Performance Gain of Smart Antennas with Diversity Combining at Handsets for the 3gpp Wcdma System

In this paper, we propose a dual smart antenna system incorporated into handsets for the 3GPP WCDMA system, in which a diversity combiner combines the two rake receiver outputs using a diversity combining scheme. We considered three diversity combining schemes, selection diversity, square law combining, and equal gain combining (EGC), and two types of the channel model for the dual antenna signals, loosely correlated fading channel model (LCFCM) and spatially correlated fading channel model (SCFCM). To obtain the channel profile, we adopted a geometrically based channel model known as GBSB (geometrically based single bounce) elliptical model in the simulation. The simulation results indicate that i) the EGC scheme performs the best among the three diversity combining schemes and ii) as expected, the higher performance gain is achieved under the LCFCM than the SCFCM. The simulation results under the two channel models are likely to be the lower and the upper bounds for the performance gain of the dual smart antenna system. Our simulation results indicate that a dual smart antenna system with diversity combining at handsets is beneficial for the 3GPP WCDMA system.