Comparison of different antenna arrays for the BER reduction in indoor wireless communication

Abstract

In this paper, we use the ultra wideband antenna array combined with particle swarm optimization PSO to minimize the BER for indoor communication systems. Three types of antenna arrays, namely the circular shape, L shape, and Y shape arrays, are used in the transmitter and their corresponding BER on several paths in the indoor environment are calculated. On the basis of the topography of the antenna array and the BER formula, the array pattern synthesis problem can be reformulated into an optimization problem and solved by the PSO. The novelties of our approach is not only choosing BER as the object function instead of the sidelobe level of the antenna pattern, but also considering the antenna feed length effect of each array element. The particle swarm optimization algorithm is employed to optimize the excitation voltages and feed lengths for these antenna arrays to reduce the BER. The strong point of the PSO is that it can find the solution even if the performance index cannot be formulated by simple equations. By the obtained antenna patterns, we can know the route with the lowest BER; meanwhile, transmission power using this route can be reduced. Numerical results show that the synthesized antenna array pattern is effective in focusing maximum gain to the line-of-sight path for these antenna arrays. The synthesized array pattern also can mitigate severe multipath fading in complex propagation environments. As a result, the BER can be reduced substantially in indoor ultra wideband communication systems. The investigated results can help communication engineers improve their planning and design of indoor wireless communication.Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.