Smart wireless antenna arrays

Abstract

Summary form only given. The antenna is indispensable in wireless communications. An antenna array is well known for its power in harnessing spatially distributed radio energy for more reliable data reception. Current trends in smart antenna technology primarily focus on mobile environments where fast channel fading is predominant in limiting channel capacities. We present a new frontier in signal processing for wireless communications, which we call smart wireless antenna arrays or, more briefly, wireless antennas. Most (if not all) current antennas are wireless on one end but wired on the other. Wired antennas of large apertures are not always convenient for users. Therefore, we have endeavored to develop smarter antennas that have no wires. Our wireless antennas (or virtual antennas) are a number of wireless mobile relays distributed around a destination receiver (or a set of destination receivers). These relays could be embedded in any wireless mobile device. We show a signal processing framework for wireless antennas.