A REPORT

ON

ANTENNA DESIGN FOR MULTIPLE INPUT MULTIPLE OUTPUT

SYSTEM

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of

Research Practice

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

BIRLA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE

HYDERABAD CAMPUS

Submitted to: Submitted by:

Dr. Sourav Nandi Rajat Dadhich (2019H1240540H)

Rose Mary Gigi (2019H1240136H)

 LIST OF FIGURES

● Figure 1: MIMO system

● Figure 2: Difference between the classical communication and MIMO communication
● Figure 2: Planar array structure
● Figure 3: Cylindrical array structure

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Abstract……………………………………………………………………………3
2. Introduction………………………………………………………………………..4
3. Multiple Input Multiple Output…………………………………………………... 6
4. Improve Isolation Between Antenna…………………….………………………...7
5. Massive MIMO for Backhaul……………………………………………………...8
6. Pilot Contamination in MIMO……………………………………………………..8
7. Performance Metrics for MIMO Antenna Systems………...…………………..…..8
8. Misconceptions in MIMO Antenna Design……………......……………………...11
9. References………………………………………………………………………....13

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ABSTRACT

In demand of high capacity and reliable wireless communication, the Multiple Input Multiple
Output technology has been studied for the last two decades. In this paper we first investigate the
need of MIMO technology and its benefits when compared to single antenna systems. Then we
briefly go over the performance metrics that are required to characterize the MIMO antenna
system. In order to meet the increased demand of much higher data rates, coverage and capacity,
Massive MIMO technology is introduced wherein base stations are incorporated with multiple
antennas. We investigate the antenna array configuration in Massive MIMO and analyze
Backhaul communication and pilot contamination in Massive MIMO Finally we look into some
major misconceptions and unclear understanding of the fundamental aspects while designing
multi antenna systems.

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INTRODUCTION

With the ever increasing demand for antennas in emerging wireless communication applications
different antenna design and their configuration has been part of research. Today’s demand is to
have high capacity for wireless transmission and to achieve it multiple antennas have been used
both at transmitter and receiver. Having multiple antennas definitely increases the capacity but
brings a challenge in their deployment.

The need of having multiple antennas is not only to achieve a high data rate but to create
diversity in each radio device. There is usually more than one radio present in handsets like GPS,
Bluetooth and several cellular bands, each radio demands an antenna for transmission hence
diversity technique is employed.

Different antenna diversity techniques are used to avoid the effects of fading.

● Spatial Diversity - In this technique, antennas are placed at a distance greater than or
equal to .125 times of wavelength to make the interference minimal.

● Beam Diversity - The antenna has different gains in different directions resulting in
different weights of transmitted signal by each antenna.

● Polarisation Diversity - This is the simplest form of diversity having antennas of same
gain in a given direction but they respond to orthogonal polarisation.

MULTIPLE INPUT MULTIPLE OUTPUT

MIMO is effectively a radio antenna technology as it uses multiple antennas at the transmitter
and receiver to enable a variety of signal paths to carry the data, choosing separate paths for each
antenna to enable multiple signal paths to be used.

Figure.1: MIMO system

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Consider an M×N MIMO system having M transmitting and N receiving antennas. It forms a
channel matrix H and the mathematical model is given by,

y vector represents N received information symbols at the receiver, H is the channel matrix of
order N×M, s is the transmitted vector represents M transmitting symbols and n is the noise
vector.

Thus, it can be observed that each received symbol at their corresponding antenna is a linear
combination of all transmitted symbols results in interference hence diversity technique,
precoding and beamforming techniques are used to form spatial multiplexing.

The general channel capacity equation for M transmitter and N receiver antennas is given by:

It is clear from the above equation that an increase in BW or the signal to noise ratio yields a
direct increase in the capacity (C). But these parameters are usually difficult to change due to the
limited spectrum bands as well as predefined power levels transmissions set by government
agencies and operators.

Hence in order to achieve an increase in C, we need to increase the value of M and N, which is
the main driver for MIMO systems. The use of multiple antennas increases the data rate within
the limited bandwidth and power levels.

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 Figure.2:Difference between the classical communication and MIMO communication

The Fig.2 shows the difference between the classical communication and MIMO
communication. Instead of using the single radiating element which radiates uniformly in the
required coverage area, an antenna array can radiate in the desired direction with the same
radiating power. If M antennas are used at the transmitter, the gain of radiated signal increases by
M times. At the receiving side, if K users are present, the strength of received signal to each user
will be M/K times (assuming M>K) stronger than classical communication. Hence,having
multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver increases the received signal strength.

IMPROVE ISOLATION BETWEEN ANTENNA

In a MIMO system, the major problems faced are due to poor isolation. The purpose of putting
multiple antennas in a MIMO system is to increase capacity. However poor isolation leads to
strong correlation between the antennas, which indeed decreases the overall system capacity.
Another drawback of poor isolation is that if antennas are placed in close proximity then some
portion of output will be absorbed by nearby antennas thus leading to low efficiency.

To improve isolation the best and easiest solution is to increase the distance between antennas.
However, it isn’t always practical when designing mobile devices due to constrained space.
To achieve high isolation several methods have been proposed. Most isolation improvement
methods can be broadly classified into two categories. One is blocking the leaking signal and the
other is cancelling out the leaking signal by introducing a new signal path. By placing antennas
with different radiation patterns together very good isolation can be achieved. It can also be
achieved by exciting orthogonal modes on a single radiator. Electric dipole and magnetic dipoles
can also be placed together to generate independent omnidirectional patterns with orthogonal

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polarization. However in many mobile devices, due to thickness constraints and chipset
arrangement, there is very little freedom in selecting antenna locations.

ANTENNA CONFIGURATION FOR MASSIVE MIMO

In Massive MIMO technology, large number of antennas are used at cellular base stations. The
system performance depends on the configuration of antenna array i.e. rectangular, circular and
spherical, pattern of each antenna and their mutual coupling.

Thus it is important to investigate and analyse the antenna array configuration in Massive MIMO
for 5G. Several antenna elements can be used in array configuration such as monopole, half
wave dipole, horn antennas and printed antennas.

Fig.3:Planar array structure Fig.4:cylindrical array structure

Fig.3 shows the planar array structure formed by placing linear arrays parallel to each other. It
allows a directive beam that results in higher gain in desired direction by lowering the sidelobe
level in undesired direction. The gain of the antenna is related to directivity and is calculated
using array factor. The array factor of planar array is the multiplication of array factors of two
orthogonal linear arrays.

Fig.4 shows the cylindrical array structure formed by stacking the circular array one over the
other such that it forms a linear array in vertical direction. The array factor of cylindrical array
depicted by multiplying the array factor of linear array in z-axis with circular array in x-y plane.
The advantage of cylindrical structure is having 360 degree symmetry because of circular
structure and a high gain due to stacking in vertical direction.

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MASSIVE MIMO FOR BACKHAUL COMMUNICATION

Backhaul communication in wireless systems resembles connecting heterogeneous base stations.

For example, several small cell base stations (SCBS) communicate with macro cell base stations
using different antenna arrays.

In case of cylindrical arrays, several circular arrays are stacked upon each other and due to 360
degrees symmetry of circular arrays its beam at macro base station can be pointed to several
small cell base stations in any direction.

Similarly, other geometries have different advantages like 3 linear planar arrays can formulate a
triangular array structure that can cover 3-sectored cells.

PILOT CONTAMINATION IN MIMO

As the wireless channel is unpredictable, to estimate it pilot symbols are transmitted over the
channel. These pilot symbols are to be orthogonal to each uplink channel to avoid interference.
Thus, there is an upper bound on these pilot symbols to maintain the orthogonality. The term
pilot contamination refers to negative effects of reusing pilot symbols in more than one cell.

The average received power of pilot symbols depends on path loss incurred by the channel. If the
terminal (mobile station) is nearer to base station (BS), the path loss is low and received power is
high unlike in the case when terminal is at the edge of cell, the path loss is high and received
power is low which results in interference with the adjacent cell.

This interference can be reduced by using less reuse factor, blind techniques and using precoding
techniques. Pilot contamination is a severe concern in case of Massive MIMO as number of
antennas are increased at BS hence if uplink and downlink pilot sequence are same it causes an
interference.

PERFORMANCE METRICS FOR MIMO ANTENNA SYSTEMS

In order to fully characterize a MIMO antenna system some additional performance metrics and
parameters are also required along with the conventional antenna-performance metrics such as
the bandwidth, the resonance frequency, the radiation patterns, the gain, and the efficiency.

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 ● Total Active Reflection Coefficient(TARC)

Scattering matrix is not enough to properly characterize the efficiency and bandwidth of the
MIMO antenna system hence we use another parameter known as the total active reflection
coefficient (TARC).

In a multi-port antenna system TARC is calculated as the square root of the whole ratio the total
reflected power by the total incident power. It can also be obtained using the S parameters.

TARC value lies between 0 and 1 wherein 0 indicates that all the available power is radiated.
For an N-element antenna, the TARC is calculated by the formula given as:

● Correlation coefficient and envelope correlation coefficient

To understand how much the communication channels are isolated or correlated with each other
correlation coefficient parameter is used. The square of the correlation coefficient is known as
the envelope correlation coefficient which is given by :

● Channel Capacity

To compare the performance improvement of a MIMO system relative to a SISO system a

parameter known as Channel Capacity is used. It is a measure of how many bits can be sent per 1
Hz of bandwidth.

Channel capacity of MIMO system is given by :

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 ● Branch Power Ratio

The power levels coming from different antenna branches are supposed to be very close. For
representing these power-level differences we use Two-branch level ratio given by :

● Diversity Gain

Diversity gain is a measure of the effect of diversity on the communication system. It is defined
as the difference between the time-averaged SNR of the combined signals within the diversity
antenna system and that of a single antenna system in one diversity channel, provided the SNR is
above a reference level.
Mathematically Diversity Gain is calculated by the following equation:

● Mean Effective Gain (MEG)

To measure antenna performance of a MIMO system, the gain calculated for a single antenna
system is not a good measurement. For a specific application the antenna is used in a certain
environment. In evaluating the system’s performance we need to take into consideration the
effect of this environment on the antenna’s radiation characteristics.

Mathematical expressions for the mean effective gain calculation are as follows:

Where XPD is cross-polarisation

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MISCONCEPTIONS IN MIMO ANTENNA DESIGN

Some points that are to be considered while designing MIMO antennas are discussed in this
section. There are several issues that still need some clarification in antenna design prospects.

I. NOT CONNECTED GROUNDS

It is a very common mistake that has to be highlighted. Many designs still have a not-
connected grounds for different antenna elements in MIMO configuration.This leads to
enhancement in port isolation because there is no current coupling through the ground
plane. A common ground is essential so that all signals can be observed on the same
reference level. If separate ground planes are used, no one guarantees that the system will
work properly since the assumption of having all ground planes at the same voltage
reference level is invalid.

II. CORRELATION AND ENVELOPE CORRELATION COEFFICIENT

Correlation coefficient(CC) and Envelope correlation coefficient (ECC) are the measures
of channel isolation in wireless communication link. A high CC signifies poor isolation
hence channel capacity is degraded so ideally CC should be 0 resembles high channel
capacity.

To calculate the CC, a radiation pattern of the MIMO system is required. For an isotropic
channel, the CC can be calculated using equation (1),

(1)

The equation that considers other environment effects i.e. for a non-isotropic channel the
CC is calculated using equation (2),

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 (2)

Using the port parameters the CC for a lossless antenna in an isotopic environment can be

calculated using equation (3),

(3)

Unfortunately, there have been papers accepting equation (3) ignoring the condition
mentioned above. As printed antennas are lossy, and unless the efficiency of the proposed
antenna is very high, the above equation cannot be applied.

III. MIXUP BETWEEN PORT ISOLATION AND FIELD CORRELATION

There is a big misconception between the port isolation and correlation coefficient.
Achieving port isolation increases the system efficiency as more power is transmitted to
the antenna. Reduction in coupling between the input ports results in enhancement of port
isolation but that does not mean CC is reduced because there is no direct relation between
port isolation and radiated fields. This misconception is due to incorrect use of equation
(3) but if equation (2) is considered one can conclude that increasing port isolation does
not affect field radiate by the antenna.

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REFERENCES

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correlation in lossy MIMO antennas,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag. , vol. 61, no. 10, pp. 5214–
5222, 2013.

[2] E. G. Larsson, O. Edfors, F. Tufvesson, and T.L. Marzetta, “Massive MIMO for next
generation wireless systems,” IEEE Commun. Mag. , vol. 52, no. 2, pp. 186–195, 2014.

[3] Theodore S Rappaport, ―Millimeter Wave Mobile Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will
Work! IEEE Access, vol.1.pp.335-349,May 2013

[4] E. Yaacoub, M. Al Husseini, A. Chehab, A. El Hajj, K. Y. Kabalan, “Hybrid Linear and

Circular Antenna Arrays”, Iranian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol. 6, no.
1, pp. 48–54, WinterSpring 2007

[5] Sharawi, M. S. (2014). Printed Mimo antenna engineering. Boston: Artech House.

[6] Zhang, Z. (2017). Antenna design for mobile devices. Wiley-IEEE Press.

[7] M. S. Sharawi, “Printed Multi-band MIMO Antenna Systems and their Performance
Metrics,” IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, Vol.55, No. 5, pp. xx-yy, 2013.

[8] M. Pappa, C. Ramesh and M. N. Kumar, "Performance comparison of massive MIMO and
conventional MIMO using channel parameters," 2017 International Conference on Wireless
Communications, Signal Processing and Networking (WiSPNET), Chennai, 2017, pp. 1808-1812

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