Combined use of space and polarization diversity on mobile cellular networks

Diversity schemes are being used on mobile cellular networks to combat the effect of multipath fading mainly at the base station site. This work investigates the use of both space diversity (where two receiving antennas are installed at the base station on each one of the coverage sectors) and polarization diversity (a dual polarization antenna is used and antennas with two ±45° linear polarization are used) at the base station in order to verify experimentally the real gain that can be obtained with this proposition. Each scheme was first tested isolated before the use of the combined technique. Results are presented in dB related to the 10% multipath fading probability occurrence improvement