Large System Analysis of Low-Cost MIMO Transmitters

In this paper, we present some results on multiplexing gain in MIMO systems with parasitic antennas. Two cases are considered. In the first case, i.e., switched parasitic antennas (SPA), a binary MIMO transmitter that requires only a single active antenna which transmits a sinusoid with constant amplitude and phase is proposed. The information is modulated onto an artificial scattering environment realized by a multitude of parasitic antenna elements. We show that this transmitter only requires 3 dB more received power than a conventional MIMO transmitter in the limit of large number of antenna elements. Moreover, in the second case, i.e., electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR), we show that the multiplexing gain is upper bounded by half the number of parasitic antenna elements.