Dual Polarized Dual Band Collocated Beam Switching Antennas for WLAN Applications

Future Access Points (APs) for Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) systems require more streams to enhance channel capacity by using Multiple Inputs Multiple Outputs (MIMO) techniques. Furthermore, antennas with reconfigurable patterns can increase significantly the communication throughput. It is a great challenge to integrate more reconfigurable antennas elements into a limited space. We propose a technique for designing four collocated antennas in order to achieve dual bands and dual polarizations with reconfigurable patterns by using a small area. Using the proposed concept, it is possible to increase the number of streams up to 16 within the same size for conventional antenna arrays in Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) APs. Experimental results will be presented and discussed during the conference.