Design & prototype development of a smart beamforming antenna

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A smart antenna is an array of radiating antenna elements employing a digital controller to achieve two main functions - direction finding and beamforming. Smart antennas can increase the capacity of a RF system and broaden its network coverage by steering multiple beams to track mobile stations, while compensating aperture distortion or reducing multipath fading and co-channel interference. The application of smart antenna systems requires accurately controlling the phase and amplitude of each radiator element in order to accurately steer the antenna beam to predefined angles/directions. Unfortunately, Sinclair Technologies had neither the technical expertise nor the resources to perform all of the required signal processing technique used in antenna arrays for directional signal transmission or reception (beamforming). Consequently, there is an urgent need on the feeding network design (i.e. power amps, phase shifters), microcontroller/ field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and firmware required to accurately control the phase and amplitude of each radiator element in order to accurately steer the antenna beam to predefined angles/directions.