Application of adaptive antenna technology to third generation radio architectures

Work at Bristol has considered the application of adaptive antenna technology to a mixed cell architecture employing DS-CDMA as the air interface. In the scenario considered, both the umbrella cells and the underlying micro cells operate within the same RF bandwidth in an attempt to support a seamless handover between different cell types. The paper presents an overview of the proposed mixed cell architecture employing adaptive antenna technology at the umbrella cell site, as well as the benefits that can be obtained from such a deployment. This is expressed in terms of the critical near-far problem and the system´s capacity. Simulation and propagation results provide evidence for the claimed capabilities of the proposed system and estimates of the likely increased spectrum efficiency