Pattern-Division Multiplexing for Continuous-Aperture MIMO

TL;DR

This paper introduces pattern-division multiplexing for continuous-aperture MIMO systems, significantly enhancing sum-rate performance by optimizing electromagnetic wave patterns on a continuous antenna surface.

Contribution

It proposes a novel pattern-division multiplexing method for CAP-MIMO, transforming pattern design into a projection problem and demonstrating substantial performance gains.

Findings

Sum-rate increased by approximately 260% over benchmark schemes.

Proposed scheme effectively optimizes electromagnetic wave patterns.

Pattern-division multiplexing enhances communication performance in CAP-MIMO.

Abstract

In recent years, continuous-aperture multiple-input multiple-output (CAP-MIMO) is reinvestigated to achieve improved communication performance with limited antenna apertures. Unlike the classical MIMO composed of discrete antennas, CAP-MIMO has a continuous antenna surface, which is expected to generate any current distribution (i.e., pattern) and induce controllable spatial electromagnetic waves. In this way, the information can be modulated on the electromagnetic waves, which makes it promising to approach the ultimate capacity of finite apertures. The pattern design for CAP-MIMO is the key factor to determine the communication performance, but it has not been well studied in the literature. In this paper, we propose the pattern-division multiplexing to design the patterns for CAP-MIMO. Specifically, we first derive the system model of a typical multi-user CAP-MIMO system, which allows us to formulate the sum-rate maximization problem. Then, we propose a general pattern-division multiplexing technique to transform the design of continuous pattern functions to the design of their projection lengths on finite orthogonal bases. Based on this technique, we further propose a pattern design scheme to solve the formulated sum-rate maximization problem. Simulation results show that, the sum-rate achieved by the proposed scheme is about 260% higher than that achieved by the benchmark scheme.