An adaptive minimum redundancy array for digital communications

The performance of a minimum redundancy array (MRA) used in conjunction with an adaptive combiner for receiving digital communications signals under co-channel interference and multipath conditions is compared with a similar system based on a uniform array. Simulation and analysis of four-element array-based systems indicate that for interference in close angular proximity to the desired signal, or for multiple paths which show small angular separation, the MRA-based system is superior. Using numerical integration techniques, it is shown that the overall bit error probability is smaller using the MRA-based system than with the uniform-array-based system.