Reconfigurable antenna for future wireless communication systems

This paper deals with the processing techniques which are known as reconfigurable antennas: these methods are foreseen to be a booster for the future high rate wireless communications, both for the benefits in terms of performance and for the capacity gains. In particular, adaptive digital signal processing can provide improved performance for the desired signal in terms of error probability or signal-to-noise ratio while the bandwidth efficiency can be increased linearly with the number of transmitting and receiving antennas. In this article, the main antenna processing techniques are reviewed and described, aiming at highlighting performance/complexity trade-offs and how they could be implemented in the future systems. The coexistence of all these different technologies in a wireless environment requires high efficiency and flexibility of the transceiver. Future transceiver implementations which are based on the Software Defined Radio technology are also reviewed and described.