Comparison of beamforming and diversity approaches for the coverage extension of W-CDMA macro cells

Antenna arrays are typically considered as capacity boosters in cellular networks. This paper studies the uplink coverage of different antenna array configurations in the wideband code-division multiple access system (W-CDMA). The paper describes the simulation parameters and discusses the simulation results. The simulations assume a macro cellular propagation environment with relatively narrow angular spread. The results show that antenna arrays at the BS provide a feasible way to improve the uplink coverage of the W-CDMA system. The diversity approach is best suitable for the low mobility environments whereas beamforming is well suited for environments having time and multipath diversity. The worst case environments from the beamforming point of view are those lacking both time and multipath diversity. It can be seen from the results that as the number of antennas increases the beamforming approach becomes more attractive than diversity methods