A beamspace diversity combiner for sector division multiple access communications

The beamspace diversity technique is effective in combating multipath fading in wireless communications. However, a disadvantage of this technique is a lack of adaptivity for cochannel interference (CCI) suppression. An adaptive beam diversity combiner using antenna arrays is proposed for sector division multiple access communications. The diversity branches are formed by with several adaptive beamformers whose response patterns encompass a prescribed angular sector in the field-of-view receiver. With a set of judiciously chosen weight vectors, effective diversity combining can be achieved inside the sector, and out-of-sector CCI can be suppressed via nulling. Simulation results confirm the efficacy of the proposed scheme.