An evaluation of the range extension achieved by the TSUNAMI (II) adaptive antenna testbed

The TSUNAMI (II) project has been an investigation into the application of adaptive antenna technology for use in future generation mobile communications systems. The key aims of the project were to investigate the increase in system capacity and coverage that can be realised above existing, non-adaptive networks. To this end, extensive field trials with a modified GSM1800 basestation equipped with an 8-element adaptive antenna system were conducted at a test site operated by Orange PCS in Bristol, UK. This paper presents a subset of the results obtained from the field trial which demonstrate that a practical increase in usable cell radius (range extension) of the order of 54% was achieved.