Application and performance of downlink beamforming techniques in UMTS

The opportunities and constraints for application of beamforming techniques in UMTS are reviewed and compared by means of extensive dynamic network-level simulations. We start by reviewing the physical layer specifications for UMTS in order to clarify which channels are allowed to use beamforming. Second, radio resource management for cells with beamforming capabilities are addressed from a standardization and algorithmic point of view. The exchange of beamforming specific measurement reports between the base station (Node-B) and the radio network controller is discussed as well as beam switching mechanisms, directional power-based admission control, and more. In addition to implementation of beamforming within logical cells, options for exploiting the antenna array to synthesize independent sector beams are also investigated (i.e., higher order sectorization via beamforming). The presented results show that beamforming within logical cells is an effective enabler for higher system capacity, while the use of beamforming for creation of many logical cells is less attractive due to significantly larger soft handover overhead and somewhat reduced capacity gain.