Performance Analysis of Time-Modulated Arrays for the Angle Diversity Reception of Digital Linear Modulated Signals

Diversity occurs whenever several copies of the same transmitted signal arrive at a receiver. Such a situation allows for improving the performance of a wireless communication system transmitting over a radio channel without increasing the transmit power. Previous works have shown that time-modulated arrays are capable of faithfully acquiring digital signals while exploiting angular diversity through the adaptive beamforming of their harmonic patterns. In this work, we take a step further and consider a wireless communication system employing digital linear modulated signals and an innovative receiver that includes a time-modulated array and a maximum ratio combining subsystem. The maximum ratio combiner is adapted to optimally exploit the multipath channel angular diversity. The performance of the system is analyzed in terms of two metrics: the signal-to-noise ratio and the symbol error rate. The results are compared to those achieved with other receivers that include conventional antenna arrays, exhibiting the time-modulated array solution a good tradeoff between performance and hardware complexity.