Abstract:
Ultra-wide band (UWB) is an attractive technology for innovative in-vehicle wireless communications requiring high
data rates and multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) a suitable scheme for the accomplishment due
to its high performance, low-power and low-cost characteristics. To contribute toward improved UWB MB-OFDM
communications inside vehicles, a channel-based antenna synthesis technique to customise in-vehicle UWB antennas that
reduce ‘blind spots’ in the communication channel is proposed and presented. For the realisation, a comprehensive analysis
was utilised and comprised an in-car channel evaluation including bit-error-rate (BER) estimations and radiation pattern-andsource syntheses. The channel was measured using a standard antenna to set up the base of the experiments and the
distribution of the impulse responses and signal-to-noise ratios in the vehicle's passenger plane shown. The currently available
IEEE 802.15.3a channel models were perceived unrealistic for the in-vehicle application and the reason for measuring the
channel practically. Using these specific channel measurements, the synthesised pattern is unveiled and consequently the
channel-based antenna synthesis technique used to predict the antenna source. The antenna with optimised pattern-andsource showed an improved BER performance compared with the standard antenna in this application; that is, a figure of merit
of 37.73% minimised ‘blind spots’.
