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To ensure high-reliability communication in healthcare networks, this paper presents a smart gateway system that includes an angle-of-arrival (AOA) estimation and a beam steering function for a small circular antenna array. To form a beam toward healthcare sensors, the proposed antenna estimates the direction of the sensors utilizing the radio-frequency-based interferometric monopulse technique. The fabricated antenna was assessed based on the measurements of complex directivity and the over-the-air (OTA) testing in Rice propagation environments using a two-dimensional fading emulator. The measurement results reveal that the accuracy of the AOA estimation agrees well with that of the analytical data obtained through the Monte Carlo simulation. This antenna is embedded with a beam steering function employing phased array technology, which can form a beam spaced at 45° intervals. The ability of full-azimuth beam steering with regard to the proposed antenna was evaluated by beam propagation experiments using a human phantom in an indoor environment. The received signal of the proposed antenna with beam steering increases more than that of a conventional dipole antenna, confirming that the developed antenna has great potential of achieving high-reliability communication in a healthcare network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an over-the-air testing method in which a full-rank channel matrix is created for a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system utilizing a fading emulator with a small number of scatterers. In the proposed method, in order to mimic a fading emulator with a large number of scatterers, the scatterers are virtually positioned by rotating the massive MIMO antenna. The performance of a 64-element quasi-half-wavelength dipole circular array antenna was evaluated using a two-dimensional fading emulator. The experimental results reveal that a large number of available eigenvalues are obtained from the channel response matrix, confirming that the proposed method, which utilizes a full-rank channel matrix, can be used to assess a massive MIMO antenna system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a method of implementing a 4 × 4 correlation matrix for evaluating the uplink channel properties of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas using an over-the-air measurement system. First, the implementation model used to determine the correlation coefficients between the signals received at the base station (BS) antennas via the uplink channel is described. Then, a methodology is introduced to achieve a 4 × 4 correlation matrix for a BS MIMO antenna based on Jakes' model by setting the initial phases of the secondary wave sources in the two-dimensional channel model. The performance of the uplink channel for a four-element MIMO terminal array antenna is evaluated using a two-dimensional bidirectional fading emulator. The results show that the measured correlation coefficients between the signals received via the uplink channel at the BS antennas using the proposed method are in good agreement with the BS correlation characteristics calculated using Monte Carlo simulation and the theoretical formula, thereby confirming the effectiveness of the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) antenna system with the ability to perform full-azimuth beam steering, and with the aim of realizing greater than 20 Gbps vehicular communications. The MIMO antenna described in this paper comprises 64 elements arranged in a daisy chain array structure, where 32 subarrays are formed by pairing elements in each subarray; the antenna yields 32 independent subchannels for MIMO transmission, and covers all communication targets regardless of their position relative to the array. Analytical results reveal that the proposed antenna system can provide a channel capacity of more than 200 bits/s/Hz at a signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR) of 30 dB over the whole azimuth, which is equivalent to 20 Gbps for a bandwidth of 100 MHz. This remarkably high channel capacity is shown to be due to two significant factors; the improved directivity created by the optimum in-phase excitation and the low correlation between the subarrays due to the orthogonal alignment of the array with respect to the incident waves. Over-the-air (OTA) experiments confirm the increase in channel capacity; the proposed antenna can maintain a constant transmission rate over all azimuth angles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]