Paul Howard

European Smart antenna test-beds

The European Commission, through RACE, ACTS and now the IST programs, has funded numerous consortium based research projects addressing capacity enhancement by means of Smart or Adaptive Antenna Technology. In addition to capacity enhancement, these projects have also considered the additional operational benefits, such as multipath mitigation and range extension, that this technology can offer to wireless network deployments. This paper provides an overview of the key results obtained from the test-beds and field trials conducted under the RACE and ACTS TSUNAMI projects as well as ACTS AWACS project. Further, new research activities, which embody Smart Antenna Technology, now supported under IST funding are also introduced.

Performance of the TSUNAMI (II) macrocellular field trial system using a dynamic interference source

The TSUNAMI (II) project has been an investigation into the application of adaptive antenna technology for use in future generation mobile communications systems. The key aims of the project were to investigate the complexity versus increase in system capacity and coverage extension that can be achieved over the existing, non-adaptive networks. May 1998 saw the completion of an 8 month field trial, covering both macrocellular and microcellular trials. These investigations were performed at the Orange Testbed in Bristol, U.K., using a modified DCS-1800 base station. In this paper are presented a subset of the macrocellular field trial results, obtained using spatial and temporal reference beamforming (TRB and SRB) in the presence of a moving, deliberate interference source. The results presented show the comparative performance of several selected adaptive antenna algorithms used by the TSUNAMI (II) testbed. The results of these trials demonstrate how the interference source and chosen algorithms ability to track wanted to unwanted users influences the overall performance of the adaptive antenna base station (AA-BSS).