Angular dispersive mobile radio environments sensed by highly directive base station antennas

Typical DECT and UMTS radio environments have been investigated with high gain directional base station (BS) antennas. Experiments have been performed as preparation for field tests with an adaptive BS antenna testbed. The dispersion of the radio environment leads to a distortion of the perceived BS antenna sidelobe levels, though still providing increase in effective gain. The spatial selectivity of directive antennas leads to a reduction in time dispersion by about a factor of two, while the cross polarization discrimination is increased a few dB. Quantitative measures of the spatial environment spreading are given, so a numerical comparison between different environments is possible