Forward link smart antennas and power control for IS-136: Capacity increase

In this paper we study the increase in capacity using fixed-beam smart antennas and power control on the forward link in IS-136, comparing the performance with a continuous downlink, as required in IS-136, to that with a discontinuous downlink. With a continuous downlink, our beamforming technique results in a 3 and 9 dB higher signal-to-interference ratio (S/I) in the output signal with four beams versus one beam, without and with power control, respectively. With discontinuous downlink, the S/I is 2 dB higher than with the continuous downlink with four beams, both with and without power control. Thus, most of the improvement of smart antennas and power control can be achieved even with the continuous downlink constraint by appropriate beamforming.