Low-cost smart antennas for advanced wireless systems

Smart antenna is a key technology for mobile communications, satellite communications, radar and sensors as it can enable the wireless systems to achieve the optimum performance by electronically steering its maximum radiation towards the desired directions while forming nulls against interfering sources. Traditional smart antennas are, however, complicated in structure, bulky, power hungry and costly. For commercial applications, it is important to reduce the size, mass, power consumption and cost of smart antennas. Firstly, this paper presents an introduction to smart antennas, followed by a brief review of various types of low-cost smart antennas. Then, several recent examples of low-cost smart antennas reported by the author's group are presented and discussed. These antennas are capable of achieving electronic beam steering within a wide angular range, while having compact sizes, low power consumption and low cost. A detailed list of references is given in the end of this paper.