Measured Improvement of Indoor Coverage for Fixed Wireless Loops With Multiple Antenna Receivers

We present measured gains of spatial and angular diversity receivers for fixed narrowband wireless links at 2.4 GHz, in scenarios where indoor service is provided from an outdoor base station. We tested the performance of maximal ratio (MRC), equal gain (EGC) and selection (SC) combiners, and compared them to angular selection diversity using directive antennas. Spatial fading statistics were found to be adequately described by means of Rayleigh distributions. Our empirical results show that a MRC will result in around 10 dB of diversity gain when 90% of the target coverage area must be served. The benefits of using a properly aimed directive antenna or equivalently a steered array of closely spaced antennas, was found to be within 1 dB of that of a MRC, with the advantage of requiring a smaller size array.