A new signal model for MIMO communication with compact parasitic arrays

Significant research effort has been drawn over the last few years to reduce the hardware complexity and size of Multiple Input - Multiple Output (MIMO) systems and to push this promising technology even to lightweight and small portable devices. Among other architectures, single-fed MIMO systems with compact parasitic arrays are a possible candidate toward this goal. To facilitate the study and design of parasitic arrays for MIMO applications, this paper presents an alternative signal model considering the currents at the ports of the transmitting array as the input to the system. Based on this model, a novel parasitic array is designed that is able to multiplex 16-QAM signals with the aid of a single radio-frequency (RF) source. The proposed signal model can also be useful for the evaluation of large parasitic arrays in massive MIMO regime, with significantly reduce hardware burden.