Rotatable Antenna Enabled Wireless Communication System with Visual Recognition: A Prototype Implementation

Rotatable antenna (RA) is an emerging technology that has great potential to exploit additional spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs) by flexibly altering the three-dimensional (3D) orientation/boresight of each antenna. In this demonstration, we present a prototype of the RA-enabled wireless communication system with a visual recognition module to evaluate the performance gains provided by the RA in practical environments. In particular, a mechanically-driven RA is developed by integrating a digital servo motor, a directional antenna, and a microcontroller, which enables the dynamic adjustment of the RA orientation. Moreover, the orientation adjustment of the RA is guided by the user’s direction information provided by the visual recognition module, thereby significantly enhancing system response speed and self-orientation accuracy. The experimental results demonstrate that the RA-enabled communication system achieves significant improvement in communication coverage performance compared to the conventional fixed antenna system.