UMTS spatio-temporal propagation trial results

The demand for novel signal processing architectures in mobile communication systems has never been greater. This is driven by the increasing demand for multimedia services and the inevitable rollout of 3G cellular systems such as Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS). Two techniques that are currently being considered to meet this demand are: multi-user detectors (MUDs) and smart antennas. In order to assess the performance of these techniques, the characteristics of the environments is of prime importance. This paper reports on a spatio-temporal measurement system that has been used to measure the multi-dimensional channel characteristics. The trials data can be used to assess the performance of MUDs and smart antennas for UMTS. The system has been used to characterise a number of representative environments, namely: urban, rural, indoor and outdoor-indoor. The channel data allows an appraisal of UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) wireless communications systems incorporating novel signal processing techniques. Thus, the relative merits of each can be determined