SINR improvement through reconfigurable antenna adaptation to handheld device orientation

The potential for signal to interference noise (SINR) improvement by using beamforming at a mobile station (MS) is well known. For example, the use of smart antennas in a mobile station is considered, and is shown that SINR improvements can be up to 40 dB for peer to peer communications and approximately 25 dB for microcell applications. In Knudsen and Pedersen considered the impact of the human head on the directionality of MS transmissions in a non-reconflgurable antenna. Despite the significant body of published work on smart antennas, there has been no published treatment we are aware of that specifically measures the motions typically experienced by handheld MSs such as cellular phones and smart phones and analyzes the SINR gains that can be achieved if these motions are measured in real time and used in setting the antenna configuration. The motivations for this work are strong. The gains that can be achieved by antenna adaptation are significant, and one can expect that even imperfect and/or delayed MS orientation information can, if provided to a smart antenna, lead to significantly improved SINR and therefore significantly improved link and service quality. Such adaptation is becoming more feasible in light of recent developments in reconfigurable antennas.