Automatic link transfer with distributed antennas

Personal communications systems (PCS) are proposed to divide the radio spectrum into a number of frequency sets, with each port having its own set of frequencies. The frequency sets are reused at spatially separated radio ports to minimize cochannel interference. This paper analyzes a radio access system that has multiple antennas spatially distributed throughout the coverage area of a radio port, instead of a single antenna at the radio port. The same signal is simulcast by each antenna in the coverage area of the port. This paper presents simulations of automatic link transfer (ALT) for ports with distributed antennas. ALT is called "handoff" in cellular systems. A model of shadow fading with distributed antennas is described. Simulation results are given with different numbers of distributed antennas and different ALT algorithms. It is shown that increasing the number of antennas results in better overall ALT performance, with a lower number of ALTs and higher minimum received signal power. Minimizing the number of ALTs will reduce the impact of wireless services on network elements.