Ways to Reduce the Number of MIMO Antenna Array Elements

MIMO antenna arrays are considered in this paper and ways to reduce the number of virtual elements are proposed. A complete antenna array is considered, the virtual aperture which is formed of $\mathbf{1 0 0}$ transmitting elements and 50 receiving elements. The virtual aperture contains 5000 virtual elements, each of which corresponds to a signal processing channel. The transition from a rectangular grid, in the nodes of which the elements of the virtual aperture are located, to a triangular grid is implemented. Three variants of the arrangement of a smaller number of transmitters and receivers are proposed. With them, the directional properties (width of the main lobe in the azimuth and elevation planes and the level of side lobes) are implemented with the same quality than in a full antenna array. Variants include: sawtooth arrangement of receiving elements; slant-line arrangement of receiving elements; slant-line arrangement of receiving elements with a reduced number of transmitting elements. It was possible to reduce the number of receiving elements by 13 percent and the number of transmitting elements by 50 percent. The number of signal processing channels was reduced by 60 percent. Ways to control the position of the plane in which the high side lobes of the virtual aperture directivity multiplier are concentrated have been determined.