Employing Directional Antennas in Double-Directional Radio Channel

A novel scheme that jointly utilizes switched beam antennas in double-directional radio channel (DDRC) is proposed. Employing directional beam pattern at both transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx) sides in DDRC provides distributed directivity gain (DDG). Jointly switching directional patterns at both ends provides extra diversity gain. We employ two electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antennas as the switched beam antennas. The scheme features a lower system complexity. The achieved capacity is even higher than that of a 2-by-2 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system in the same channel environment.