Abstract:

As MIMO technology matures and the hype of it begins to wane in academia, the wireless industry is making an increasing effort to deliver the promises of the technology in commercial products. As it turns out, one research area that has thus far not received significant attention is plaguing this effort, i.e., the challenge of getting the technology to work in compact mobile terminals. In particular, the placement of more than one antenna in a compact manner can kill MIMO performance. In this talk, I will first quantify the problem of closely spaced antennas in compact terminals in terms of diversity performance, using a multiband dual-antenna handset prototype. The impact of a user in proximity of the terminal is also investigated in this context.  I will then present several recently proposed techniques that may be used to either mitigate or completely neutralize the aforesaid performance degradation.

Biography：

Buon Kiong Lau received the BE(Hons) and Ph.D degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Western Australia and Curtin University of Technology, Australia, in 1998 and 2003, respectively.

During 2000–2001, he took a year off from his Ph.D studies to work as a Research Engineer with Ericsson Research, Kista, Sweden. From 2003 to 2004, he was a Guest Research Fellow at the Department of Signal Processing, Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden. From 2004 to 2007, he was a Research Fellow at the Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University, Sweden, where since 2007 he is an Assistant Professor.

During 2003, 2005 and 2007, Dr Lau was also a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Applied Mathematics, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, P. R. China, the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, and Takada Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, respectively. His research interests include array signal processing, wireless communication systems, and antennas and propagation.

Dr. Lau is an active participant of European collaboration projects, including COST Action 2100, where he is the Co-Chair of Subworking Group 2.2 on “Compact Antenna Systems for Terminals”. He chaired the 2008 Workshop on MIMO Antenna Systems in Lund, Sweden, and co-organizes the 2009 Joint COST2100/COST ASSIST Workshop in Valencia, Spain. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE.