Yuichi KIMURA Atsuo SENGA Masayoshi SAKAI Misao HANEISHI
This paper presents design of an alternating-phase fed single-layer slotted waveguide array for a sector shaped beam in the E-plane radiation pattern. A sector beam pattern is very effective for radar applications for detecting obstacles in a certain angular range without mechanical or electronic scanning. The sector shaped beam with 13 degree beam width is synthesized by a cascade of T-junctions in the feed waveguide which excite the radiating waveguides with a longitudinal shunt slot array. In order to realize the required excitation distribution of the radiating waveguides for the sector shaped beam, 30 T-junctions with symmetrical arrangement are designed by tuning a width of the coupling window, an offset of the window, and a width of the feed waveguide cascaded to the subsequent T-junction, respectively. Design and measurement are performed in 60 GHz band. The prototype antenna assembles easily; the slotted plate is just tacked on the groove feed structure and is fixed by screws at the periphery, which is the key advantage of the alternating-phase fed arrays. The measured sector pattern with low sidelobe level agrees well with the predicted one. Validity of the sector beam design as well as the performance of the alternating-phase fed array is confirmed by the measurement.
Shuichi OHNO Kenichi YAMAGUCHI Kok Ann Donny TEO
Simple but efficient antenna selection schemes are proposed for the downlink of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) transmission with multiple transmit antennas over frequency selective fading channels, where transmit antennas are selected at the mobile terminal and the base station is informed of the selected antennas through feedback channel. To obtain the optimal antenna selection, channel frequency responses are required and performances have to be evaluated at all the subcarriers. To reduce the computational complexity at mobile terminal, time-domain channels are utilized for antenna selection in place of channel frequency responses. Our scheme does not guarantee the optimal antenna selection but is shown by numerical simulations to yield reasonable selections. Moreover, by using a specially designed pilot OFDM preamble, an antenna selection without channel estimation is developed. Efficiencies of our suboptimal antenna selections with less computational complexities are verified by numerical simulations.
For a microstrip antenna (MSA) with a ring-shaped slot on formed on the ground plane, downsizing the microstrip patch and expanding the circularly polarized bandwidth have been achieved successfully. The dimensions of the patch are 6.8 mm7.4 mm and the minimum axial ratio (AR) of 0.6 dB is obtained at 6.1 GHz. In addition, its AR is less than 3 dB at the relative bandwidth of 3.5%. The bandwidth of the proposed MSA is twice that of conventional single-feeding circularly polarized MSAs; however, its size is only half that of conventional MSAs.
Akira SAITOU Kyoung-Pyo AHN Hajime AOKI Kazuhiko HONJO Koichi WATANABE
A design method for an ultra-wideband bandpass filter (BPF) with four coupled lines has been developed. For demonstration purposes, 50 Ω-matched self-complementary antennas integrated with the ultra-wideband, differential-mode BPF with four coupled lines, a notch filter, and a low-pass filter (LPF) were prepared and tested. An optimized structure for a single-stage, broadside-coupled and edge-coupled four-lines BPF was shown to exhibit up to 170% fractional bandwidth and an impedance transformation ratio of 1.2 with little bandwidth reduction, both analytically and experimentally. Using the optimized structure, 6-stage BPFs were designed to transform the self-complementary antenna's constant input impedance (60πεe- 1/2(Ω)) to 50 Ω without degrading bandwidth. In addition, two types of filter variations--a LPF-embedded BPF and a notch filter-embedded BPF--were designed and fabricated. The measured insertion loss of both filter systems was less than 2.6 dB over the ultra-wideband (UWB) band from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz. The filter systems were embedded in the wideband self-complementary antennas to reject unnecessary radiation over the next pass band and 5-GHz wireless LAN band.
Min HUANG Xiang CHEN Yunzhou LI Shidong ZHOU Jing WANG
In this letter, we discuss the problem of receive antenna selection in the downlink of multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP), where the number of receivers is assumed equal to that of transmit antennas. Based on the criterion of maximum system sum-capacity, a per-layer receive antenna selection scheme is proposed. This scheme, which selects one receive antenna for each receiver, can well exploit the nonlinear and successive characteristics of THP. Two models are established for the proposed per-layer scheme and the conventional per-user scheme. Both the theoretical analysis and simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme can greatly improve the equivalent channel power gains and the system sum-capacity.
Akiyo YOSHIMOTO Takeshi HATTORI
Multilink MIMO technique is a promising technology for cellular networks with a guaranteed quality-of-service. It will provide high capacity and wide coverage. We evaluated the downlink performance of the multilink MIMO system from the perspective of quality-of-service. The presence of Rayleigh fading, shadowing, and path loss was assumed. To evaluate the proposed system, we developed a performance measure for MIMO cellular system. The measure is ergodic capacity taking into account area coverage. Our numerical results show that the area coverage of proposed multilink MIMO system is greatly improved compared with that of the conventional singlelink MIMO system. Using the proposed measure, we also found that the multilink MIMO system could achieve high capacity with guaranteed QoS for a wide coverage.
Shin-ichiro MATSUZAWA Kazuo SATO Atushi SANADA Hiroshi KUBO
In order to improve the antenna gain, a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) leaky-wave (LW) antenna composed of symmetrical unit cells with short stubs terminated by vertical vias is designed. The use of symmetrical unit cells suppresses the cross-polarization of radiation to less than 23 dB. By comparing the measured radiation characteristics to that of a conventional CRLH LW antenna without short stub in the X-band, it is shown that the presented CRLH LW antenna with 51 unit cells offers a narrower beam and the antenna gain improves 4.1, 2.2 and 3.1 dB in the backward, broadside and forward directions of radiation, respectively.
Ying ZHANG Qinye YIN Ming LUO Yansheng JIANG
Since Smart Antenna technology has powerful spatial processing ability; it is regarded as a promising approach to enhancing the data rates and capacity of wireless LAN systems. In this paper, a small size, practical switched-beam antenna system, well suited for domestic in-home networking in the 2.4 GHz band, is designed and tested. The system has the configuration of regular nine-prism, and nine 1/4 wavelength rectangular patches are symmetrically distributed on the nine sides of the prism. The switching process is based on control of the microstrip used to feed the patch radiators, by placing PIN diodes at the microstrip feeding lines. The antenna array can generate nine beams with a gain of 11 dB. All the beams generated by the system are cophasal excited and have a 40°beamwidth. Compared to the uniform array, the system can guarantee the consistency of every beam and is preferable in shape.
Qiang CHEN Yasunori KOMUKAI Kunio SAWAYA
The peak SAR values of two-element array antennas for mobile handsets in the vicinity of a spherical phantom of a human head are evaluated numerically as a function of the distance between the array antenna and the head phantom when the two elements of a two-element array antenna are either co-phase voltage-fed or reverse-phase voltage-fed. It is found that relation between the worst case of the SAR and the phase difference of array elements strongly depends on the distance. When part of the head phantom is located in the reactive near-field region of the array antenna, although the co-phase feed SAR value is slightly smaller than the reverse-phase feed SAR value, the SAR value is practically independent of the phase difference, but when the head is completely outside the reactive near-field region, the co-phase feed SAR value is larger than the reverse-phase feed SAR value.
Young-Cheol YU Minoru OKADA Heiichi YAMAMOTO
We propose a dipole array antenna assisted Doppler spread compensator with maximum ratio combining (MRC) diversity for mobile reception by a digital television terrestrial broadcasting receiver. Although OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing), used for the physical layer standard of digital terrestrial television broadcasting (DTTB), is robust to multi-path delay spreading thanks to its long symbol interval, it is sensitive to Doppler spread. OFDM itself cannot mitigate the performance degradation due to fading unless error correction coding is also used. Furthermore, although a Doppler spread compensator based on a linear array antenna has already been proposed, it has problems concerning the mutual coupling effect and polarization mismatch between the transmitter and receiver antennas. The proposed dipole antenna array assisted Doppler spread compensator is not only capable of mitigating both Doppler and fading phenomena, but also of efficiently receiving horizontally polarized radio waves. Computer simulation results showed that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional monopole array assisted Doppler spread compensator.
Satoshi SHINADA Tetsuya KAWANISHI Masayuki IZUTSU
For the uplink of a radio-on-fiber system or an electromagnetic field sensor, a resonant type optical modulator array connected with antennas can effectively convert a micro/millimeter-wave to a light wave. We designed and fabricated 10 GHz band resonant modulators and micro-strip antennas. And we demonstrated the simultaneous operation of four modulators using power received by micro strip antennas connected to each modulator. We confirmed that the optical phase change induced by the received power could be proportionally increased with the number of arrays.
An adaptive array code acquisition for direct-sequence/code-division multiple access (DS/CDMA) systems was recently proposed to enhance the performance of the conventional correlator-based method. The scheme consists of an adaptive spatial and an adaptive temporal filter, and can simultaneously perform beamforming and code-delay estimation. Unfortunately, the scheme uses a least-mean-square (LMS) adaptive algorithm, and its convergence is slow. Although the recursive-least-squares (RLS) algorithm can be applied, the computational complexity will greatly increase. In this paper, we solve the dilemma with a low-complexity conjugate gradient (LCG) algorithm, which can be considered as a special case of a modified conjugate gradient (MCG) algorithm. Unlike the original conjugate gradient (CG) algorithm developed for adaptive applications, the proposed method, exploiting the special structure inherent in the input correlation matrix, requires a low computational-complexity. It can be shown that the computational complexity of the proposed method is on the same order of the LMS algorithm. However, the convergence rate is improved significantly. Simulation results show that the performance of adaptive array code acquisition with the proposed CG algorithm is comparable to that with the original CG algorithm.
Hiroki IURA Hiroyoshi YAMADA Yasutaka OGAWA Yoshio YAMAGUCHI
Antenna array is essential factor for multiple- input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems. Since the antenna array is composed of closely spaced elements, the mutual coupling among the elements cannot be ignored for the best performance of the array. Mutual coupling affects the MIMO channel, so the performance of a MIMO system, including channel capacity and diversity, varies with the degree of mutual coupling. The effect of mutual coupling is a function of the antenna load impedance. Therefore, designing an optimal element-matched array for a MIMO system requires consideration of the optimal matching condition for the array elements, the one that maximizes the channel capacity. We evaluated the effects of mutual coupling with various matching conditions in dipole arrays, and investigated their effects on the path correlation and channel capacity of MIMO systems. Simulation showed that the conventional conjugate matching of each element is still suitable for closely spaced elements except when the separation is about less than 0.1λ. Theoretical consideration of the received power of a closely-spaced-element array is also provided to show the effects of mutual coupling.
A.K.M. BAKI Naoki SHINOHARA Hiroshi MATSUMOTO Kozo HASHIMOTO Tomohiko MITANI
Minimizing the Side Lobe Level (SLL) and attain highest achievable Beam Collection Efficiency (BCE) is a critical goal for Solar Power Station/Satellite (SPS). If all antennas are uniformly excited then the main beam will carry only a part of the total energy due to the higher SLL. SLL is decreased and BCE is increased by adopting edge tapering for SPS. But edge tapering is a complex technical problem for SPS. So an optimization is needed between uniform amplitude distribution and edge tapering system. We have derived a new method of edge tapering called Isosceles Trapezoidal Distribution (ITD) edge tapering. Only a small number of antennas from each side of the phased array antenna are tapered in this method. ITD edge tapering is almost uniform so it is technically better. We have compared different amplitude distribution systems; uniform, Gaussian, Dolph-Chebyshev and the newly derived ITD method. The SLL reduction in ITD is even lower than those of other kinds of edge tapering. Therefore the amount of losing power in the SLL in ITD is lower. As a result the interference level becomes lower and BCE becomes higher in this method. The higher BCE and better SLL performance than those with uniform distribution can be achieved in ITD with phase error and under unit failed condition.
Masanori TAKATA Masaki BANDAI Takashi WATANABE
This paper addresses the issue of deafness in MAC (Medium Access Control) protocols for wireless ad hoc networks using directional antennas. Directional antennas are expected to provide significant improvements over omni-directional antennas in ad hoc networks, such as high spatial reuse and range extension. Recently, several MAC protocols using directional antennas, typically referred to as directional MAC protocols, have been proposed for ad hoc networks. However, directional MAC protocols inherently introduce new kinds of problems arising from directivity. One major problem is deafness, caused by a lack of state information of neighbor nodes, whether idle or busy. This paper proposes DMAC/DA (Directional MAC with Deafness Avoidance) to overcome the deafness problem. DMAC/DA modifies the previously proposed MAC protocol, MDA (MAC protocol for Directional Antennas), to reduce the number of control messages and also maintain the ability to handle deafness. In DMAC/DA, WTS (Wait To Send) frames are simultaneously transmitted by the transmitter and the receiver after the successful exchange of directional RTS (Request To Send) and CTS (Clear To Send) to notify the on-going communication to potential transmitters that may experience deafness. The experimental results show that DMAC/DA outperforms existing directional MAC protocols, such as DMAC (Directional MAC) and MDA, in terms of throughput, control overhead and packet drop ratio under the different values of parameters such as the number of flows and the number of beams. In addition, qualitative evaluation of 9 MAC protocols is presented to highlight the difference between DMAC/DA and existing MAC protocols.
This paper presents a novel threshold-based selection scheme to combine adaptive transmit antenna selection with an adaptive quadrature amplitude modulation (AQAM) for a spatial multiplexing (SM) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with linear receivers in practical uncorrelated and correlated channel conditions. The proposed scheme aims to maximize the average spectral efficiency (ASE) for a given bit error rate (BER) constraint and also to lower the hardware complexity. Our simulations are run on a general MIMO channel model, under the assumption that the channel state information (CSI) is known at the receiver and the adaptive control signaling can be perfectly fed back to the transmitter. We deploy the low rank-revealing QR (LRRQR) algorithm in transmit antenna subset selection. LRRQR is computationally less expensive than a singular value decomposition (SVD) based algorithm while the two algorithms achieve similar error rate performances. We show that both the conventional AQAM scheme (i.e., without adaptive transmit antenna selection) and the SM scheme perform poorly in a highly correlated channel environment. We demonstrate that our proposed scheme provides a well-behaved trade-off between the ASE and BER under various channel environments. The ASE (i.e., throughput) can be maximized with a proper choice of the channel quality threshold and AQAM mode switching threshold levels for a target BER.
Osamu NAKAMURA Shinsuke TAKAOKA Eisuke KUDOH Fumiyuki ADACHI
MC-CDMA is an attractive multi-access method for the next generation high-speed mobile communication systems. The uplink transmission performance is limited by the multi-access interference (MAI) from other users since all users share the same bandwidth. Adaptive antenna array can be used to suppress the MAI and to improve the uplink transmission performance. In this paper, we propose a frequency-domain adaptive antenna array for multi-code MC-CDMA. The proposed frequency-domain adaptive antenna array uses a simple normalized LMS (NLMS) algorithm. Although the NLMS algorithm is used, very fast weight convergence within one MC-CDMA symbol duration is achieved since the weight updating is possible as many times as the number of subcarriers within one MC-CDMA symbol duration.
Huy Hoang PHAM Tetsuki TANIGUCHI Yoshio KARASAWA
Nowadays, MIMO systems are playing an important role in wireless communications. In this paper, we propose a spatial-temporal adaptive MIMO beamforming scheme for single carrier transmission in frequency-selective fading channels with the assumption of perfect channel state information (CSI) at both the transmitter and receiver. The transmit and receive weight vectors for detecting the preceding signal and the receive weight vectors for detecting the delayed signals of the preceding signal are designed by an iterative update algorithm. Based on minimum mean square error (MMSE) method, the delayed versions of the preceding signal are exploited to maximize the output signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR) instead of suppressing them at the receiver. The improvement of output SINR is useful for MIMO systems to enhance the high-quality communication in broadband wireless systems.
Toshimitsu TANAKA Tamotsu HOUZEN Masaharu TAKAHASHI Koichi ITO
In this paper, the authors propose a circularly polarized printed antenna combining a slot array antenna and a patch antenna, with dual-band operation. The proposed antenna has good isolation performance, is compact, and has simple configuration. This antenna is composed of two parts, a patch antenna (for Rx) on the top, and a slot array antenna (for Tx) on the bottom, respectively. The element layout is such that the lower radiation element is not hidden by the upper one for wide observation angle. Hence, both radiation elements can naturally radiate the targeted polarization. Both slot array and patch antenna are fed by electromagnetically coupled microstrip line feed. With such a configuration, it is possible to efficiently obtain good isolation characteristics for both frequency bands. Furthermore, this antenna can be easily composed and it is not necessary to use any feeding pin or via hole. The target of this antenna is mobile communications applications such as mobile satellite communications, base-station of wireless LAN, etc. Here, the design techniques are discussed and the numerical and experimental analyses are presented.
Hiromichi TOMEBA Kazuaki TAKEDA Fumiyuki ADACHI
Recently, we proposed space-time block coded-joint transmit/receive antenna diversity (STBC-JTRD) for narrow band transmission in a frequency-nonselective fading channel; it allows an arbitrary number of transmit antennas while limiting the number of receive antennas to 4. In this paper, we extend STBC-JTRD to the case of frequency-selective fading channels and propose frequency-domain STBC-JTRD for broadband direct sequence-spread spectrum (DSSS) signal transmission. A conditional bit error rate (BER) analysis is presented. The average BER performance in a frequency-selective Rayleigh fading is evaluated by Monte-Carlo numerical computation method using the derived conditional BER and is confirmed by computer simulation of the signal transmission. Performance comparison between frequency-domain STBC-JTRD transmission and joint space-time transmit diversity (STTD) and frequency-domain equalization (FDE) reception is also presented.