Single-RF Diversity Receiver for OFDM System Using ESPAR Antenna with Alternate Direction

This paper presents a single-RF diversity scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) receiver using Electronically Steerable Passive Array Radiator (ESPAR) antenna whose direction changes alternately at the OFDM symbol rate. OFDM is widely used for mobile communication systems because of its broadband wireless transmission capability in a severe time dispersive multipath propagation channel. OFDM is, however, not efficient for mitigating the performance degradation due to fading. Diversity is an efficient technique for solving this problem. Although maximal ratio combining diversity is the most efficient technique, it requires the same number of RF front-end circuitry and analog-todigital converters (ADC) as antennas. Although ESPAR antenna-based diversity technique requires only a single-RF and ADC, the convergence is not fast enough to track fast variation of the channel state. Furthermore, it is not efficient in a frequency selective channel. In this paper, we propose a new OFDM diversity scheme using ESPAR antenna. The proposed scheme is capable of obtaining the diversity gain in a frequency selective fading environment and avoids the slow convergence rate problem in the conventional technique using ESPAR antenna. Computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme gives diversity gain in a frequency selective fading channel.