SMART ANTENNA SYSTEMS

(an overview)

 An

antenna in a telecommunications system is the port through which (radio frequency RF) energy is coupled from the transmitter to the outside world for transmission purposes And in reverse, to the receiver from the outside world for reception purposes

 Omni

directional Antennas :

which radiates and receives equally well in all directions

 Need

More power Limited Frequency Re use Interference

single antenna can also be constructed to have certain fixed preferential transmission and reception directions. Sectorized antenna system take a traditional cellular area and subdivide it into sectors that are covered using directional antennas looking out from the same base station location

 More

coverage Better Frequency Re use

Over Heads: Hand Overs Adjacent Channel Interference

Why we need Smart Antenna:

Higher Capacity

Higher Coverage
Higher bit rate Improved link quality Spectral efficiency Mobility

Smart Antenna Array: antenna array with a digital signal processing capability to transmit and receive in an adaptive and spatially sensitive manner. Smart Antennas are arrays of antenna elements that change their antenna pattern dynamically to adjust to the noise, interference in the channel and mitigate multipath fading effects on the signal of interest. The difference between a smart (adaptive) antenna and dumb (fixed) antenna is the property of having an adaptive and fixed lobe-pattern, respectively

Smart >> digital signal processing facility

 Switched Beam Antennas Dynamically-Phased Arrays Adaptive Antenna Arrays

Switched lobe (SL): ( also called switched beam ) simplest technique comprises only a basic switching function between separate directive antennas or predefined beams of an array

Dynamically phased array (PA):

continuous tracking can be achieved by including a direction of arrival (DoA) algorithm for the signal received from the user can be viewed as a generalization of the switched lobe concept

WHY SMART ANTENNA ARRAYS ARE

SUPERIOR TO CONVENTIONAL ANTENNAS

Active Beam

Desired User

Antenna Array

Interfering User

Antenna Array

Switched Beam System

Adaptive Array

Interference Rejection Comparison

Desired Signals Co-channel Interfering Signals

USAGE Applications to:

cellular and wireless networks

radar

electronic warfare (EWF) as a countermeasure to electronic jamming

satellite systems

number of radiating elements

a combining/dividing network
Signal Processing Unit

the idea of smart antennas is to use base station antenna patterns that are not fixed, but adapt to the current radio conditions can be visualized as the antenna directing a beam toward the communication partner only

(Space Division Multiple Access)

more than one user can be allocated to the same physical communications channel simultaneously in the same cell separated by angle only

in a TDMA system, two users will be allocated to the same time slot and carrier frequency at the same time and in the same cell

SDMA (Space Division Multiple Access)

Comparison of Switched Beam Antenna Adaptive Arrays

Criteria
Integration

Switched Beam
Easy to implement Low cost

Adaptive Array
Transceiver complexity High cost Less hardware redundancy

Range/ Coverage

More coverage compared More coverage compared to conventional systems to switched beam system Less coverage compared to adaptive array Focusing is narrower Capable of nulling interfering signals

Interference Difficulty in distinguishing Rejection between desired signal and interferer Does not react to the movement of interferers.