On the Implementation of Blind Interference Alignment With Single-Radio Parasitic Antennas

Abstract

This paper studies the electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna as a solution for beam pattern switching to implement blind interference alignment (BIA). The ESPAR antenna uses a single radio-frequency (RF) chain, and its beamforming is achieved by simply tuning the reactance loads of parasitic elements. Furthermore, ESPAR's beam pattern can be designed to enhance the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), thereby improving the performance of BIA. The focus of this work is the design of the ESPAR beam pattern to realize and improve BIA. In the first approach, each receiver ESPAR antenna dynamically selects the proper beam patterns from among the sector beam patterns, which are pre-designed to access different angular sectors with constant optimal antenna efficiency. We also propose a singular value decomposition (SVD) beamforming method, by means of the available channel state information at the receiver and a dynamic matching network for a high antenna efficiency. The simulation results illustrate the improvement of BIA with proposed methods, especially in the low and moderate SNR region, due to ESPAR's beamforming capability.