Distributed versus centralized antenna arrays in broadband wireless networks

This paper studies the potential benefits of antenna array processing-used in conjunction with adaptive data-rate control-in broadband wireless networks. We focus on distributed antenna arrays, i.e., combining signals from a group of microcells, rather than the more conventional centralized (macrocellular) antenna, array processing. We show that distributed arrays promise significant power and capacity gains over centralized arrays. Moreover, we show that even selection combining (though less effective than coherent combining) can be very successful in this architecture, offering a promising tradeoff between performance and complexity.