Resource Allocation and Adaptive Antennas in Cellular Communications

The rapid growth in demand for cellular mobile communications and emerging fixed wireless access has created the need to increase system capacity through more efficient utilization of the frequency spectrum, and the need for better grade of service. In cellular systems, capacity improvement can be achieved by reducing co-channel interference.

Several techniques have been proposed in literature for mitigating co-channel interference, such as adaptive antennas and power control. Also, by allocating transmitter power and communication channels efficiently (resource allocation), overall co-channel interference can be maintained below a desired maximum tolerable level, while maximizing the carried traffic of the system.

This dissertation presents investigation results on the performance of base station adaptive antennas, power control and channel allocation, as techniques for capacity improvement. Several approaches are analyzed. Firstly, we study the combined use of adaptive antennas and fractional loading factor, in order to estimate the potential capacity improvement achieved by adaptive antennas.

Next, an extensive simulation analysis of a cellular network is carried out aiming to investigate the complex interrelationship between power control, channel allocation and adaptive antennas. In the first part of this simulation analysis, the combined use of adaptive antennas, power control and reduced cluster size is analyzed in a cellular system using fixed channel allocation.

In the second part, we analyze the benefits of combining adaptive antennas, dynamic channel allocation and power control. Two representative channel allocation algorithms are considered and analyzed regarding how efficiently they transform reduced co-channel interference into higher carried traffic. Finally, the spatial filtering capability of adaptive antennas is used to allow several users to share the same channel within the same cell. Several allocation algorithms combined with power control are analyzed.