Polarforming for Wireless Communications: Modeling and Performance Analysis

This paper presents, for the first time, the concept of polarforming for wireless communications. Polarforming refers to a novel technique that enables the polarization of an antenna to shape into a desired polarization state for aligning with the polarization of an electromagnetic (EM) wave. It can fully leverage polarization diversity to enhance the performance of wireless communication systems through polarization matching. To implement polarforming, we propose a new paradigm of phase shifter (PS)-based polarization-reconfigurable antennas (PRAs) that can form linear, circular, and general elliptical polarizations by phase shift control. To further demonstrate the benefits of polarforming, we investigate a PRA-aided wireless communication system equipped with tunable polarization of antennas. We characterize the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel capacity of the considered system as a function of the phase shifts of PS-based PRAs. We also provide a detailed polarforming interpretation under the single-input single-output (SISO) scenario and theoretically show how polarforming differs from the conventional (analog) beamforming based on PSs. Moreover, we develop an alternating optimization approach to maximize the channel capacity for the systems with single-antenna transmitter/receiver. Based on the water-filling principle, we also derive an upper bound on the MIMO channel capacity with PS-based PRAs and then maximize this capacity bound by optimizing the phase shifts through alternating optimization. Finally, comprehensive simulation results are presented, which not only validate the effectiveness of polarforming in combating channel depolarization but also exhibit substantial performance improvements over conventional systems.