Abstract
The number of required antenna elements is rapidly increasing, in compliance with the development of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and beamforming techniques in 5G technology. Integrated antenna, which is composed of multiple antenna elements, will be considered for next-generation technologies. Therefore, in this chapter, we provide the mathematical and practical explanation of the integrated antenna for the next-generation technologies. First, we introduce a mathematical expression of an antenna element based on spherical vector wave modes and explain channel models for the integrated antenna and the antenna array based on the integrated antenna. Second, we provide practical antennas designed as the integrated antenna and verify that the integrated antenna array can be implemented practically. Lastly, we evaluate the performance of the integrated antenna array compared to mono-polarization and dual-polarization dipole arrays.
Keywords
- integrated antenna
- integrated antenna array
- spherical vector wave
- channel model
- practical antenna
1. Introduction
As more high speed is required, many 5G communication systems have been proposed. While there are a lot of technologies for the 5G communication system, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is a basis for the 5G communication system. MIMO system has been proposed to increase spectral efficiency and diversity gain in wireless communication. The MIMO technology enhances the spectral efficiency and diversity gain by utilizing multiple antennas, because the multiple antennas provide multiple channels [1, 2]. In order to obtain multiple channels, the antenna elements have to be separated from the other antenna elements with larger gap than half-wavelength distance. However, it is difficult to increase the number of antennas because the antenna size is limited in wireless communication.
To enhance the spectral efficiency with compact antenna size, dual-polarization antenna array has been used for 5G technology [3]. It is possible to obtain two uncorrelated channels using the orthogonality of the dual-polarization antenna. However, the dual-polarization antenna still has limitation to increase the spectral efficiency without expanding antenna space.
It has been studied to enhance the spectral efficiency without increasing antenna space by using multiple radiation patterns of the antennas [4, 5, 6, 7]. It was theoretically proposed that six times of spectral efficiency can be obtained compared to a single antenna by using three electric dipoles and three magnetic dipoles allocated at the same position. It means that the multiple antennas can be integrated within a compact size and provide multiplexing gain. Thus, the MIMO system can increase the spectral efficiency by not only using larger antenna array size but also combining multiple radiation patterns.
On the other hand, there have been studies of array optimization technologies for the linear antenna array according to various objective functions [8, 9]. This antenna array could have better interference cancelation using genetic algorithms. Then, it is also possible to enhance the spectral efficiency and diversity gain by combining the array optimization technologies and the integrated antenna-based array system.
In this chapter, we introduce an integrated antenna array which is a type of the MIMO systems. The integrated antenna array consists of multiple array elements, and the array element has multiple antenna elements. Each antenna element of the integrated antenna has different radiation patterns to increase the spectral efficiency in wireless communication area. The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the concept of the integrated antenna array and to show the possibility to apply it practically to wireless communication technology. We will also explain a framework for next-generation technology so that we can provide further works as well.
We organize the chapter as follows. In Section 2, we explain channel models for the integrated antenna array. In Section 3, several practical integrated antennas are introduced to verify that the integrated antenna array can be implemented practically. In Section 4, we verify the performance of the integrated antenna array in urban macro-cell environment compared with mono-polarization and dual-polarization dipole antenna arrays.
2. Channel model
The channel model is dependent on the structure of the MIMO system. To provide the channel model for the integrated antenna array, firstly we provide a channel model for a general case as given in Figure 1 [1]. We develop the channel model with considering complex structures.
2.1. MIMO channel model
We consider a MIMO channel with a transmit and receive system, which is equipped with
where
where
We assume that the sizes of the transmit and receive antenna are negligible compared to the distance between the transmit system and the receive system. Then, the covariance matrix of the MIMO channel is given by
where
This channel model is called by the Kronecker model of MIMO system in general case.
2.2. Spherical vector wave-based channel model
There are spherical vector wave (SVW) modes which are orthonormal basis functions for arbitrary radiation pattern [10, 11, 12]. The radiation pattern of an arbitrary transmitter antenna is described as
where
Consider that the transmit and the receive systems have an integrated antenna without array structure, which are composed of
where
where
Here,
where
It is also assumed that the joint probability density function of the PAS in (10) can be decomposed by
Then, the SVW mode channel of the transmitter is obtained by [14].
where
From (3) and (7), therefore, we can see that
We can describe the channel model for the integrated antenna by using the SVW modes.
2.3. Channel model for integrated antenna array
For 5G communication technology, it is important that the integrated antenna is expandable to array structure. Thus, it is necessary to derive the channel model for the MIMO system equipped with the integrated antenna array. The structure of the integrated antenna array is illustrated in Figure 3.
Each antenna element has not only a radiation pattern but also a relative position to the other antenna elements. The received signal of the MIMO system with the integrated antenna arrays is given by
where
where
where
We explained the channel models for the MIMO system with the integrated antenna arrays mathematically. In the following section, we will verify the performance of the integrated antenna array based on the channel model we discussed.
3. Practical antenna design
There have been many practical antennas which are designed for the integrated antenna. Through some practical antennas, we can see that the integrated antenna may be implemented for the wireless communication. Design of the integrated antenna is dependent on the system requirement such as array structure and channel environment. In this section, we introduce various practical integrated antennas for several cases.
3.1. Practical integrated antenna
It is important to integrate multiple antennas with compact size, which have orthogonal radiation patterns of each other. There are practical integrated antennas without considering array structure as shown in Figure 4. It is found that the integrated antenna has two types of antenna elements which have radiation patterns of electric dipole antenna and magnetic loop antenna. Planer inverted-F antennas (PIFA) are used for the electric dipole antenna, and quarter-wavelength slot antennas are used for the magnetic loop antenna [16, 17]. It is also seen that the integrated antennas have three-dimensional structures because the array structure was not considered. Therefore, it is noted that the integrated antenna may consist of more than two antenna elements practically.
3.2. Practical integrated antenna array
The integrated antenna array may be implemented as shown in Figure 5. It is found that the practical integrated antenna array is composed of
To reduce the antenna size, we eliminated a conduct strip in front of the antenna element and designed that
It is necessary to verify that the integrated antenna has reasonable antenna characteristics such as radiation efficiency, bandwidth and mutual coupling. The proposed four-port integrated antenna was implemented as shown in Figure 6. For the integrated antenna, the antenna elements have the same antenna characteristics of each other because of symmetric configuration. The simulated and the measured S-parameters of the integrated antenna are shown in Figure 7a and b, respectively, where
The simulated and measured S-parameters of the integrated antenna-based
The radiation patterns of the integrated antenna are illustrated in Figure 9. It is found that the simulated and measured radiation patterns are agreed well. It is shown that the antenna elements radiate to y-axis in order to support the front area of the antenna structure and have different radiation patterns. The radiation patterns generated by using the transmitting coefficient matrix
4. Array optimization based on integrated antenna array
It is important to combine the integrated antenna array and the array optimization algorithm. We assume that the integrated antenna array is utilized as a transmit system, and then the channel capacity of the MIMO system may be described as
where SNR is signal-to-noise ratio and
However,
Therefore, it is necessary to optimize the
4.1. Performance of integrated antenna
In order to show the possibility of the integrated antenna in wireless communication area, we verify the performance of the integrated antenna by optimizing
There are various objective functions for optimization of
To obtain the optimum value of
We consider the 16-port integrated antenna as the integrated antenna without array structure. We assume that the receive system has 16 antennas and that the channel is a full-scattering environment, which has the PAS given by
The channel capacity of the 16-port integrated antenna is described in Figure 10. It is found that the channel capacity of 16-port integrated antenna achieves channel capacity close to that of the ideal 16-port antenna.
4.2. Performance of integrated antenna array
We consider the four-port integrated antenna, which was proposed in Section 3 as the array element of the integrated antenna array. We assume that all antenna arrays have
The channel capacities of the integrated MPOL and DPOL antenna arrays are illustrated in Figure 12. Although the integrated antenna array occupies smaller size than the others, the integrated antenna array has higher channel capacity than the MPOL and DPOL antenna arrays. It means that the multiple radiation patterns of various antenna elements for the integrated antenna may enhance the channel capacity without increasing antenna space to utilize spatial gain.
4.3. Further works
To optimize an integrated antenna array in wireless communication area, we study the mathematical optimization of the integrated antenna array. Under assumption of
However, the achievable
On the other hand, there are different constraints and objective functions for
5. Conclusion
We introduced the integrated antenna array for the 5G communication technology and provided the MIMO channel model for the integrated antenna array. We showed that the integrated antenna can be implemented as practical antenna systems for the wireless communication. We also proposed the practical integrated antenna array with the four-port integrated antenna. Based on the MIMO channel model, we explained the optimization problems for the integrated antenna array. The performance of the integrated antenna array was verified compared to dual-polarization antenna array. It has been shown that the integrated antenna array can achieve higher spectral efficiency than the conventional antenna arrays. Therefore, it could be seen that the integrated antenna array would be an attractive solution for the next wireless communication technology.
In a source-free region
Consider vector wave functions
where
In spherical coordinates, we can obtain the solution to (22) for unbounded media as
where
where
where
where
The normalized vector spherical harmonics
where
Because of the orthogonal relationship, furthermore, an arbitrary field
From (25) and (32), the outgoing vector waves
These spherical vector waves may become the solutions to the vector wave functions
The far field is the outgoing spherical vector waves when the
where multi-index
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