Distributed Antenna Cellular System for Transmission of Broadcast/Multicast Services

Among radio technologies, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have attracted wide research interests in recent years. It is widely recognized that MIMO systems can be employed for achieving a high capacity and a high diversity order, for mitigating the effects of various types of interfering signals, and for supporting space-division multiple-access (SDMA). In this study a MIMO assisted cellular system using distributed antennas is proposed and investigated, where a big number of antennas are distributed in the area covered by the system. The proposed system is capable of providing a platform for possibly integrating the conventional cellular systems into the future advanced, high-flexibility, ad-hoc and cooperative wireless networks. This system is considered for MBMS (multimedia broadcast multicast service) that enables mobile operators to deliver rich multimedia to a huge number of subscribers by broadcasting over the radio frequencies assigned to WCDMA.