Passive Self-Interference Suppression for Single-Channel Full-Duplex Operation

Full-duplex radios have become a topic of increased interest in the wireless communications community. As part of this development, many efforts were directed to passively decrease the self-interference level at the antenna outputs. However, in many proposed solutions transmission and reception occur through different propagation channels. This article demonstrates and quantifies the negative impact of channel differentiation on pivotal applications of full-duplex radio, such as cognitive radio. Antenna designs used for self-interference suppression in full-duplex radio architectures are analyzed. In order to ensure that transmission and reception occur within the same propagation channel, the use of the envelope correlation coefficient is proposed. The article aims to first define the problem and proposes a metric to quantitatively assess full-duplex antenna designs. This is followed by analysis and discussion of representative full-duplex solutions (i.e., their antenna and passive RF feed components) proposed in the literature. Finally, it is demonstrated for the first time that passive non-magnetic self-interference suppression comes at the cost of increased losses in the structure. A theoretical upper limit for the antenna efficiency is proposed. Its consistency is verified for three representative full-duplex antenna designs that are well documented in the literature.