Radio resource management for WCDMA networks supporting dual antenna terminals

The downlink performance enhancement provided by dual antenna terminals in a WCDMA network is evaluated. A UMTS network is taken as a case study and the behaviour of conventional power based radio resource management algorithms is discussed for both circuit and packet switched services. The aim is to clarify: (i) what the available capacity gain is; (ii) whether it is possible to capture this capacity gain without any higher layer overhead; and (iii) how the capacity is distributed among the users. A theoretical analysis of the dependency of the capacity gain upon the proportion of dual antenna terminals is conducted and the outcome matches the simulation results. Moreover, the impact of soft handover on the performance gain is considered. Furthermore, it is shown that the system becomes hard limited due to lack of channelisation codes, rather than excessive interference.