2013 COST

28-31 May 2013, Illemenau, Germany

A concept study on MIMO antenna system for small size CPE operating in the TV White Spaces
Montaha Bouezzeddine 1 ,Werner L. Schroeder 2
RheinMain University of Applied Sciences, Am Brueckweg 26, D-65428 Ruesselsheim, Germany
1

montaha.bouezzeddine@hs-rm.de, 2 werner.schroeder@hs-rm.de

AbstractA concept study on multi-port MIMO antenna systems for relatively small size Customer Premises Equipment is presented. The antenna system is meant to operate in the TV White Spaces from 470 MHz to 790 MHz and to support Cognitive Radio applications. The design concept is derived from a characteristic modesstudy of the shielding enclosure of the device. Advantages and diculties incurred by this approach are discussed. Preliminary results of attainable instantaneous bandwidth are shown.

system, we state the requirements of this latter. Lastly, a design concept for a 4-ports antenna system is described and evaluated. II. Characteristic modes: Theoretical review Introduced by Garbacz [2], and developed by Harrington and Mautz [3] , the TCM is a frequency-domain analysis. The main idea of considering the TCM, here, resides in using the devices chassis as a main radiator, after exciting it with some couplers placed around. To determine suitable dimensions of the chassis and the locations of couplers, we proceed to the calculation of the eigencurrents on a metallic surface. Let us rst draw the main lines of this theory, but readers can refer to [3] and [4] for details. We consider an incident wave E inc on a conductor surface, in which is induced a current surface density Js . This current gives rise to a secondary eld. The boundary condition associated to the vanishing of the tangential component of the electric eld on a perfect conductor is given by Z[Js ] + E inc
tan

I. Introduction The switchover from analog to digital TV, known under the name of digital dividend, accompanied by the bands saturation of mobile communication have urged to dene a new strategy in assigning the spectrum resources. The Cognitive Radio (CR) or what is called DSA! (DSA!) permits to re-allocate the unused resources of the primary users and recongure the wireless system to adapt to the secondary userss needs in order to exploit more eciently the spectrum radio, especially where some bands are frequently unused. The main functionalities of a CR system reside in scanning the spectrum to detect the spectrum holes, and tuning itself to work in the unused bands [1]. In parallel, Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technologies constitute another trend in communication systems that allow to improve the link reliability of the wireless channel taking advantage from the diversity and the spatial multiplexing. These technologies aim at facing the increase in data trac, and the need for reliability, by increasing the frequency Bandwidth (BW) and the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). Equipping CR systems with MIMO antennas lead to new possibilities such as reducing the interferences caused to primary users, and performing a more accurate spectrum scanning. Nevertheless, building a multi-ports antenna system poses several challenges, in particularly for small devices where we lack enough space. Many concerns raise regarding the locations of the antennas, the kind of antennas to use, and how to reduce the eects of the surrounding objects. In this paper, we employ the Theory of Characteristic Modes (TCM) to design our antenna system. In the rst section, we present a theoretical review of the TCM. Before demonstrating the pros and cons of applying the mentioned theory for MIMO

=0

(1)

We can write Z = R + jX, where the operators R and X are symmetric and real. Furthermore R is positive. The eigenvalue problem is formulated as X[Js,n ] = n R[Js,n ]. (2)

The vectors solutions of the eigenvalue problem are orthogonal functions and real; in this particular case, we call them eigencurrents with corresponding eigenvalues n . The orthogonality relations between dierent eigenmodes can be written in the form Js,m |RJs,n Js,m |XJs,n Js,m |ZJs,n
S S S

= 2Pn mn ,

(3) (4) (5)

= 2Pn n mn ,

= 2Pn (1 + jn )mn

where m and n refer respectively to the m-th and n-th characteristic modes, mn is the Kronecker symbol and the term Pn designates the power radiated by the n-th mode. The factor 2 is due to the consideration of peak values instead of eective ones. The eigenelds are expressed as En = Z[Js,n ] = (1 + jn )R[Js,n ] (6)

Any total surface current density Js can be written as a superposition of the eigencurrents Js =
n

Antenna Design Requirements

Bandwith, pattern, Frequency, Isolation

n Js,n ,

(7)
Modelling Antenna with MoM Theory of Characteristic Modes

with the coecient of expansion given by n = Js,n |RJs

S

1 Js,n |ZJs (1 + jn )

(8)
Selecting most efficient modes Smallest Eigenvalues

By applying the Poynting theorem and equating with (5), it can proved that 1 En Em dS = 2Pn mn
S
Meet the requirements (BW)?

(9)

Calculating Q factor of the modes

We conclude that the characteristic elds are equally orthogonal. The eigenvalues are related to the time average of the stored electric and magnetic energy, and consequently to the radiation quality factors. n = 2 Wmag,n Wele,n Pn (10)

No

Yes Feeding Structure Design Modify the exciters (Geometry, position, dimensions)

Fig. 1: Diagram of antenna design procedure when exploiting the TCM.

The eigenvalues bring important information about the modes that could be eciently excited. In fact, the smaller is the n , the more eciently the n-th characteristic mode could be excited. When the electric stored energy is equal to the magnetic one, the mode is at resonance and n = 0. III. Characteristic modes and MIMO A. MIMO requirements To design an ecient N-ports MIMO antenna system, we have to ll, from the antenna point of view, some requirements, among which we can cite: Well matched antennas to reduce losses and increase the eciency of each single antenna. Well decoupled antennas to guarantee that the applied power to port i is not reinjected in port j due to coupling. ({i, j} {1, N }; i j). The rst condition is meaningless if not accompanied by this condition. For an optimal case, the S-parameters matrix is equal to the null matrix, i.e, S=0 (11)

The S matrix is associated to a reciprocal 2N -ports network where the inputs are the incident waves coming from the RF Front-End and the outputs correspond to the antenna ports(receive case). Orthogonal patterns measured by the pattern correlation coecient.

1) Find the most ecient modes that could be excited depending on values in the frequency range of interest. 2) Select the needed number of modes that corresponds to that of the antennas to be used. If the modes available are not sucient, designer could think about adding some extensions to decrease the modess resonant frequencies. 3) Determine the type of coupling to be chosen: capacitive or inductive. 4) Optimize the exciterss parameters: location with respect to the chassis depending on the charge distributions of the selected modes, and the distance from the chassis. In our case, the optimizations criterion is based on the modal BW increase, to be dened later. If many modes share the same exciters, compromise might be made to optimize the BW of some modes at detrimental of others. 5) In case multiple modes share the same exciters, a feeding network or what we call a Mode Decomposition Network (MDN) is required to distinguish the excited modes. 6) For optimal performances, the signals applied to the MDN should be relatively matched to avoid high losses. Hence, a matching network is required before reaching the MDN. Now that we have illustrated MIMO requirements and the procedure to build a MIMO antenna system by exploiting the TCM, we will present the advantages and inconveniences induced by this approach. C. TCM pros and cons The application of the TCM for a MIMO antenna system has been frequently adopted. Still, some authors prefer rather to use a classic design (patches, meander line antenna, etc). What are the advantages and the drawbacks related to each of both approaches?

B. TCM procedure In many references [5][7], MIMO antenna systems are built using the TCM approach. We will give an insight on the main steps of this approach. After setting the chassis dimensions, a Method of Moments (MoM) code is applied to calculate the eigencurrents and the eigenvalues.

When using the chassis as a main radiator, we are exploiting the whole available volume to design the antenna system thus it is more advantageous in terms of BW and antennas eciency. In fact, both electrical parameters are strongly dependent on to the physical parameters, i.e antennas size. The other major interest of using the TCM resides in the fact of obtaining orthogonal patterns, as proven in a previous paragraph.This feature is primordial when dealing with MIMO antenna. Besides a low coupling between the modes could be achieved. From the other side, the application of this approach demonstrates some weakness points. Sharing the same exciters and chassis could have an eect on the coupling between the modes. At the same time, the antennas could be dramatically aected by the electronics surrounding. Secondly, we cannot control the radiation patterns, which are imposed by the selected modes. Besides, a geometrical tuning is hard to be implemented when using the chassis as a main radiator (some solutions still could be found). If working over a large frequency range, diculties connected to the chassis dimensions emerge. Let us take our case as an example; we are working in the range [470; 790]MHz so the ratio between the upper frequency and the lowest is almost 2. The modes behave completely dierent at the lower and upper band, and we still have to cope with the xed dimensions of the chassis. Two other major problems will appear in advanced levels. A MDN should be built if many modes share the same exciters. We have equally to design a simultaneous Matching Network (MN). A large dierence between the modal reection coecients makes it quasi-impossible to match all the modes simultaneously. Besides, with a simultaneous MN, we risk to sacrice the large BW obtained for some modes. Finally, attention must be given for the couplers to avoid exciting unwanted signals that can increase the correlation between the antennas. When opting for a classic solution, design does not demand any MDN. Furthermore, the radiation patterns are more exible depending on the chosen types of antennas. The MDN is not required but we still need to design a decoupling network to guarantee a high isolation between the dierent antennas, especially that their patterns wont be not necessarily orthogonal. But it should kept in mind that even when applying a classic approach, the coupling due to the chassis, or the ground plane plays a major role on the antennas performances, that could be harmful, if not well understood. The parameters BW and eciency of each single antenna could not be optimal for the studied application especially when dealing with Electrically Small Antenna (ESA). To achieve high performances with both concepts, we need to realize a Characteristic Modes (CM) analysis to evaluate the eigenmodes that could be possibly excited on the chassis that contributes dominantly to the radiation.

Fig. 2: Eigenvalues magnitude versus frequency for the rst 8 modes.

Mode 1 Mode 2

+
Mode 3

Mode 4

+ +

Fig. 3: Current and charge patterns of the four selected modes.

IV. Multi-antenna system design A. Antenna design We consider a 220 180 56 mm3 box to be used as a CPE. The analysis of CM allowed us to select the modes that can be eciently excited and build a 4-ports MIMO antenna system. The results are obtained by applying a MoM code based on Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) basis functions. We plotted the values versus the frequency as shown in Fig.2. As we have seen in a previous paragraph, generally, the smaller the , the more eciently the modes could be excited.

In this paper, we content ourselves to present the results obtained for the 4 modes using WIPL-D [9]. Due to the symmetry properties of the couplers, we simulated the quarter structure of the box by dening electric and magnetic walls, Perfect Electric Conductor (PEC) and Perfect Magnetic Conductor (PMC) at the center. For each conguration, we select the convenient symmetry planes. We illustrate the modal reection coecients in Fig.5. To mention that the 4th was not eciently excited with the exciters placed at the corners, for two reasons: Firstly, the eigenvalues of this mode (mode 8 in Fig.2) are not small comparing to the others. Secondly, the maximum distribution of the charge is located at the middle of the edges. We do not show, in this paper, the complete structure. During the simulation, we modied the exciters parameters in order to maximize the BW, calculated using the formula Q= Fig. 4: Box structure with four exciters placed at the corners. f0 dX 2R d f f , Q (12)

Then we calculate the 7-dB return loss BW, by applying BW7dB = (13)

In the table 1, we present the results in terms of the maximal BW that could be obtained for each mode at some frequencies. Those results do not include any matching option, they only illustrate the coupling between the exciters and the chassis. TABLE I: Modal Instantaneous BW in MHz of the 4 considered modes. F ( MHz) 500 600 700 800 mode1 110 68 54 56 mode2 150 120 95 85 mode3 40 180 200 200 mode4 10 25 52 100

Fig. 5: Modal reection coecients for the 4 selected modes after introducing the exciters.

We have selected 4 capacitive modes to excite. In Fig.2, they correspond to the modes {1, 2, 3, 8}. As a next step, we drew the current distribution and charge distribution (see appendix) to determine the most suitable locations of the exciters. Both distributions are summarized in Fig.3, where the (+) and () signs characterize a positive and negative dense charge distribution and will refer later to the phases that should be applied to the exciters. To excite the modes eciently, the couplers should be located at the maximum of the electric eld and the charge distribution. Fig.4 show the box used as a main radiator with nonresonant exciters placed at the corners.

To verify the estimated BW values obtained via the formulas, we added a pi-circuit as shown in g.6. An optimization algorithm, consisting of minimizing the mean of the modal reection coecients, was used in order to determine the components values of the circuit. The 7dB return loss BW for each mode after adding a MN are tabulated. TABLE II: Instantaneous BW in MHz of the 4 modes obtained with a MN. F ( MHz) 500 600 700 800 mode1 80 57 49 52 mode2 90 84 68 76 mode3 26 180 300 300 mode4 10 50 80

We observe that the BW obtained with the proposed MN circuit are comparable to the modal coecients. The fact that

References
[1] Z. Ji and K. Liu, Cognitive radios for dynamic spectrum access - dynamic spectrum sharing: A game theoretical overview, Communications Magazine, IEEE, vol. 45, no. 5, pp. 8894, 2007. [2] R. Garbacz and R. Turpin, A generalized expansion for radiated and scattered elds, Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 348358, 1971. [3] R. F. Harrington and J. Mautz, Theory of characteristic modes for conducting bodies, Antennas and Propagation, IEEE Transactions on, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 622628, 1971. [4] B. D. Raines, Systematic design of multiple antenna systems using characteristic modes, Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University, 2011. [5] S. Chaudhury, W. Schroeder, and H. Chaloupka, Mimo antenna system based on orthogonality of the characteristic modes of a mobile device, in Antennas, 2007. INICA 07. 2nd International ITG Conference on, 2007, pp. 5862. [6] E. Antonino-Daviu, M. Cabedo-Fabres, M. Gallo, M. Ferrando-Bataller, and M. Bozzetti, Design of a multimode mimo antenna using characteristic modes, in Antennas and Propagation, 2009. EuCAP 2009. 3rd European Conference on, 2009, pp. 18401844. [7] R. T. Maximov, C. L. Zekios, and G. Kyriacou, Mimo antenna design exploiting the characteristic modes eigenanalysis, in ESA conference 2010, 2010, pp. 15. [8] A. Krewski, W. Schroeder, and K. Solbach, Mimo lte antenna design for laptops based on theory of characteristic modes, in Antennas and Propagation (EUCAP), 2012 6th European Conference on, 2012, pp. 18941898. [9] Wipld.o.o, http://www.wipl-d.com/, wipl-d v7.

Fig. 6: Repetitive motif of the pre-matching circuit.

the estimated BW are due whether to the fact that the formula shown above is approximate and mainly used at resonance with the hypothesis about R being constant. Employing another algorithm or modifying the MNs structure could lead to similar results. V. Conclusions A MIMO antenna system for CR applications was discussed in this paper. We have tackled the TCM approach to build a multiple ports antenna system. First, we gave a theoretical insight about the theory that helped us conclude about the pros and cons of employing such approach. A MIMO system design using the TCM was illustrated briey.

Glossary
BW CM CR DSA ESA F-FDD MDN MIMO MN MoM PEC PMC RWG SNR TCM

Bandwidth Characteristic Modes Cognitive Radio Dynamic Spectrum Access Electrically Small Antenna Full-Frequency Division Duplex Mode Decomposition Network Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Matching Network Method of Moments Perfect Electric Conductor Perfect Magnetic Conductor Rao-Wilton-Glisson Signal to Noise Ratio Theory of Characteristic Modes