Performance of antenna diversity combining for OFDM-CDMA systems in ground-based communications

We present the comparative diversity performance of the uniform circular array (UCA) and the uniform linear array (ULA) in ground-based communications. In ground-based communications, ULA is the most commonly used antenna system for sectorized cell systems like commercial cellular systems. For omni-directional cell communication systems, such as many ground-based military communication systems, however, there has been increased interest in using UCA. We compare the performance of UCA and ULA based on BER (bit-error-rate) results. The analytical BER is derived as a function of spatial fading antenna correlation for both types of antenna arrays. Results show that, for a similar aperture size, the UCA outperforms the ULA. This is most pronounced for small and moderate angle spread.