Design Optimization of SIMO Receivers with Compact Uniform Linear Arrays and Limited Precision A/D Conversion

Antenna arrays can be made compact when the spacing between adjacent antennas is reduced to less than half of the wavelength. This facilitates the deployment of multiple antennas to communication devices that are limited in their physical dimensions, yet introduces significant spatial correlation between the channels as well as antenna mutual coupling. With careful design of a matching network at the receiver front-end, the antennas can be decoupled and superior performance can be achieved as compared to half-wavelength arrays. In this work, we investigate the design optimization of a multi-antenna receiver with a compact uniform linear array, where we try to find the optimal antenna spacing and the number of antennas that lead to the maximal channel capacity and energy efficiency of the system. Moreover, we take into account the impact of A/D conversion with limited precision, which results in a trade-off between quantization error and power consumption. Simulation results accentuate the advantage of using small compact antenna arrays and low bit resolutions for the A/D converters.