Merging multicarrier CDMA and oscillating-beam smart antenna arrays: exploiting directionality, transmit diversity, and frequency diversity

In this paper, a novel merger of multicarrier code-division multiple access (MC-CDMA) and smart antenna arrays is introduced. Here, a group of Q carriers in the MC-CDMA system is applied to its own M-element smart antenna array at the base station (BS). The smart antennas are located in close proximity to one another. We generate a transmit diversity gain at the receiver by carefully moving (oscillating) the antenna array´s pattern. The pattern oscillation is achieved by applying appropriate time-varying phases to array elements of each smart antenna. The beam pattern oscillation ensures a mainlobe at the position of the intended user and small oscillations in the beam pattern. This beam pattern oscillation leads to a time-varying channel with a controllable coherence time; hence, a transmit diversity benefit, in the form of a time diversity benefit, is available at the receiver. Employing MC-CDMA with the proposed smart antenna at the BS, we achieve: 1) directionality which creates high network capacity via space-division multiple access; 2) a transmit diversity gain which supports high performance at the receiver in the mobile unit; and 3) increased capacity and performance via MC-CDMA´s ability to support both CDMA and frequency diversity benefits, respectively.