Electronically Steerable Parasitic Array Radiator Antenna Research Articles

Design and on-field test of ESPAR antenna for UAV-based long-range IoT applications

Design and on-field test of ESPAR antenna for UAV-based long-range IoT applications

Microstrip ESPAR Antenna With Conical Beam Scanning

Microstrip ESPAR Antenna With Conical Beam Scanning

Miniaturized Electronically Steerable Parasitic Array Antenna

In this article we propose a miniaturized dual-band electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna. The antenna can generate up to two steerable beams. The beam-steering range of the proposed antenna is 360˚ in the azimuth plane. The antenna’s eual-band coverage includes the frequency ranges from 2.3 GHz to 2.53 GHz and from 2.9 GHz to 3.7 GHz. The antenna consists of six folded parasitic monopole elements surrounding an active conical element. The folded monopole element design offers three times lower antenna height than that of the conventional ESPAR antennas. The active element has conical shape and it is larger in length than the parasitic monopole elements, this enables the dual-band operation. Thus, the proposed design is not only smaller than the conventional ESPAR antennas but it also achieves dual-band operation. Despite its compact design, the antenna has a peak gain of 6.3 dBi, which is equivalent to the gain of conventional ESPAR antennas. These characteristics make the antenna a good candidate for next generation communication systems.

Direction of Arrival Estimation Based on Received Signal Strength Using Two-Row Electronically Steerable Parasitic Array Radiator Antenna.

In this paper, we present a novel approach to direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation using two-row electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna which has 12 passive elements and allows for elevation and azimuth beam switching using a simple microcontroller, relying solely on received signal strength (RSS) values measured at the antenna output port. To this end, we thoroughly investigate all 18 available 3D antenna radiation patterns of the antenna measured in an anechoic chamber with respect to radiation coverage in the horizontal and vertical direction and propose a generalization of the power-pattern cross-correlation (PPCC) algorithm involving a high number of multiple calibration planes (MCP) as well as specific combinations of radiation pattern sets. Additionally, a new way of RSS-based DoA estimation accuracy assessment, which involves thorough testing conducted along the elevation direction when RF signals impinging on the antenna arrive from arbitrary θ angles, has been reported in this paper to verify the overall algorithm’s performance. The results obtained for different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels indicate that two-row ESPAR antenna can produce, even for low SNR values, accurate DoA estimation in the horizontal plane without prior knowledge about the elevation direction of the unknown RF signals by using appropriate combinations of only 12 3D antenna radiation patterns.

Relay-Aided Wireless Sensor Network Discovery Algorithm for Dense Industrial IoT Utilizing ESPAR Antennas

Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) applications require reliable and efficient wireless communication. Assuming dense wireless sensor networks (WSNs) operating in a harsh environment, a concept of a time-division multiple access (TDMA)-based WSN enriched with electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antennas is proposed and examined in this work. The utilized antenna provides one omnidirectional and 12 directional radiation patterns that can be electronically switched by the sensor node. We introduce a relay discovery algorithm, which selects those sensor nodes with an ESPAR antenna capable to act as relay. The selection of the relay nodes is based on a certain link quality threshold that algorithm uses as input. The outcome is a reduction in the number of layers or hops with a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). To emphasize the physical aspect of the wireless propagation, we introduce the measured antenna radiation patterns and consider two different path-loss propagation models representing blockage-free and blockage-prone industrial environments. A number of network simulations were performed and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as a link quality measure was examined with respect to the network density and different measured radiation pattern settings. The main outcomes show a tradeoff between SNR per link and the percentage of nodes that can serve as relays. As a result, we propose network design guidelines that take under consideration the QoS range with respect to SNR together with an optimal number of antenna radiation patterns that should be selected as a tradeoff between latency, energy consumption, and reliability in a network.

Two-Row ESPAR Antenna With Simple Elevation and Azimuth Beam Switching

In this letter, we propose a two-row electronically steerable parasitic array radiator antenna designed for direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation in Internet of Things (IoT) applications relying on simple microcontrollers. The antenna is capable of elevation and azimuth beam switching using a simple microcontroller-oriented steering circuit, and provides 18 directional radiation patterns, which can be grouped in 3 distinctive sets having different directions in the elevation. For each elevation direction, there are six different beam configurations that cover 360° in the horizontal plane. Measurements of the realized antenna prototype carried out in an anechoic chamber show good agreement with numerical simulations. The antenna prototype provides low sidelobe level, low half power beamwidth in both elevation and horizontal directions, and exhibit monotonous drop from the maximum value for all 18 radiation patterns. Therefore, the antenna is a good candidate for IoT nodes capable of DoA estimation in situations when radio frequency signals are impinging the antenna from different directions in elevation.

Calibration-Free Single-Anchor Indoor Localization Using an ESPAR Antenna.

In this paper, we present a novel, low-cost approach to indoor localization that is capable of performing localization processes in real indoor environments and does not require calibration or recalibration procedures. To this end, we propose a single-anchor architecture and design based on an electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna and Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 utilizing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) protocol. The proposed algorithm relies on received signal strength (RSS) values measured by the receiver equipped with the ESPAR antenna for every considered antenna radiation pattern. The calibration-free concept is achieved by using inexpensive BLE nodes installed in known positions on the walls of the test room and acting as reference nodes for the positioning algorithm. Measurements performed in the indoor environment show that the proposed approach can successfully provide positioning results better than those previously reported for single-anchor ESPAR antenna localization systems employing the classical fingerprinting method and relying on time-consuming calibration procedures.

Low-Complexity Adaptive Spatial Processing of ESPAR Antenna Systems

Accessing the spatial domain of wireless environments through antenna arrays has become key to improve the use of energy and, in light of this, there is an increasing need for low cost multi-antenna architectures. As one alternative, the Electronically Steerable Parasitic Array Radiator (ESPAR) was proposed as a coupling-based inexpensive option; allowing to significantly reduce the amount of required radio frequency (RF) front-ends. As a caveat, due to its inherent non-linear behavior, the required computational complexity can be prohibitive. Additionally, the unavailability of precise mutual coupling and channel state information (CSI) becomes a further issue difficult to avoid in practical setups. In this regard, the current work has two main contributions: a) it deals with the computational complexity by proposing the linearization of ESPAR’s system model through the truncated Taylor expansion of the admittance matrix; facilitating the spatial processing algorithm of interest. Also, the authors propose b) to face the mutual coupling and CSI unavailability issue via the joint estimation of the channel-ESPAR parameters as directly observed through the single RF front-end. Relying on the optimization of the linearized system model, the pilot-based algorithm to be introduced allows ESPAR to track the configuration that synthesizes coherent combination at a significantly low complexity. Particularly, as shown through Monte-Carlo simulation, the latter allows to obtain 4 dB of array gain with a single RF front-end via a 5-element ESPAR.

GA-MIMO: Genetic Algorithm for Optimization of ESPAR Antenna on Beamspace MIMO

An electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR) antenna can be used on a beamspace (BS)-multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system to reduce the device complexity. An ESPAR antenna has beamforming ability with single RF chain. However, antenna structure and channel conditions affect the number of orthogonal basis pattern which generated using Gram-Schmidt method. Based on this problem, reactance value at each parasitic element need to be optimized to form radiation pattern that required by the BS-MIMO. In this research, Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used to optimize reactance value which represented by the correlation between the desired and achieved radiation pattern, in different number of elements and different channel condition. GA is selected because this problem can be modeled as chromosome and several individual. Furthermore, the result shows in channel-ignorant and channel-aware, antenna with seven elements has a correlation in median value of 99.46% and 90.58%, respectively. Antena electronically steerable passive array radiator (ESPAR) dapat digunakan dalam sistem beamspace (BS)-multiple input multiple output (MIMO) dalam mengatasi kompleksitas perangkat. Antena ESPAR memiliki kemampuan untuk membentuk pola radiasi pada arah tertentu dengan menggunakan terminal tunggal, namun struktur antena dan kondisi kanal mempengaruhi pola dasar ortogonal yang dihasilkan melalui metode Gram Schmidt. Berdasarkan permasalahan tersebut, nilai reaktansi pada setiap elemen parasit perlu dioptimasi sehingga dapat menghasilkan pola radiasi yang dibutuhkan oleh sistem BS-MIMO. Pada penelitian ini, Algoritma Genetika digunakan untuk mengoptimasi nilai reaktansi yang direpresentasikan melalui korelasi antara pola radiasi yang dibutuhkan dengan pola radiasi yang dihasilkan, dalam jumlah elemen yang berbeda dan kondisi kanal yang berbeda. AG dipilih karena permasalahan ini dapat dimodelkan sebagai kromosom dan beberapa individual. Hasil analisis pada kondisi channel-ignorant dan channel-aware menunjukkan bahwa antena dengan tujuh elemen memiliki korelasi nilai median sebesar 99,46% dan 90,58%.

λ/64‐spaced compact ESPAR antenna via analog RF switches for a single RF chain MIMO system

In this study, an electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna via analog radio frequency (RF) switches for a single RF chain MIMO system is presented. The proposed antenna elements are spaced at λ/64, and the antenna size is miniaturized via a dielectric radome. The optimum reactance load value is calculated via the beamforming load search algorithm. A switch simplifies the design and implementation of the reactance loads and does not require additional complex antenna matching circuits. The measured impedance bandwidth of the proposed ESPAR antenna is 1,500 MHz (1.75 GHz–3.25 GHz). The proposed antenna exhibits a beam pattern that is reconfigurable at 2.48 GHz due to changes in the reactance value, and the measured peak antenna gain is 4.8 dBi. The reception performance is measured by using a 4 4 BPSK signal. The measured average SNR is 17 dB when using the proposed ESPAR antenna as a transmitter, and the average SNR is 16.7 dB when using a four‐conventional monopole antenna.

RSS-Based DoA Estimation for ESPAR Antennas Using Support Vector Machine

In this letter, it is shown how direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation for electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antennas, which are designed to be integrated within wireless sensor network nodes, can be improved by applying support vector classification approach to received signal strength (RSS) values recorded at an antenna's output port. The proposed method relies on ESPAR antenna's radiation patterns measured during the initial calibration phase of the DoA estimation process. These patterns are then used in the support vector machine (SVM) training process adapted to handle ESPAR antenna-based DoA estimation. Measurements using a fabricated ESPAR antenna indicate that the proposed SVM approach provides more accurate results than available RSS-based estimation algorithms relying on power pattern cross-correlation method.

Low-Profile ESPAR Antenna for RSS-Based DoA Estimation in IoT Applications

In this paper, we have introduced a low-profile electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna that can successfully be used to estimate the direction-of-arrival (DoA) of incoming signals in wireless sensor network (WSN) applications, in which the height of the complete antenna has to be low. The proposed antenna is over three times lower than high-profile ESPAR antenna designs currently available in the literature for the DoA estimation; it can provide eight unique main beam directions and relies on simplified beam steering, which makes it applicable to simple and inexpensive WSN nodes. Measurements using our fabricated ESPAR antenna prototype indicate that relying solely on the received signal strength values recorded at the antenna output port, it is possible to achieve accurate DoA estimation results with error levels similar to those available for high-profile ESPAR antennas relying on the similar energy-efficient simplified beam steering concept and having 12 unique main beam directions. As a consequence, the overall time required for the DoA estimation using the proposed antenna can be reduced by 33%.

RSS-Based DoA Estimation Using ESPAR Antennas and Interpolated Radiation Patterns

In this letter, it is shown how an algorithm, which employs received signal strength values in order to estimate direction of arrival (DoA) of impinging signals in wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes equipped with electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antennas, can easily be improved by applying an interpolation algorithm to radiation patterns recorded in the calibration phase of the DoA estimation process. The proposed method allows one to measure ESPAR antenna's radiation patterns during the initial calibration phase with much coarser than 1° angular resolution, while the overall DoA estimation accuracy can be kept at the similar level. Measurements using a fabricated ESPAR antenna have indicated that anechoic chamber calibration procedure of WSN nodes equipped with such antennas can be done almost 50% faster, which in consequence will reduce system deployment costs in practical WSN applications where a number of WSN nodes can easily reach hundreds.

Efficient Channel Estimation and Detection Techniques for MIMO-OFDM Receivers Using ESPAR Antenna with Low-Complexity

Efficient Channel Estimation and Detection Techniques for MIMO-OFDM Receivers Using ESPAR Antenna with Low-Complexity

Single-RF Multi-Antenna Transmission With Peak Power Constraint

Electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) technology enables the implementation of antenna arrays of a number of elements with a single radio frequency (RF) source. Two approaches to achieve stable transmission using an ESPAR antenna (EA) are to increase the self-resistance of an EA or to transmit signals closely approximating the actual signals that keep the EA stable. Both approaches did not take into account the impact of limited power on an EA transmission, which is a practical constraint on power amplifier design. We propose a new transmission scheme to enable an EA to provide stable multiple antenna functionality taking into account the instantaneous total power requirement. This problem is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem and it is solved analytically by coordinate transformation and geometric analysis. The optimal approximate signals are obtained using root finding and interior-point algorithms. Moreover, it is shown through simulations that our proposed scheme achieves similar symbol error rate performance to that of the standard multiple antenna transmitter with multiple RF chains under power limited single-user and multi-user transmission scenarios. Furthermore, it is shown that increasing the self-resistance of an EA to achieve stability is highly power inefficient.

Spatial Multiplexing of OFDM Signals With QPSK Modulation Over ESPAR

An electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) transmitter, employing one active and one parasitic antenna element, which can simultaneously transmit two orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals with quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) modulation via spatial multiplexing, is developed. In particular, a minimum mean square error (MMSE) scheme for quantizing the parasitic load impedance is developed to reduce the number of distinct load impedance values that should be realized for spatial multiplexing over ESPAR. To this end, the probability density function of the parasitic load impedance is derived, and the realizable region of the load impedance is analyzed. It is observed that the resistance of the active antenna element should be large enough to transmit OFDM signals. The characteristics of two existing ESPAR antennas with different mutual coupling matrices are examined, and it is observed that the one with the larger active antenna resistance is suitable for OFDM transmission. The bit error rate (BER) and the receive error vector magnitude performances of the proposed ESPAR systems with 6/8-bit quantizers and zero-forcing (ZF) receiver are compared with those of the corresponding ideal multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system through computer simulation. The results demonstrate that the performances of the proposed ESPAR with the 8-bit quantizer and the ideal MIMO systems can be almost identical, whereas the proposed ESPAR with the 6-bit quantizer exhibits some performance loss.

Simple 2-D Direction-of-Arrival Estimation Using an ESPAR Antenna

In this letter, it has been shown how an electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna can be used for 2-D direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation employing received signal strength (RSS) values only. The proposed approach relies on changes in RSS values recorded at the antenna output port observed for different vertical and horizontal directions, while antenna's main beam sweeps 360° area around the ESPAR antenna. Based on the observed diversity in RSS values, obtained for different ESPAR antenna radiation patterns and different directions of a signal impinging the antenna, a simple 2-D DoA estimator has been proposed. Measurements using the fabricated ESPAR antenna indicate that, by relying solely on RSS values and the proposed algorithm, it is possible to perform 2-D DoA estimation with the acceptable accuracy in realistic and inexpensive systems, where the phase of impinging signals cannot easily be measured.

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

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.

Design and Beamforming Performance of the Compact ESPAR Antenna for the Beam Space MIMO System

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is essential to wireless and mobile communication for the higher channel capacity. However, this MIMO system requires many active RF (radio frequency) stages, and is very difficult to be used in mobile devices. It produces the high energy consumption at RF stage as well as the high hardware complexity. Especially, it will be more serious in the massive MIMO system that is strongly considered as an enabling technology for the 5G mobile communication system. In order to solve this problem, beam-space MIMO (BS-MIMO) systems were proposed using the electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna, which work as the MIMO system using single RF stage with many passive parasitic elements. However, there are some limits in this ESPAR based BS-MIMO system because of this many passive parasitic elements. The conventional BS-MIMO system basically uses two parasitic elements for one dimension of MIMO. So, in this paper we like to propose a design method for reducing the passive elements number in this BS-MIMO system. In the proposed system, we cut down the number of the parasitic elements into half. So, the proposed BS-MIMO system uses one parasitic element for one dimension of MIMO. To design 8 ? 8 MIMO system, only eight elements of parasitic elements are needed instead of 16 elements in conventional design. Since this proposed ESPAR based BS-MIMO system requires only the half number of parasitic elements, we can design more compact ESPAR antenna design. Also, we can easily increase the MIMO dimension with compact size by this proposed ESPAR antenna. Simulation results can confirm that the proposed ESPAR BS-MIMO system with half number of elements keeps the very similar performance of the conventional system and acceptable beamforming performance as well. This proposed system could be very useful for the massive MIMO system design for the 5G mobile communication.

Random Aerial Beamforming for Underlay Cognitive Radio With Exposed Secondary Users

In this paper, we introduce the exposed secondary-user (SU) problem in underlay cognitive radio systems, where both the secondary-to-primary and primary-to-secondary channels have a line-of-sight (LoS) component. Based on a Rician model for the LoS channels, we show, both analytically and numerically, that LoS interference hinders the achievable SU capacity when interference constraints are imposed at the primary user (PU) receiver. This is caused by the poor dynamic range of interference channel fluctuations when a dominant LoS component exists. To improve the capacity of such a system, we propose the use of an electronically steerable parasitic array radiator (ESPAR) antenna at the secondary terminals. An ESPAR antenna involves a single radio frequency (RF) chain and has a reconfigurable radiation pattern that is controlled by assigning arbitrary weights to $M$ orthonormal basis radiation patterns via altering a set of reactive loads. By viewing the orthonormal patterns as multiple virtual dumb antennas , we randomly vary their weights over time, creating artificial channel fluctuations that can perfectly eliminate the undesired impact of LoS interference. This scheme is termed as random aerial beamforming (RAB) and is well suited for compact and low-cost mobile terminals as it uses a single RF chain. Moreover, we investigate the exposed-SU problem in a multiuser setting, showing that LoS interference hinders multiuser interference diversity and affects the growth rate of the SU capacity as a function of the number of users. Using RAB, we show that LoS interference can, in fact, be exploited to improve multiuser diversity by boosting the effective number of users .