Full-Azimuth Beam Steering MIMO Antenna Arranged in a Daisy Chain Array Structure

This paper presents a multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system with the ability to perform full-azimuth beam steering, and with the aim of realizing greater than 20 Gbps vehicular communications. The MIMO antenna described in this paper comprises 64 elements arranged in a daisy chain array structure, where 32 subarrays are formed by pairing elements in each subarray; the antenna yields 32 independent subchannels for MIMO transmission, and covers all communication targets regardless of their position relative to the array. Analytical results reveal that the proposed antenna system can provide a channel capacity of more than 200 bits/s/Hz at a signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) of 30 dB over the whole azimuth, which is equivalent to 20 Gbps for a bandwidth of 100 MHz. This remarkably high channel capacity is shown to be due to two significant factors; the improved directivity created by the optimum in-phase excitation and the low correlation between the subarrays due to the orthogonal alignment of the array with respect to the incident waves. Over-the-air (OTA) experiments confirm the increase in channel capacity; the proposed antenna can maintain a constant transmission rate over all azimuth angles.