The exploitation of multipath signal energy present in mobile radio systems

Describes the use of diversity in mobile communications to overcome many of the problems induced by the propagating channel. The use of an adaptive antenna array to coherently recombine the multipath signal energy present at the receiver terminal is proposed. Such a system would allow a satellite receiver to exploit the multipath energy in cases where the main line of sight component is blocked or attenuated. This approach relies on uncorrelated fading envelopes being acquired by employing space diversity reception techniques. In order to demonstrate that sufficiently uncorrelated signals can be obtained from small inter-element separations, measurements have been taken using a mobile terminal receiving transmissions from the MARCES B2 satellite. The results of this study are briefly summarised