Towards the implementation of a WCDMA AAA receiver on an FPGA software radio platform

A software radio base station incorporating adaptive array beamforming and power control can reduce call blocking and forced termination, thereby increasing the system's capacity. This paper, based on the work of Tanaka, Sawahashi and Adachi (1997), compares the simulated performance of an adaptive antenna array (AAA), DSCDMA receiver with that of a single antenna RAKE receiver. The results indicate that when the link is interference limited, a six element AAA receiver increases the link capacity to approximately three times that of the single antenna RAKE receiver. These results, together with an investigation into power control, are used as justification for development of an FPGA based AAA receiver on a software radio platform. The system configuration, comparative results and current status of the FPGA implementation are discussed.