The effect of imperfect antenna cross-polar performance on the diversity gain of a polarization-diversity receiving system

The achievement of diversity gain relies on the realization of two signal branches with low signal correlation. A statistical technique is used to simulate the coupling between the channels and quantifies the effect of cross-polar coupling as a function of the intrinsic correlation of the received signals and the coupling introduced by the antenna. The definition of polarization orthogonality is examined, and both rigorous and approximate methods of measurement are described.