Coverage and capacity of WCDMA systems with beam steering antennas

The goal of this contribution is to discuss the benefits of beam steering antennas on downlink dedicated channels (DCHs) of the WCDMA-FDD system, regarding coverage and capacity aspects. Our studies are based on a software tool (WIDE/sub sim/- WCDMA downlink dynamic system level simulator), which performs slot-based dynamic simulations of the WCDMA radio access network on the forward link direction. The multicell environment and user mobility are taken into account, aiming at a combined evaluation of radio resource management (RRM) and smart antenna strategies. The RRM algorithms implemented in the simulator are: power-based call admission control, power allocation, power control (open loop and inner loop) and soft(er) handover.