Flexible Continuous Controlled Smart Antenna Platform

This thesis introduces the origin and subsequent development of smart antennas, up to the present day status of R&D test platform research. A novel, exible, low-cost, easy-to-use platform prototype was developed and is described in this thesis. The prototype is based on quadrature modulators, D/A quadrature control converters and low-speed synthesis control. The prototype was put to the test with four antenna elements at a 2.4GHz operating frequency. A set of test results demonstrated the validity of the platform. This research will be of benefit in digital beamforming algorithm research, MIMO technology or software defined radio techniques.