Measurement of diversity performance of modulated scattering array antennas for mobile handsets

Array antennas have been widely studied and used for base stations because they are effective in solving the problems of multipath fading and co-channel interference and improving performance and capacity in wireless communication systems. However, little effort has been made for developing array antennas suitable for mobile handsets, because of the difficulties such as the limited space on the handset to mount an antenna array with sufficiently low spatial correlation, high cost and complexity of the printed board circuits for operating adaptive algorithm. Therefore, it is required to develop array antennas with simple configurations which are suitable for mobile handsets. The modulated scattering technique was one of the effective measurement methods for near field measurement and was applied to fast measurement of antenna radiation pattern recently. A new concept of array antennas, which is called modulated scattering array antenna (MSAA), was proposed based on the modulated scattering technique. In this research, the diversity performance of a 2-element MSAA are measured in Raleigh fading environment to demonstrate the effectiveness of the MSAA.