Name: Vishnu Mishra

Enrollment No: 43513202818

ECE-2

“Smart Antenna”

Summary

As the numbers of systems, networks and users increased over the years of development of
wireless communication systems; so has preserving a maintainable capacity to be able to
contain these increasing numbers. Since day one, wireless communication system designers
were aware of the fact that capacity and interference were certainly going to create a problem
in the very near future. This technical report will briefly discuss a technology called Smart-
Antenna, which has an adaptive nature and is capable of solving the problems that face the
conventional communication systems.

Contents

I. Introduction page 2.
II. Report Body page 3.
Figures list:
a) Figure 1.1 page 4.
b) Figure 1.2 page 5.
c) Figure 2.1 page 6.
d) Figure 2.2 page 7.
e) Figure 2.3 page 8.
f) Figure 2.4 page 9.
g) Figure 3.1 page 10
III. Conclusions page 11

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 I. Introduction

A Smart technology is a system or a device that has the ability to adapt to certain changes over
time while offering a broad range of possible applications. Technologies that contain both logical
and physical applications in all formats and have the ability to automatically adapt and modify
their own behaviour independently in order to fit in with that which is present in their
environment by sensing objects they are dealing with and providing data for further analyzation
are known to be Smart. A Smart technology is usually a modified version of a conventional
technology, the main differences are present in the way a Smart technology gathers data and how
it deals with inputs and surroundings to save energy while offering better solutions to the
problems faced by the conventional technology. Smart technologies have great presence in
today’s world, they exist in a variety of different fields and lots of research is being carried out in
the design and implementation of such technologies. One of the examples of Smart technologies
are Smart Refrigerators, this special type of refrigerators is programmed to better identify
precisely what products are being stored inside them and whether some products are missing or
simply ran out. Another type of a Smart technology is Smart Glasses, which is basically a
wearable computer that adds information to what its user sees, it can offer several features as
good as a Smart Phone plus a vast range of industrial and healthcare applications. This technical
report will focus on Smart Antenna, a technology that has grown at a formidable rate especially
with today’s advancements in wireless communications that have integrated with powerful low-
cost digital signal processors, general-purpose processors and ASICs (Application-Specific
Integrated Circuits).

II. Report Body

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 1. Analogy

1.1 Human Analogy

Engineering systems that have great impact in our lives are mostly derived from man’s
ability to observe nature’s complexity and integrity, especially the human body.
Hence, to give a simple view of how a Smart Antenna works we can think of two
speakers in a dark room with one listener (Check Fig 1.1 below). The listener can
determine precisely the location of the desired speaker as he moves around the room
due to variation of the time the voice takes to arrive at each vocal sensor, in that case
the ear. Given the data present in the form of time differences, the brain -being the
human signal processor- then calculates the direction of the speaker from the time
delays of the voice received by the ears. After that, the brain simply adds the strength
of the voices from each ear in order to concentrate on the sound of the calculated
direction. Moreover, if more speakers enter the room the brain can still focus on one
conversation at a time by tuning out undesired interferes. In an opposite manner, the
listener can reply to the location of the desired speaker by the orientation of the mouth
-being the transmitter- toward the direction of the speaker.

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 Figure 1.1 Human analogy for Smart Antenna

Source: http://slideplayer.com/slide/7453684/

1.2 Electrical Equivalent

Quite similar to the human hearing system, an electrical Smart-Antenna system uses
two antennas instead of ears, and a digital signal processor (DSP) instead of a brain.
Thus, when the DSP measures the time delays from each individual antenna, it
calculates the direction of arrival (DOA) of the desired signal, it then modifies the
phases and gains of that signal to produce a radiation pattern that focuses on it while
tuning out any undesired signals (Check Figure 1.2 below).

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 Figure 1.2: Electrical equivalent

Source: [1] page 932

2. Smart-Antenna Systems

2.1 An Overview
Smart-Antenna systems are considered an extension for cell sectoring (a conventional
technology of increasing the capacity of a cellular structure) in which the sector
coverage is made up of multiple beams [2], this happens by the use of multiple
antenna arrays, and the beams’ number in each sector depends on the array geometry.
Since Smart-Antennas have the ability to concentrate their radiation pattern towards
the desired users while rejecting undesired interference, they ensure a great coverage
area for every base station. Furthermore, given that Smart-Antennas have a high
ability to reject unwanted interferences, and so a lower bit error rate (BER), they can
offer the much-needed capacity improvement, which solves the problem that wireless
communication system designers have been facing since early days. The systems of

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 Smart-Antennas were first introduced as Switched-Beam systems, which after
illustration of how they work a justification to the need for Smarter Antennas will be
evident [3].

2.2 Switched-Beam Systems

In order to enhance the received signal, the Switched-Beam system can select
from one of several predefined patterns (Check Fig 2.1 below) in which a user is
provided with an active beam as his portable unit moves through the cell by
focusing radiation on the DOA of the portable unit of the user. Since each sector
is subdivided into smaller sectors, therefore it is obvious that the system is an
extension for cell sectoring. As the unit moves through the cell, the system detects
that movement through certain DSP algorithms and thus activates the appropriate
predefined beam pattern, and it keeps doing that as long as the unit is moving.
The aim of the Switched-Beam system was to provide the user with the greatest
signal-gain possible according to his location. Unfortunately, given that the beams
were static, users have experienced trouble where their location was not exactly in
the centre of an active beam, which gave credit to an interferer near the centre of
the active beam since the interference had more enhancement than the desired
user, a problem that was solved by the Adaptive Array Systems [4].

Figure 2.1: Switched-Beam System

Source: [1] page 936

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2.3 Adaptive Array Systems
Adaptive array systems introduce more degrees of freedom because they can “adapt” a
radiation pattern to the radio-frequency (RF) signal environment in real time. Meaning
that they have the potential to direct the main beam towards the desired unit in order to
give it maximum gain while supressing all undesired interferences. In other words,
adaptive array systems can ultimately adjust the appropriate radiation pattern for each
user. This is way more superior than the performance of a Switched-Beam System
(Check Fig 2.2 below).

Fig 2.2: Comparison between (a) Switched Scheme and (b) Adaptive scheme

Source: https://www.myprivatetutor.com/prime/documents/ppts/details/819/smart-antenna

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 The figure shows that the Switched-Beam system not only fails to give maximum
amplification to the desired signal, but also is unable to effectively suppress the
interferes. Adaptive array Systems also can greatly increase capacity because of their
ability to control the radiation pattern in a larger coverage area for each cell site. In the
region of of low-level interference, both types of Smart Antennas (Switched-Beam and
Adaptive array) can offer high gains over the conventional sectored systems that use
omnidirectional antennas (antennas that propagate the signal in all directions rather
than the desired direction). Nevertheless, in a region of high-level interference, the
interference suppression feature of the adaptive array systems supplies much more
coverage than either the Switched-Beam or the conventional systems [4]. Since the
real world is a high interference environment, adaptive array systems outperformed all
other systems in terms of capacity, interference suppression and gain enhancement for
the desired users (Check Fig 2.3 below).

Figure 2.3: Relative coverage area comparison in low and high interference environments

Source: http://azhar-paperpresentation.blogspot.com.eg/2010/04/smart-antenna-systems.html

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 Adaptive array systems can track and locate signals and dynamically modify the
antenna pattern to improve reception as well as removing interference as much as
possible using appropriate digital signal-processing algorithms. The block diagram of
an adaptive array system (Check Fig 2.4 below) converts the signals received into
baseband, it then locates the desired signal with the help of a DOA algorithm, after
that it keeps track of the desired signal by controlling the phases and amplitudes
(weights) of the signal. The DSP contains the DOA algorithm which in turn computes
the direction of arrival by calculating the time delays between the antennas. After that
is done, the adaptive algorithm calculates the appropriate weight that results in an
optimum radiation pattern by the help of a cost function. Since adaptive arrays are
DSP intensive, the details of how the weights and time delays are computed will not
be discussed in this report.

Figure 2.4: Block diagram of an adaptive array system

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/224247962_fig1_Fig-1Block-diagram-of-a-smart-antenna-system

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 3. Applications

3.1 Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA)

SDMA is one of the ultimate goals of development of cellular radio systems, it is
among the most-sophisticated applications of smart-antenna technology; it has very
advanced spatial-processing capabilities that allow it to locate a lot of users at the
same time; and thus making different beams for each individual user (Check Fig 3.1
below).

Fig 3.1: SDMA multibeam system.

Source: [1] page 939

This allows more than one user to be allocated to the exact same physical
communication channel in the same cell simultaneously, separated by a certain angle.

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 3.2 Security
In a world that has become full of threats and vulnerabilities arising from intruders and
hackers, the need for security has greatly increased, especially with the presence of a
society that is drastically relying on transmitting personal information and conducting
business, security is of crucial importance. Smart Adaptive antennas make it much
more difficult for an intruder to tap a connection, since the intruder must be positioned
in the same direction of the user as seen from the base station to be able to tap a
connection, something which he can hardly achieve [5].

3.3 Emergencies
Many have lost their lives due to location-related issues, lots of women have been
raped and murdered in a suburb or a bar bathroom somewhere simply because they
were undetectable. With the spatial detection nature of Smart-Antenna systems, they
can be used to accurately locate humans in emergencies and save them from dangers
that would have rather been unavoidable if not for Smart Antennas [5].

III. Conclusions
In conclusion, Smart-Antenna development was essential for solving the problems that faced
Cell Sectorized and Switched-Beam Systems. This is where Adaptive Array Smart-Antennas
came in, a technology with an adaptive nature that successfully solves the capacity problem
along with increasing the range given their directional quality, a quality that was missing in
omnidirectional and sectorized antennas, they have also suppressed the interferences for a
most powerful, pure and smooth communication experience.

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