Performance analysis and evaluation for active antenna arrays under three-dimensional wireless channel model

Abstract

In this paper, we establish a full 3-D channel model to support the performance analysis and evaluation of active antenna array (AAA)-based wireless communication systems. We analyze and compare the impact of three different downtilt methods employed in AAA antennas, electrical downtilt (ET), mechanical downtilt (MT), hybrid downtilt (the combination of ET and MT), on the antenna patterns, which would notably impact the performance of mobile wireless communication systems. We compare the performances of the wireless communication system throughput based on the 2-D and 3-D wireless channel models using passive antenna arrays. We also investigate the system performance in terms of the capacity and coverage with different AAAs under the 3-D channel. After the performance analysis and evaluation, we have observed that the downtilt optimization may introduce significant gains in coverage and capacity for individual antennas with smaller beamwidth of the vertical patterns, but may not lead to notable gains for individual antennas with relative larger beamwidth of the vertical patterns.