Efficient evaluation of adaptive digital beamforming for multi-service provision in a cellular CDMA system

In future wireless communication scenarios, there will be a greater need for multimedia access, with the transfer of data being of at least equal importance to voice communications. Cell capacity in a CDMA communication system can be increased through the use of base station antenna arrays and digital beamforming. We explore cell capacity values for combined services (voice and data) over the reverse link of a CDMA system and investigate the improvements that can be obtained from beamforming. Our simulated and predicted results for bandwidths of 1.2288 MHz (narrowband IS-95) and 4.9152 MHz (wideband CDMA) show good agreement with each other. The wider bandwidth appears to be more appropriate for multi-service provision due to an observed constant data throughput as the number of data mobiles is varied. An increase of approximately 50% in average throughput was observed for 2 elements and 135% for 3 elements, as compared to the single element case for 4.9152 MHz.