High performance SMILE arrays through an energy efficient multiplexer

Abstract

The Spatial Multiplexing of Local Element (SMILE) technique is a simplified array architecture which uses one RF channel to carry information from multiple RF channels by using multiplexing. Existing SMILE approaches with ordinary multiplexers offer similar performance to a regular array in an interference limited scenario. The performance degrades in a receiver noise limited environment as less signal power is captured. A distinct pulse compression technique based on switched resonator concept is introduced here. Because the circuit can compress the time duration of a modulated RF pulse without changing the phase information and without incurring significant energy loss, it is ideal to be applied as a high performance multiplexer in SMILE arrays. In this paper, the pulse compression technique is demonstrated in both simulation and experiment. The SMILE array based on this novel pulse compression technique is studied in simulation, which shows superior performance than existing SMILE techniques.