Sandwiched-Monopole MIMO Array for Full-Solid Angle Flying Car-to-Car Communications

In this paper, a sandwiched-monopole MIMO array is proposed for illuminating upper and lower hemispheres in space for use in flying car-to-car communications. By adjusting the size of a ground plane of the array, the radiation pattern in high elevation angles is enhanced, resulting in an increase in the channel capacity near zenith and nadir directions. The analytical results reveal that the proposed antenna using monopole antenna elements enables the outage probability of MIMO transmission to be zero for an 87 % achievable channel capacity over the entire solid angle, compared with a 22 % achievable channel capacity for the array using dipole antenna elements.