Energy Efficient Smart Antenna Beamforming Algorithms for Next-Generation Networks

Abstract

Smart antenna consist of multiple antenna elements at the transmitting and/or receiving side of the communication link, whose signals are processed adaptively in order to exploit the spatial dimension of the wireless channel. Depending on the signal process at the transmitter, receiver, or both ends of the communication link, the smart antenna technique can increase the capacity of the wireless network by improving link quality using impairments mitigation mechanisms. This work investigates different smart antenna beamforming algorithms considering energy efficiency using adaptive antenna techniques with a uniform linear array geometry. The schemes used for investigation are half power beam width, side lobe level, array spacing and variable node distance (range). The results demonstrate that Constant module (CMA) algorithm makes antenna arrays more energy efficient while it has high mean square error. On the other hand, Recursive Least Square (RLS) is recommended for next-generation wireless networks because it provides significant energy efficiency while keeping mean square error minimum than the rest of the algorithms.