Simple Millimeter-Wave Quasi-Maximal-Ratio-Combining Antenna Diversity System Based on Millimeter-Wave Self-heterodyne Transmission Technique

Yozo SHOJI  Hiroyo OGAWA  

Publication
IEICE TRANSACTIONS on Communications   Vol.E87-B    No.8    pp.2203-2211
Publication Date: 2004/08/01
Online ISSN: 
DOI: 
Print ISSN: 0916-8516
Type of Manuscript: PAPER
Category: Wireless Communication Technology
Keyword: 
millimeter-wave,  MMIC,  self-heterodyne,  diversity,  maximal-ratio-combining,  receiver-array,  

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Summary: 
A simple millimeter-wave quasi-maximal-ratio-combin-ing antenna diversity system based on the millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique is described. The millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique is useful for developing millimeter-wave systems with enhanced characteristics in regard to system miniaturization, development and fabrication cost, and the frequency stability of the signal transmission. We also show that applying this technique with an antenna diversity receiver configuration can easily solve a problem peculiar to millimeter-wave systems--the fact that the transmission link always requires a line-of-sight path--without requiring hardware designed with millimeter-scale precision. In this paper, we theoretically analyze the operating principle of a combining antenna diversity system based on the millimeter-wave self-heterodyne transmission technique. We further prove that we can obtain a diversity gain in accordance with that of a maximal-ratio combining diversity system without resorting to any complicated control of the received signal envelope and phase. Our experiments using the simplest two-branch diversity structure have validated the operating principle derived in our theoretical analysis. Our results show that a received CNR improvement of 3 dB is obtained as a diversity gain. We also demonstrate that circuit precision corresponding to the wavelength of the intermediate frequency, rather than to the millimeter wavelength, is sufficient to obtain the diversity effect when we control the signal phase or delay in combining the received signals.