift in large-scale corpora. However, comparing embeddings generated from different corpora is a complex task. In this paper, we propose to use a simple approach for detecting concept drift based on the change in word contexts from different time periods and apply it to subsequent time periods so that the detailed drift could be detected and visualised. We dive into certain words to track how the meaning of a word changes gradually over a long time span with relevant historical events which demonstrates the effect of our method

Characterization of MIMO antennas with multiplexing efficiency

A simple and intuitive metric of multiplexing efficiency is proposed for evaluating the performance of MIMO antennas in the spatial multiplexing mode of operation. The metric is particularly useful for antenna engineers whose goal is to achieve the optimum antenna system design. Experimental results involving prototype mobile terminals highlight the effectiveness of our proposal

Multiplexing efficiency of MIMO antennas

A simple and intuitive metric of multiplexing efficiency is proposed for evaluating the performance of MIMO antennas in the spatial multiplexing mode of operation. Apart from gaining valuable insights into the impact of antenna efficiency, efficiency imbalance and correlation on multiplexing performance, the metric is particularly useful for antenna engineers whose goal is to achieve the optimum antenna system design. Experimental results involving prototype mobile terminals highlight the effectiveness of our proposal

Measured adaptive matching performance of a MIMO terminal with user effects

Absorption and impedance mismatch due to the proximity of a user as well as certain propagation channel characteristics can severely degrade the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) performance of multi-antenna terminals in real usage scenarios. In this context, we investigated the potential of adaptive impedance matching (AIM) to mitigate performance degradation from these effects based on channel measurements involving a terminal prototype in three user scenarios and two propagation environments. First, optimal AIM state for the terminal in a given user-channel setup was found by post-processing the measured channels. The optimal state was then experimentally verified with two Maury Microwave mechanical tuners. The results show that by employing AIM instead of 50Ω termination, the average capacity is increased by up to 25%. Moreover, the observed capacity gains can be partly explained by physical mechanisms underlying the propagation conditions. Furthermore, the achieved gains with real tuners are only marginally affected by the tuners’ actual insertion losses, estimated to be 0.1-0.7 dB. Therefore, we conclude that AIM can be a viable solution to enhance MIMO terminal performance

A compact six-port dielectric resonator antenna array: MIMO channel measurements and performance analysis

MIMO systems ideally achieve linear capacity gain proportional to the number of antennas. However, the compactness of terminal devices limits the number of spatial degrees of freedom (DOFs) in such systems, which motivates efficientantenna design techniques to exploit all available DOFs. In this contribution, we present a compact six-port dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) array which utilizes spatial, polarization and angle diversities. To evaluate the proposed DRA array, a measurement campaign was conducted at 2.65GHz in indoor officescenarios for four 6 × 6 multiple antenna systems. Compared to the reference system of monopole arrays which only exploit spatial diversity, the use of dual-polarized patch antennas at the transmitter enriches the channel’s DOF in the non-line-of-sight scenario. Replacing the monopole array at the receiver withthe DRA array that has a 95% smaller ground plane, the 10% outage capacity evaluated at 10 dB reference signal-to-noise ratio becomes equivalent to that of the reference system, due to the DRA’s rich diversity characteristics. In the line-of-sight scenario, the DRA array gives a higher DOF than the monopole array asthe receive counterpart to the transmit patch array. However, the outage capacity is 1.5 bits/s/Hz lower, due to the DRA array’s lower channel gain