Single RF Chain MIMO Receiver Using Beam-Steering Time Modulated Antenna Array

Typically, MIMO systems require multiple antennas and multiple radio frequency (RF) chains in order to obtain uncorrelated spatial channels. This leads to cumbersome designs which are expensive to fabricate and consume a lot of energy. This paper shows a MIMO receiver with only one RF chain, which can significantly reduce cost of a MIMO system. Proposed single-RF MIMO receiver is based on a time modulated antenna array. Diverse channels were obtained by periodical ON/OFF switching. Beam-steering was used to further improve the performance of a MIMO system by focusing the main beam of the receiving antenna toward some desired direction in space.