Conception and application of smart antennas for transport applications

This paper presents, in a first time, an original method of smart antenna design, based on an antenna array driven by vector modulators. Different radiation patterns are measured to validate the method. In a second time, we show the interest in using such antenna array in transports domain. Thus, we first integrate these radiation patterns into a 3D propagation simulator based on Ray-Tracing, to achieve deterministic simulations of wave propagation in site specific environment (dense urban, urban, suburban). Then, we perform some simulations of an OFDM communication on a mobility scenario in a realistic urban environment taking into account antennas and channel behavior. Significant gains in terms of power consumption, electromagnetic de-pollution and Bit Error Rate (BER) are provided with smart antennas in comparison with dipole antenna.