Performance improvement in array processing architectures of WCDMA systems by low side lobe beamforming

The European standard for 3rd generation mobile communication is wideband direct sequence code division multiple access (WCDMA), in which the same frequency spectrum is shared through all cells simultaneously, as opposed to TDMA. Thus in a WCDMA system all transmitted signals turn out to be disturbing factors to all other users in the system in the form of interference. Therefore the system capacity strongly depends on the interference level in the system. To suppress the amount of interference, fast and reliable interference controlling algorithms must be employed in next generation systems. In this paper it is shown that antenna arrays with steerable low sidelobes can reduce interference in WCDMA can increase the system capacity and array performance. Four performance metrics of array processing architectures are simulated in an interfering environment to demonstrate the advantage of low sidelobe beamforming over adaptive antennas.