Design and Performance Aspects of an Adaptive Cylindrical Beamforming Array

In this article, the design of a cylindrical beamforming array (CBA) is presented. The array is conformed over a ring of a conducting circular cylinder. From the total number of elements, M, of the array, a subset of N successive elements is enabled each time. The selection of the subset is based on the minimization of the angle between its broadside direction and the direction of arrival (DOA) of the signal of interest (SOI). Furthermore, by adaptively combining the outputs of the active subarray, the gain of the system is maximized. The cylindrical beamforming array is integrated into the CDMA acquisition phase, where a joint process of code acquisition and smart-antenna adaptation is applied. The array is implemented for the uplink of a base-station receiver of a wireless communications system. A detailed justification and a performance evaluation under various simulation scenarios, which include integration into spatial and two-dimensional rake receivers, are also presented.