Systems and methods for selecting reconfigurable antennas in MIMO systems

摘要

A method allows reconfigurable multi-element antennas to select the antenna configuration in MIMO, SIMO and MISO communication system. This selection scheme uses spatial correlation, channel reciprocal condition number, delay spread and average Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) information to select the antenna radiation pattern at the receiver. Using this approach, it is possible to achieve capacity gains in a multi-element reconfigurable antenna system without modifying the data frame of a conventional wireless communication system. The capacity gain achievable with this configuration selection approach is calculated through numerical simulations using reconfigurable circular patch antennas at the receiver of a MIMO system that employs minimum mean square error receivers for channel estimation. Channel capacity and Bit Error Rate (BER) results show the improvement offered relative to a conventional antenna selection technique for reconfigurable MIMO systems.

主权项

1. A method of selecting an antenna array configuration for a multi-element reconfigurable transmitter antenna and a multi-element reconfigurable receiver antenna, comprising the steps of:
providing receiver look-up tables accessible by a receiver processor associated with said receiver antenna for at least 1 of N antenna array configurations, said receiver look up tables including values for antenna related parameters of discrimination between different wireless channel scenarios, said antenna related parameters comprising at least one of a signal to noise ratio (SNR), an angular spread (AS), a reciprocal condition number (Dσ), a reciprocal condition number of the transmit/receive correlation matrices (Dλ) and a delay spread (DS); said receiver processor estimating values for said antenna related parameters for at least one but less than N antenna array configurations; said receiver processor setting the antenna array configuration for the receiver antenna based at least in part on said estimated values and an array configuration retrieved from a receiver look up table using the estimated values; a transmitter processor associated with the transmitter antenna calculating SNR at the transmitter antenna; the receiver processor calculating Dλ at the transmitter antenna and providing the calculated Dλ at the transmitter antenna to the transmitter processor, and the transmitter processor further using the received Dλ to retrieve an antenna array configuration for the transmitter antenna from the transmitter look up tables; the transmitter processor using the SNR at the transmitter antenna to retrieve an antenna array configuration for the transmitter antenna from transmitter look up tables accessible by said transmitter processor for at least 1 of N antenna array configurations, said transmitter look up tables including values for at least one of SNR, AS, Dσ,Dλ and DS; and the transmitter processor setting the antenna array configuration for the transmitter antenna based on the retrieved antenna array configuration for the transmitter antenna.