Antenna selection with RF pre-processing: robustness to RF and selection non-idealities

Abstract

Multiple antenna transmitter and receiver architectures that combine antenna selection with RF pre-processing have been shown to significantly outperform conventional antenna selection with the same number of RF chains. Often, performance close to a full complexity architecture (with more RF chains) is also achieved. This paper studies the effect of hardware and signal processing non-idealities on such architectures. We show that they are robust to quantization, phase, and calibration errors introduced by RF phase-shifters, and also to the channel estimation errors. While insertion loss does lead to performance degradation, performance better than conventional antenna selection is observed for typical insertion loss values. RAWCON 2004This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc.; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Inc. All rights reserved. W1B.1Abstract-Multiple antenna transmitter and receiver architectures that combine antenna selection with RF pre-processing have been shown to significantly outperform conventional antenna selection with the same number of RF chains. Often, performance close to a full complexity architecture (with more RF chains) is also achieved. This paper studies the effect of hardware and signal processing non-idealities on such architectures. We show that they are robust to quantization, phase, and calibration errors introduced by RF phase-shifters, and also to the channel estimation errors. While insertion loss does lead to performance degradation, performance better than conventional antenna selection is observed for typical insertion loss values.

Channel Statistics-Based RF Pre-Processing with Antenna Selection

“…Their impact on RF pre-processing was investigated in [34], which showed that it is very robust to phase non-idealities. For high insertion losses, low noise amplifiers may need to be placed before the selection switch, which can increase the overall cost of the system.…”

“…The implementation using only variable phase-shifters is a critical issue that ultimately determines the practical viability of the proposed design [31]- [34]. While equal gain combining (EGC) at the receiver and equal gain transmission both use only phase-shifters [35]- [37], their use is limited to spatial diversity systems.…”

WLC11-6: Antenna Selection for Compact Dual-Polarized MIMO Systems with Linear Receivers

“…In our analysis we have assumed lossless switching. However, we note that the insertion loss of RF switches degrades the performance of any antenna selection system and should be taken into account, while designing these systems [15].…”

Aiming Perfectly in the Dark-Blind Interference Alignment Through Staggered Antenna Switching

“…Each distinct geometrical configuration corresponds to a different mode of operation. Various technologies, such as microelectromechanical switches (MEMS), nanoelectromechanical switches (NEMS) or solid state switches are used to perform the switching operation and offer various tradeoffs in terms of the switching speed, insertion loss, monolithic integration capability, size and reliability [13,8,7]. A reconfigurable antenna offers a choice to switch among several pre-set modes.…”