Research on multiple antenna systems has been a hot topic in recent years due to the demands for higher transmission rate and more reliable link in rich scattering environment in wireless communications. Using multiple antennas at both the transmitter side and the receiver side increases the channel capacity without additional frequency spectrum and transmitted power. However, due to the limited space at the size-limited terminal devices, the most critical problem in designing multiple antennas is the severe mutual coupling among them. The aim of this thesis is to provide compact, decoupled and efficient multiple antenna designs for terminal devices. At the same time, we propose a simple and cost effective method in multiple antenna measurement. All these efforts contribute to the development of terminal devices for the fourth generation wireless communication. The background and theory of multiple antenna systems are introduced first, in which three operating schemes of multiple antenna systems are discussed. Critical factors influencing the performance of multiple antenna systems are also analyzed in details. To design efficient multiple antenna systems in compact terminals, several decoupling methods, including defected ground plane, current localization, orthogonal polarization and decoupling networks, are proposed. The working mechanism and design procedure of each method are introduced, and their effectiveness is compared. Those methods can be applied to most of the terminal antennas, reducing the mutual coupling by at least 6dB. In some special cases, especially for low frequency bands below 1GHz, the chassis of the device itself radiates like an antenna, which complicates the antenna decoupling. Thus, we extend the general decoupling methods to the cases when the chassis is excited. Based on the characteristic mode analysis, three different solutions are provided, i.e., optimizing antenna locations, localizing antenna currents and creating orthogonal modes. These methods are applied to mobile phones, providing a more reliable link and a higher transmission rate, which are evaluated by diversity gain and channel capacity, respectively. In order to measure the performance of multiple antenna systems, it is necessary to obtain the correlation coefficients. However, the traditional measurement technique, which requires the phase and polarization information of the radiation patterns, is very expensive and time consuming. In this thesis, a more practical and convenient method is proposed. Fairly good accuracy is achieved when it is applied to various kinds of antennas. To design a compact and efficient multiple antenna system, besides the reduction of mutual coupling, the performance of each single antenna is also important. The techniques for antenna reconfiguration are demonstrated. Frequency and pattern reconfigurable antennas are constructed, providing more flexibility to multiple antenna systems. / QC 20120604

Recently, reconfigurable antennas have attracted significant interest due to their high adaptation with changing system requirements and environmental conditions. Reconfigurable antennas have the ability to change their radiation pattern, frequency or polarization independently according to the application requirements. In this thesis, three different reconfigurable antenna structures have been designed / beam-steerable meanderline antenna, dual circularly polarized meanderline antenna and dual-frequency slot-dipole array. Traveling wave meanderline antenna arrays are investigated in detail and a beam-steerable traveling wave meanderline antenna array has been introduced for X-band applications. Beam-steering capability of the antenna array has been achieved by loading the antenna elements with varactor diodes. Theoretical analysis and computer simulations of the proposed antenna have been verified with experimental results. Radiation direction of the 8-element meanderline array can be rotated 10&deg / by changing the varactor diode&rsquo / s bias voltage from 0V up to 20V. Also, a polarization-agile meanderline antenna array has been designed and simulated. Polarization of the circularly polarized meanderline array can be altered between right hand circularly polarized and left hand circularly polarized by using RF MEMS switches. The third type of reconfigurable antenna investigated in this thesis is a dual frequency slot-dipole array operating at X- and Ka-band. Electrical length of the slot dipoles has been tuned by using RF MEMS switches. Antenna prototypes have been manufactured for &lsquo / on&rsquo / and &lsquo / off&rsquo / states of RF MEMS switches and it has been shown that the operating frequency can be changed between 10 GHz and 15.4 GHz.