This work proposes an electrically small 3D beamforming antenna for PHYsical Layer (PHY-layer) security. The antenna comprises two layers of stacked patch structures and is a five-mode five-port MIMO system operating around 1.85 GHz with electrical size ka=0.98 and radiation efficiency of up to 55%. By studying the properties of the excited modes, phase and amplitude control allow for unidirectional beam scanning towards any direction around the elevation and azimuth planes. PHY-layer security is investigated using the directional modulation (DM) technique, which transmits unscrambled baseband constellation symbols to a pre-specified secure direction while simultaneously spatially distorting the same constellations in all other directions. Bit Error Rate (BER) calculations reveal very low values of 2×10−5 for the desired direction of the legitimate receiver, with BER<10−2 beamwidths of 55∘ and 58∘ for the azimuth and elevation planes, respectively.
@article{arxiv.2301.08470,
title = {Electrically Small Multimodal 3D Beamforming MIMO Antenna for PHY-Layer Security},
author = {Abel Zandamela and Nicola Marchetti and Adam Narbudowicz},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2301.08470},
year = {2023}
}