Two Port Reconfigurable Circular Patch Antenna for MIMO Systems

In this paper we demonstrate a novel reconfigurable multi-port circular patch antenna that improves the performance of a MIMO wireless communications system through pattern diversity. Different modes of the circular patch antenna can be excited by varying its radius with PIN diode switches. The performance achievable with such reconfigurable antennas in a 2times2 MIMO communication system is evaluated using computational electromagnetic ray tracing simulations and channel measurements in an indoor environment. The results show an improvement in throughput while reducing the physical size of the antenna array on the communication device.