Essential considerations in implementing the smart antenna system for downlink beamforming

This paper addresses some essential problems that have to be taken into consideration in implementing the smart antenna base station (SABS) for downlink beamforming. In order to provide proper downlink beamforming as well as uplink beamforming, a pragmatic procedure of automatic calibration is proposed. Through the experimental test, we confirm that the proposed calibration technique has eliminated the problem of the phase differences of the signal path associated with each antenna. Also, in this paper, we first analyze the multipath condition under which the auxiliary pilot becomes indispensable for detecting the data transmitted on the data channel and what happens if the auxiliary pilot is not available. Then, the performance of the downlink beamforming utilizing the auxiliary pilot is analyzed through the computer simulations. Finally, we present a comparison of downlink communications to uplink ones in terms of throughputs available at each of uplink and downlink communications.