A mobile base station phased array antenna

A mobile communications base station antenna, which utilizes a cylindrical array design, is presented. A scanning antenna beam can be achieved by arranging a number of travelling wave patch antennas in a cylindrical array configuration. Using a switching matrix, different subsets of antenna elements, in the array, can be excited, thus producing a narrow steerable beam. Narrow scanning beams allow these base station antennas to retain both the high gain characteristic of directional antennas as well as the multidirectional characteristic of omnidirectional antennas. For a given transmit power such base station antennas can broadcast greater distances while still being able to communicate with users in a 360° radius (at different time intervals). An alternative perspective is that scanning antennas can be placed in much closer proximity with the same co-channel interference. This decrease in cell size means that a larger number of mobile users can be concentrated in a smaller area without increasing spectrum allocation