Effect of angular energy distribution of an incident signal on the spatial fading correlation of a uniform linear array

Array antennas have been widely used in wireless communication systems to improve the overall system coverage, capacity and link quality. The performance of different antenna array architectures such as diversity and beamforming arrays is critically dependant on the spatial correlation between antenna elements. We examine the effect of different angular distributions of an arriving signal on the spatial fading correlation between antenna elements of a uniform linear array (ULA). Using Monte Carlo simulations, we investigate the effect of angle of arrival (AOA) distribution on the mean bit error rate (BER) performance of a code division multiple access (CDMA) system employing a ULA at the base station (BS). The results show that the spatial correlation and BER are mainly dependent on the value of angular spread (i.e. the standard deviation of the underlying azimuth energy distribution) and not on the type of the assumed energy distribution.