Handbook of Smart Antennas for RFID Systems

CHAPTER 20

LOW-COST AND COMPACT RF-MIMO TRANSCEIVERS

IGNACIO SANTAMARÍA JAVIER VÍA VICTOR ELVIRA JESÚS IBÁÑEZ JESÚS PÉREZ

Department of Communications Engineering, University of Cantabria, Santander, Spain

RALF EICKHOFF and UWE MAYER

Chair for Circuit Design and Network Theory, Technische Universitaet Dresden, Dresden, Germany

20.1 INTRODUCTION

In the last decade, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless technology has gained considerable attention due to its potential to significantly increase spectral efficiency and/or reliability compared to traditional single-input single-output (SISO) systems [1–3]. A full-rank n × n MIMO channel is equivalent to n orthogonal SISO channels [1]; therefore, to exploit all the benefits of the MIMO channel (diversity or multiplexing gain), n parallel antenna paths must be independently acquired and processed at baseband. Consequently, the hardware costs, size, and power consumption are multiplied by a factor of n as well. Despite the numerous advantages of MIMO systems, these higher costs have delayed the wide-scale commercial deployment of multiple-antenna wireless transceivers mainly in handsets or low-cost terminals. The demand of low-cost, low-power-consumpting and compact wireless transceivers is even more important for radio-frequency identification (RFID) applications, which explains why conventional MIMO technologies have not found widespread application in RFID systems [4].

In this chapter, we describe a novel MIMO architecture ...