Compensation for the mutual coupling effect in smart antenna arrays

Abstract

Smart antennas techniques are considered to be the best means to mitigate the effects of severe and dynamic interference on the performance of modern communication systems. But in a practical array system, the eceiving elements of the smart array must be of some physical size. The elements receive and re-radiate the incident signals, which results in the mutual coupling among them. The mutual coupling distorts the linear phase front of the incoming signal which results in an inaccurate DOA estimation and significant degradation of the system performance. Therefore, any practical implementation of smart antenna systems requires compensation for mutual coupling effect in smart antennas.This research work deals with the mutual coupling compensation in the area of smart array antennas and some array signal processing issues. A number of problems within this diverse area are analyzed using theory and methods not only from signal processing but also from antennas, computation of electromagnetic and mathematic and statistic theory. In fact, this interdisciplinary character is a major theme and contribution of the thesis since most of the literatures on the analyzed topics did not make this connection.