Performance of pattern diversity in reconfigurable antenna arrays

In this paper, we investigate the benefits offered by radiation pattern diversity in reconfigurable antenna arrays and place these benefits in context with spatial diversity provided by conventional antenna arrays. These antennas provide pattern diversity that can improve capacity and offers a unique opportunity for antenna system miniaturization for portable wireless devices. We use a common modeling framework to study the impact of spatial and pattern correlation on the performance of the multi-antenna array systems. We consider a geometry-based MIMO channel cluster model to investigate the effects of the channel spatial characteristics and antenna array geometry/radiation patterns on the spatial correlation and system performance. Our findings demonstrate relative diversity performance improvement of at least 3 dB from using pattern diversity over space diversity.