Phase diversity for an antenna-array system with a short interelement separation

Abstract

This paper presents a simple procedure of obtaining a diversity gain in an antenna-array system with a short interelement separation, typically less than the carrier wavelength A. The new technique provides a diversity gain through a noncoherent combination of received signals at each antenna element. The diversity gain arises because, as the number of signal components of the received signal at each antenna element becomes large enough and as the arrival angle of each signal component is distinct from one another, which is a general signal circumstance in most practical code division multiple access (CDMA) signal environments, the amplitudes of the received signals become nearly independent due to the phase difference among the received signals. The diversity gain will be referred to as "phase diversity" in this paper. The proposed technique is first theoretically analyzed to estimate the performance in terms of pseudorandom-noise-code acquisition, which is verified through extensive computer simulations. Then, through the experimental results that are obtained from a CDMA array-antenna base station system, it has been shown that the performance of noncoherent detection is proportionally improved to the number of antenna elements.