Comparison of co-directional reception using beamforming, switched beams and multiuser detection strategies in WCDMA systems

Co-directional or clustered mobile users can be received using smart antennas at the base station (BS) and a multiuser detector can be used to isolate their respective signals. We consider the scenario of clustered users in a WCDMA system and compare the performance of beamforming and switched beams antennas, along with multiuser detection strategies (decorrelating detector (DD) and the minimum mean squared (MMSE) detector) for their reception at the BS. We show via simulations that the switched beams technique along with a multiuser detector, is a better strategy than beamforming along with a multiuser detector, when the number of users in a cluster increases.