Adaptive Antennas for Microcellular and Mixed Cell Environments with DS-CDMA

Adaptive antenna technology is now regarded as one of the key system components in future generation cellular networks. This paper considers the performance of a DS-CDMA system which employs adaptive antennas at the base station sites of both microcell and mixed micro/umbrella cell operational environments. A microcellular ray tracing propagation tool has been employed in order to ascertain site specific propagation data. Results for a typical small cell environment highlight both the propagation characteristics and the behaviour of the adaptive antenna, as well as the sensitivity of the system upon parameters such as the mutual coupling effect. This work does not assume idealised propagation conditions or antenna radiation patterns for the small cell analysis.