In recent years, various applications based on propagation characteristics have been developed. They generally utilize the locality of the fading characteristics of multipath environments. On the other hand, if a received signal at a remote location can be estimated beyond the correlation distance of the multipath fading environment, a wide variety of new applications can be possible. In this paper, we attempt to estimate a received signal at a remote location using the MUSIC method and the least squares method. Based on the plane wave assumption for each arriving wave, multipath environment is analyzed through estimation of the directions of arrival by the MUISC method and the complex amplitudes of the received signals by the least squares method, respectively. We present evaluation results on the estimation performance of the method by computer simulations.

The new hybrid antenna structures having external high-impedance-plane (HIP) shield are proposed. These antennas consist of normal patch or dipole antenna, working as a radiator, and HIP shield working as a reflector. The external HIP shield helps to reduce the undesired backward radiation. Generally, metal shield should be placed a quarter wavelengths apart from the antenna, but HIP shield can be placed close to the antenna and low profile structure can be obtained. In addition, compared with single-layer HIP antennas, having a patch surrounded by HIP structure, these hybrid antennas have the advantage of installation because the shielding effect can be obtained by attaching the external shield under the existing antenna. We fabricated HIP boards and combined with a microstrip patch or a regular dipole. The hybrid patch antenna with HIP shield improves the front-to-back radiation ratio (F/B ratio) similar to the single-layer HIP antenna or the hybrid patch with metal shield. But the dipole antenna with HIP shield, the F/B ratio is worse than the dipole with metal shield. These results indicate the TM mode antenna is suitable for the HIP shield in terms of the F/B ratio improvement.

Surface wave distribution over electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) plate is measured and suppression of surface wave propagation over the EBG is investigated. We used a micro current probe that detects H-field strength of the propagating transverse magnetic (TM) microwave up to 6 GHz. By scanning with the probe over the EBG, we visualized surface wave distribution at various frequencies. This visualized map shows that the EBG plate suppresses the surface wave propagation within the bandgap frequency. We utilized this effect for the antenna reflective shield. By combining the EBG with a microstrip patch antenna, this EBG works as a reflective shield and the front-to-backward radiation ratio of antenna is increased. In this experiment, we fabricated three types of shield board; mushroom type of EBG that has hexagonal textured patches connected with via-holes, textured surface without via-holes, and plane metal. By comparing the surface wave distributions and beam patterns of antenna with various shields, we found that the visualized map of TM surface wave gives us direct and intuitive information and helpful tips in designing the EBG reflective shield for patch antenna.