Smart Antenna Technologies for Future Wireless System: Trends and Challenges

Abstract

The adoption of smart/adaptive antenna techniques in future wireless systems s expected to have a significant impact on the efficient use of the spectrum, the minimization of the cost of establishing new wireless networks, the optimization of service quality and realization of transparent operation across multi technology wireless networks. Nevertheless, its success relies on two considerations that have been often overlooked when investigating smart antenna technologies: First, the smart antennas features need to be considered early in the design phase of future system; Second, a realistic performance evaluation of smart antenna technique needs to be performed according to the critical parameters associated with future systems requirements. This paper presents brief account on smart antenna (SA) system. SAs can place nulls in the direction of interferers via adaptive updating of weights linked to each antenna element. SAs thus cancel out most of the co-channel interference resulting in better quality of reception and lower dropped calls. SAs can also track the user within a cell via direction of arrival algorithms. This paper explains the architecture, evolution and how the smart/adaptive antenna differs from the basic format of antenna. The capabilities of smart/adaptive antenna are easily employable to Cognitive Radio and OFDMA system.