Performance of Angle Switch Diversity Using ESPAR Antenna for Mobile Reception of Terrestrial Digital TV

Using a computer simulation, we investigate the mobile reception quality of terrestrial digital broadcasting with switch diversity in consideration of channel estimation errors caused by switching. Generally, the bit error rate (BER) performance of antenna switch diversity is degraded by abrupt phase changes due to switching. In this paper, we demonstrate that the switching rate of diversity decreases by 60% and the BER performance improves when using a directional antenna. We use an ESPAR (electrically steerable parasitic array radiator) antenna as the directional antenna. A switching beam pattern along the direction of travel, in particular, gives the best BER performance, and when the maximum Doppler frequency is 20 Hz, the maximum diversity gain is about 4 dB at a BER of 10^-2.