Antenna diversity for mobile radio reception in rural areas

An assessment is made of the performance of antenna diversity schemes employed at a mobile receiver located within two rural areas of North West England. Various antenna arrangements were considered with two λ/2 dipole antennas spaced vertically, horizontally and in a crossed configuration. Important conclusions have been drawn for each antenna configuration considered. The envelope crosscorrelation for signals received on two horizontally spaced antennas is always less than 0.25 with a horizontal separation ⩾0.5 λ. It has been found that the correlation is less than 0.6 with a vertical separation ⩾0.5 λ. When scattered signals were received on crosspolarized antennas, it has been found that the branch signals are uncorrelated. However, because the monitored signal was transmitted only with vertical polarisation, the mean signal received on the vertical antennas was approximately 10 dB stronger than that on the horizontal antenna. Overall, results have shown that the envelope crosscorrelation between branch signals is dependent upon the local topography in the vicinity of the mobile