Small-Sized Shaped Beam Base Station Antenna with Superior Intersector Interference Reduction in High Speed Cellular Systems

Abstract

This paper presents a newly developed small-sized shaped beam base station antenna in order to reduce inter-sector interference for next generation high speed wireless data communication systems. The developed antenna realizes polarization diversity as a single small-sized antenna without decreasing the 3dB main beamwidth compared with the conventional antenna by applying a newly designed beam shaping method. Furthermore, side sub-reflectors are newly installed in the radome to reduce the antenna beam gain in the direction toward the edge region neighboring the other sectors of the horizontal antenna pattern. By adopting this type of reflector, the diameter of the radome can be minimized at 0.65λ, which is slightly longer than that of the conventional antenna. Both a computer simulation and a field measurement test based on an actual cellular network were conducted for the purpose of clarifying the validity of the shaped beam antenna. In the results, the CINR at the service area by the shaped beam antenna was 1dB and 3.5dB better than that of the conventional antenna at the median and 10% of CDF, respectively. The developed antenna will be expected to contribute to the enhancement of the quality of cellular radio systems in the future.