Experiments on coherent adaptive antenna array diversity for wideband DS-CDMA mobile radio

In wideband direct sequence code division multiple access (W-CDMA), employing an adaptive antenna array is a very promising technique to reduce severe multiple access interference (MAI) from high rate users. A four-antenna pilot symbol-assisted coherent adaptive antenna array diversity (PSA-CAAAD) receiver comprising an adaptive antenna array based on a minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion and a Rake combiner is implemented in preliminary laboratory and field experiments. There are two important design concepts of the PSA-CAAAD receiver. The first is that the adaptive antenna array forms an antenna beam for each resolved propagation path and tracks only slow changes in the directions of arrival (DOA's) and average powers of the desired and interfering user signals. The second is that the Rake combiner tracks the instantaneous changes in channel conditions and coherently combines the signals of the desired user propagating along the resolved paths to maximize the instantaneous signal-to-interference plus background noise power ratio (SINR). This paper presents, both by laboratory and field experiments, the effectiveness of PSA-CAAAD receiver as a powerful means to reduce severe MAI from high rate users, and that it is more effective than using a space diversity receiver with the same number of antennas in the W-CDMA reverse link.