Polarimetric vector receivers for CDMA multipath signals

In this dissertation, we investigate the design and performance of receivers for vector antenna systems on multipath fading channels. Vector antennas are co-located antennas that can detect or excite more than one component of the received electro-magnetic field. We study the design and implementation of vector antenna receivers for code-division multiple-access (CDMA) signals in the presence of multipath signal propagation. The use of antenna arrays in CDMA systems has been widely investigated in wireless communications, due to the significant gain of capacity relative to a single antenna systems. Multiuser space-time detection schemes which utilize antenna arrays (e.g., the beamformer-RAKE) have also been proposed for CDMA systems to exploit space and time and to combat multiuser interference. Most of this previous work has focused on the use of linear arrays of single- or dual-polarized antennas, which typically measure one or two components of the received electromagnetic (EM) field in several locations. The use of vector antennas (arrays of antennas that measure multiple components of the EM field in one location) for CDMA systems has not been addressed in the literature.