LAUSR

The papers in this special issue focus on the impact of user-related randomness on antennas and channels. In the early days of telecommunications, most antennas were considered as fixed installations, and their performance was determined in terms of their directivity and radiations patterns when the polarizations of the antennas on the transmitting and receiving sides were aligned. With the birth of satellite communications, there soon became a need for reusing the frequencies by polarization multiplexing, resulting in dual polarized systems with an even stricter requirement to alignment in order to avoid interference between the two communication channels. Furthermore, mobile communications resulted in random channels owing to both fast Rayleigh fading and slow shadow fading. Nowadays, wireless devices and base stations/access points are used more and more in hugely differing contexts and environments for terminals. The papers in this issue have been prepared in this context, the aim being to help make better known the issues raised above from the antennas and propagation community and to contribute to foster research and development in this area.