On HSUPA Open Loop Switched Antenna Transmit Diversity Performance in Varying Load Conditions

The Switched Antenna Transmit Diversity (SATD) scheme is a promising transmit diversity technique to improve the performance in High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA) systems. Antenna switching rests on a technique where only one antenna is active at a time even if the UE is equipped with multiple transmit antennas. Switching and antenna selection can be based on different methods and criteria and this paper provides simulative analysis of three different open loop antenna switching algorithms for the HSUPA systems. Furthermore, the focus will be on evaluating corresponding system level performance compared to the single Tx antenna performance when bursty traffic is assumed. The studies show that there are achievable gains and thus system performance may be enhanced by applying the antenna switching scheme, especially when the mobile velocity is low.