Effect of Polarization on the Performance of Adaptive Antenna Arrays

The polarized electromagnetic waves impinging on adaptive antenna arrays have significant impact on their performance. In this paper we investigate the effect of polarized desired and undesired signals on the performance of electronically steered beam adaptive antenna arrays in terms of their output SINR’s (Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratios). To achieve this goal, we compare the performances of adaptive antenna arrays composed of single dipole antenna elements with those composed of cross-dipole antenna elements to illustrate the effect of polarized signals on their performance. Based on the experimental and simulation results, it will be shown that the adaptive antenna arrays using cross-dipole antennas provide better performance compared to those using single-dipoles, in presence of randomly polarized signals. However, if the desired signal polarization is well known, single-dipole antenna arrays exhibit better performance.