Smart Antennas - A Technical Introduction

SYMENA Software & Consulting GmbH

Wiedner Hauptstrae 24/15, A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Phone: [+43-1] 585 51 01-0, Fax: [+43-1] 585 51 01-99
info@symena.com, www.symena.com
Abstract Smart Antennas are recognized
as a key technology for capacity increase in
3G radio networks. Smart Antennas offer a
mixed service capacity gain of more than
100% and hence reduce to less than half
the number of base stations required. They
are one of the most promising technologies
for the enabling of high capacity wireless
networks. Since Smart Antennas are more
expensive than conventional base stations,
they should be used where they are truly
needed.
In this paper we provide a brief overview
of Smart Antennas, their benefits and how
they actually work.

characteristics. This weight adaptation is the

smart part of the Smart Antennas, which
should hence (more precisely) be called
adaptive antennas.

I. SMART ANTENNA BASICS

Conventional base station antennas in
existing operational systems are either
omnidirectional or sectorized. There is a waste
of resources since the vast majority of
transmitted signal power radiates in directions
other than toward the desired user. In addition,
signal power radiated throughout the cell area
will be experienced as interference by any other
user than the desired one. Concurrently the
base station receives interference emanating
from the individual users within the system.
Smart Antennas offer a relief by transmitting /
receiving the power only to / from the desired
directions.
A Smart Antenna consists of M antenna
elements, whose signals are processed
adaptively in order to exploit the spatial
dimension of the mobile radio channel. In the
simplest case, the signals received at the
different antenna elements are multiplied with
complex weights, and then summed up; the
weights are chosen adaptively. Not the antenna
itself, but rather the complete antenna system
including the signal processing is adaptive or
smart. All M elements of the antenna array
have to be combined (weighted) in order to
adapt to the current channel and user

Fig. 1. Smart antenna patterns in a multiservice UMTS system with high data rate
interferers and desired low data rate users.
Smart Antennas can be used to achieve
different benefits. The most important is higher
network capacity, i.e. the ability to serve more
users per base station, thus increasing
revenues of network operators, and giving
customers less probability of blocked or
dropped calls. Also, the transmission quality
can be improved by increasing desired signal
power and reducing interference. A schematic
model of how Smart Antennas work is shown in
Figure 1. The example cell serves several low
data rate users and a few high data rate users.
The latter are indicated by mobile terminals
with large screen and keyboard. Let us consider
the uplink first: Without Smart Antennas the
high data rate users heavily interfere with the
more distant desired user. The former have to
send with higher TX power in order to fulfill the
1

requirements at the receiver. Using Smart

Antennas means the antenna beams are
directed towards and focused on the desired
user and hence this user can be heard much
better. The interference from the high data rate
interferers is reduced by setting broad nulls

we will provide an overview of Smart Antenna

classifications such as switched beam
antennas, spatial processing, space-timeprocessing, and space-time detection. Then we
will present an overview of the adaptation
algorithms and, finally, we will show the effects
of the introduction of Smart Antennas on radio
network planning.
II. SMART ANTENNA RECEIVER CLASSIFICATIONS

Fig. 2. Antenna pattern of a eight-element

uniform linear array. The signal arrives at 10.
Two interfering signals are shown, one at -35
and a stronger one at 32. The smart antenna
algorithms compute the antenna weights for all
eight antenna elements so that the Signal-toNoise-and-Interference ratio (SNIR) becomes
an optimum.
in the antenna pattern towards their main
direction of arrival. This interference reduction
corresponds to an increase in the uplink
coverage in a UMTS network. This is also
shown in Figure 2.
Further benefits include a possible
reduction of the delay spread, allowing higher
data rates, and a reduction of the transmission
power in both uplink and downlink. The latter
is responsible for the downlink capacity
limitation in UMTS networks. The less base
station transmission power is required for a
single link, the more users can be served.
Hence, Smart Antennas can increase both the
uplink and the downlink capacity of UMTS
radio networks.
Having reviewed how a Smart Antenna can
improve the performance of a mobile system,
we shall now look at how to achieve the
individual improvements. In the following text

Smart Antennas can basically be divided

into: switched beam, spatial processing, spacetime-processing, and space-time detection. The
simplest implementation is the so-called
switched beam system, in which a single
transceiver is connected to the RFbeamforming unit. If the number of antenna
elements is M, one out of the predefined set of
beams (N M) is selected, based on maximum
received signal power or minimum bit error
ratio (BER) [1] [2]. The best signal is selected
for further processing by a standard receiver.
This technique benefits from its simplicity.
However, maxima and nulls of the antenna
pattern can not be put into arbitrary directions,
but can only be chosen from one of N possible
positions.
A more sophisticated approach is the spatial
filter or spatial processing. The received signals
are converted down to base band and sampled.
This procedure requires M receiver chains. The
signals of each receiver chain are multiplied
with complex weights w, and then summed up.
The resulting output signal can then be
processed like any signal from a normal
antenna. In wideband systems like UMTS, the
signal is fed into a conventional equalizer1,
which combines the signal components with
different delays, leading to the term time or
temporal processing. The combination of these
two involves simultaneous filtering in space and
time and is called space-time processing.
Space-only processing works best if each
antenna element shows the same time
dispersion, i.e. the same shape of the impulse
response. If this is not true, each antenna
element should have a separate equalizer. If we
use a linear equalizer of length L , the total
structure has then M spatial and L temporal
complex weights, leading to a complexity of
M * L . Instead of calculating the spatial and
1

In narrowband systems, a decision device can

follow immediately

temporal weight vectors in a sequential

manner, we can calculate them jointly, leading
to a weight matrix of size M * L . The receiver is
then also known as joint space-time receiver or
joint space-time equalizer. The output signal is
then fed into a decision device for recovering
the received bitstream.
Finally, we could also do the space-time
equalization and the detection jointly, leading
to a so called joint space-time detection.
Space-time detection offers best performance,
but also the highest degree of complexity.
Figure 3 shows block diagrams of both a
decoupled space-time and a joint space-time
receiver2.
Smart Antennas can also be classified in a
different way: whether they use diversity or
beamforming. Diversity relies essentially upon
the statistical independence of the signals at
different antenna elements. In the simplest
case, one exploits the high improbability that
the signals of all the elements are
simultaneously in a fading dip.

combining methods for the diversity signals,

the SNIR can finally be optimized [4] [3].
In beam forming, one exploits the close
proximity of antenna elements in order that an
appreciable correlation between the antenna
elements is present. The close proximity of
antenna elements allows forming a unique
antenna pattern that enhances the desired
signal and suppresses the interference.
III. WEIGHT ADAPTATION ALGORITHMS
In the beamforming case the major question
is: How to calculate the complex weights w for
the individual antenna elements for each user?
Before answering this question one should
reflect upon the different processes in the
baseband signal processing unit, before the
antenna weights can be adapted. Basically the
signal processing unit is responsible for the

user identification, user separation and beamforming. First, the base station has to estimate
the directions of arrival of all multipath
components. Next, it has to determine whether
the echo from a certain direction comes from a
desired user or from an interferer. Finally, it
can compute the antenna weights in order to
increase the SNIR as much as possible.
Adaptation algorithms are designed to
process the above mentioned demands. They
can basically be classified as temporal
reference (TR), spatial reference (SR) and blind
(BA) algorithms.

A. Temporal Reference Algorithms (TR)

Fig. 3. Space-Time receiver structures. (a)

separate space and time domain weight
adaptation, (b) joint space time filtering.
In order to achieve statistical independence
various diversity techniques can be applied [3].
By using more advanced, but well known
2

In literature, the separated space-time receiver

structure is also named decoupled space-time
rake, beamformer rake, 2D-rake and vector
Rake - single beamformer.

TR algorithms are based on the prior

knowledge of the time structure of parts of the
received signals. The training sequences of
both 2G (a midamble in GSM) and 3G (pilot
bits in UMTS) systems fulfill this requirement.
The receiver adjusts the complex weights in
such a way that the difference between the
combined signal at the output and the known
training sequence is minimized. Those weights
are then used for the reception of the actual
data. The temporal reference approach can be
used in conjunction with both diversity and
beamforming methods, although it is more
common with the former.

B. Spatial Reference Algorithms (SR)

SR algorithms estimate the direction of
arrival (DOA) of both the desired and interfering

signals. They are based on the prior knowledge

of the physical antenna geometry. In most
mobile communication systems, the time a
wavefront takes to pass through the antenna
array is much smaller than the bit (or chip)
interval Tb (Tc). Therefore, the narrowband
assumption for antenna arrays is valid (see
Figure 4). This makes it possible to model the
time delays of the wave between the antenna
elements as phase shifts. Hence, a received
signal impinging at the antenna array at angle
can be expressed as

structure of the transmitted signal, e.g. finite

alphabet, or cyclostationarity. If training
sequences are used in combination with blind
algorithms, they are called semi-blind
algorithms which show better performance than
temporal reference algorithms or blind
algorithms alone [5]. Currently, all blind or
semi-blind algorithms require too much
computation time to be employed in real time,
but semi-blind algorithms are close to real-time
implementation.
IV. EFFECTS ON RADIO NETWORK PLANNING

j 2 sin ( )( M 1)
j 2 sin ( )

c( ) = 1, e
,K, e
(1)

where c() is the array steering vector, d,

and M denote the inter-element spacing, the
wavelength and the number of antenna
elements. The notation (.)T indicates the
transpose. For the estimation of the individual
DOAs no additional information is needed.
After user identification (e.g. by utilizing the
training sequence) the signals can be separated
and detected.

C. Blind Algorithms (BA)

Instead of using a training sequence or the
properties of the receiver array, blind
algorithms can be applied for weight adaptation
as well. Blind Algorithms basically try to extract
the unknown channel impulse response and the
unknown transmitted data from the received
signal at the antenna elements. Even though
they do not know the actual bits, Blind
Algorithms use additional knowledge about the

. .
.

. .

Fig. 4. Principle of SR algorithms. The phase

shift between two antenna elements is defined
by the antenna geometry and the angle of
incidence. k=2/ , where is the wavelength,
d is the interelement spacing and M is the
number of antenna elements.

The effects of Smart Antennas on the radio

network planning process are various. The most
important technical innovation regarding smart
antenna radio network planning is the
consideration of the spatial behavior of the
mobile radio propagation channel. Within the
European research initiative COST 259 [6]
several channel models have been developed.
They are aimed at UMTS and HIPERLAN3,
with particular emphasis on Smart Antennas
and directional channels. They have been
introduced
in
the
3rd
generation
standardization process by 3GPP [7].
The spatial behavior of the received
interference is another significant issue
regarding the complex smart antenna radio
network planning. If the interference is
spatially white, i.e. the interferers are equally
distributed in the coverage area, the gain due
to Smart Antennas only has to be taken into
account in the link budget. This can be easily
implemented by utilizing look-up-tables, where
the smart antenna gains are listed in order of
the experienced signal to noise and
interference ratio (SNIR).
The simplifying assumption of spatial
whiteness holds in second generation CDMA
systems at least approximately, where mainly
speech users with almost identical data rates
are served. It can be shown that this is no
longer true in multi-service high data rate
UMTS networks [8]. The consequence is that
smart antenna adaptation algorithms have to be
considered even in the planning process! While
simple beamsteering algorithms only consider
the desired signal, more sophisticated
algorithms take the interferers into account.
Finally, Smart Antennas also affect the radio
resource management (RRM). The RRM
3

HIgh PERformance Local Area Network

algorithms are important for the planning

process when the main concerns are about the
number of served packet switched users and
the quality of service (QoS) in the network.
Literature available on smart antenna
systems is vast and covers aspects such as
capacity
evaluation,
identification
and
implementation of algorithms for array
processing. Good overviews are given in [9],
[10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17].
V. SOLUTIONS OFFERED BY SYMENA
For a fast and efficient roll-out of Smart
Antennas, enhanced planning tools are
necessary. SYMENA offers a full range of
software solutions for Smart Antenna radio
network planning and optimization. SYMENAs
software solutions help operators to invest their
money where it is needed and to avoid it where
it is not.
Detailed information about the products can
be
found
on
the
web-site

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

http://www.symena.com
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Contact
SYMENA
Software & Consulting GmbH
Wiedner Hauptstrae 24/15
A-1040 Vienna, Austria
Tel.
[+43-1] 585 51 01-0
Fax
[+43-1] 585 51 01-99
info@symena.com
www.symena.com