An Alternative Setup for a Base-Station Cellular Antenna

Abstract

This paper proposes the use of an alternative setup of a cellular base-station antenna with the potential of reducing the cochannel interference. The setup uses a different cell antenna placement strategy where there is one base-station antenna per cell located high at its center. Unlike a traditional base-station antenna radiating in the horizontal direction, the antenna under consideration radiates downward. The beamwidth of the antenna is considered to be wide enough to match the cell diameter. In addition, the radiation pattern beyond the associated beamwidth is assumed to possess a large attenuation. This paper studies the use of the proposed antenna setup by examining the cell geometry and grouping and its effect on the antenna radiation pattern. It is shown that for a sufficiently large attenuation pattern beyond the antenna beamwidth, the corresponding signal-to-interference ratio can be made significantly larger than the one resulting from the traditional antenna setup.