Development of a semi-automatic effective diversity gain measurement system for multi-antenna systems

Antenna diversity performance assessment measures are essential to multi-antenna systems. Among different evaluation metrics, the effective diversity gain is the ultimate ones since not only antenna characteristics but also environment factors are accounted. However, the conventional effective diversity gain measurement process is time consuming and labor intensive process. A semi-automatic measurement system is hence proposed in this work. Multiple antennas are connected to power detectors, which are controlled by a computer controlled AD/DA card. The system control program is coded in Labview. The whole system is mounted on a push cart. During the measurement process, the cart is moved manually in a multipath rich environment. Power levels received by antennas are recorded automatically. The proposed system can significantly reduce the time and labor required for the measurement. Measured data can be processed to yield the effective diversity gain of the tested multi-antenna system.