STTR Phase I: Phase-Modulated Antennas for Bandwidth-Efficiency and Cost Reduction

This Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase I research project aims to prove the feasibility of Direct Phase Antenna Modulation (DPAM), an innovative wireless communication signaling technology that promises to greatly enhance spectral efficiency and multi-user interference, while reducing hardware complexity and component cost. The proposed approach uses specific novel properties of an antenna structure to perform modulation and demodulation, bypassing the need for these blocks in transmitter or receiver electronics. A doubling of data rate for a fixed spectrum allocation and quality of service can be achieved through use of a novel orthogonal bit per symbol in conjunction with traditional Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (QPSK) signaling. This proposed DPAM technology promises to enhance the widely used QPSK format, improving bandwidth efficiency by 50% while reducing system complexity and costs. Such an increase in bandwidth can have a large impact on wireless communications as radio spectrum, a fixed resource, is becoming more and more congested. This technology can support future versions of 802.x wireless data, personal communications, and telemetry services for consumer, government, military, and public safety applications. The DPAM also provides improvements with respect to multi-user isolation and also promises improved resistance to jamming.