Antenna Pattern Multiplexing for Enhancing Path Diversity

Abstract

In this chapter, we show the concept of antenna pattern multiplexing (APM), which enhances path diversity gain and antenna pattern diversity reception in multipath rich fading environment. We discuss the types of antennas that achieve the APM, i.e., generating time-varying antenna pattern and the benefits of reducing antenna size and hardware cost. When electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR) antenna is used, the benefits can be maximised. A model of receiving process is proposed for analysing the ergodic capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems using APM. We derive a model of received signals to analyse the system performance. The received signal in matrix form includes an equivalent channel matrix, which is a product of antenna pattern matrix, the channel coefficient vector for each output. Numerical results in terms of ergodic capacity show the comparable performances of the proposed MIMO with APM to the conventional MIMO systems; in particular, the number of arrival paths and the number of antenna pattern are sufficiently large. Also the ergodic capacity can be equivalent to that of the conventional MIMO systems when the average SNR per antenna pattern is constant among the virtual antennas