Simulation Studies of Smart Antenna under the Influence of

White Signals and DOAs

Mobia Jacob#1,

Shashikumar D#2

Department of electronics and communication Engineering,

Christ University
Bangalore, India
1
mobia.mobia41@gmail.com

Department of electronics and communication engineering,

Christ University
Bangalore, India
2
shashikumar.d@christuniversity.in

Abstract The adoption of smart / adaptive antenna

(direction of the desired source) compared to some undesired

directions (direction of interfering sources).

techniques in future wireless systems is expected to have a

significant impact on the efficient use of the spectrum, the
minimization of the cost of establishing new wireless
networks, the optimization of service quality and
realization of transparent operation across multi
technology wireless networks [1]. This antenna array used
to increase the channel capacity, extend the coverage, steer
multiple beams to track mobiles. Moreover it can also be
used to reduce multipath fading and co-channel
interference. DOA estimates the direction of arrival of the
signal, using the techniques as MUSIC, ESPRIT etc.

Keywords-DOA, MUSIC, ESPRIT, MIMO, CDMA, Beam

forming

I. INTRODUCTION
The main job of DOA (Direction of Arrivals) estimation is to
estimate the direction of arrival of the incoming signals. DOA
depends on many parameters. The parameters are number of
mobile users, number of array elements, inter-element
spacing, number of signals and spatial distribution. As the
number of mobile subscribers increases rapidly, combined
with a demand for more sophisticated mobile services
requiring higher data rates, the operators are forced to
investigate different methods to put more capacity into their
networks. Smart antennas are foreseen as one of the more
promising technologies for reducing interference and
increasing capacity in CDMA networks [1]. Further, CDMA
is a multiple access interference limited system, any action
that reduces the interference level increases more users in the
system, higher bit-rates, improved quality for the existing
users at the same bit-rates and extended cell range for the
same number of users at the same bit rates, or any arbitrary
combination of these.
II. SMART ANTENNA SYSTEM CLASSIFICATION
Based on the signal processing technique followed at the
baseband output of the antenna array smart antennas can be
grouped into four basic types based on:
1) Beam forming: Through beam forming [2], a smart antenna
algorithm can receive predominantly from desired direction

2) Diversity combining: A major limiting factor in wireless

communication is multipath fading where the amplitude of the
received signal fluctuates over time. The occurrence of
a
deep fade where the signal amplitude becomes very small can
impair the communications link for a conventional or a single
antenna system.
3) Space-time equalization: The preceding two techniques
usually assume that the signal of interest is a narrowband
signal compared to the coherence bandwidth of the channel
and is thus subjected to flat fading across the bandwidth of the
signal. Multipath fading in wireless communication can also
introduce frequency distortion to the received signal.
4) Multiple Input Multiple Outputs (MIMO) [3]: As the name
suggests this scheme requires array processing at the
transmitter and receiver. There are two different types of
MIMO schemes: one uses spatial multiplexing to enhance data
rate for a given bandwidth (thus, the spectral efficiency) and
the other uses space time coding using diversity combining
techniques to combat fading.
The system which is used for the operation can be sub divided
into three parts. These are mainly DOA estimation [4], DOA
classification and Beam forming. Each of these performs there
assigned operations.
III. DOA ESTIMATION
In a mobile environment, it is usually assumed that the
scatterers surrounding the mobile station are approximately at
the same height as or higher than the mobile. At the base
station side, it is assumed that the base station antenna is
deployed above the surrounding scatterers, typically mounted
on masts placed on rooftops.
The number of DOAs that can be estimated is smaller than the
number of antenna elements. This is a major disadvantage in
environments suffering from large angle spread. If large angle
spread is present, then the point source model is not valid and
inevitably many different DOAs correspond to a single signal
source. In that case spatial structure methods require more

antenna elements than the total number of impinging signals

and their multipaths. Spatial structure methods directly
estimate the DOAs of the impinging wavefronts [4]. Once the
DOAs are found, the weight vector necessary to separate the
wavefronts can be determined via beamforming methods. In
this paper, MUSIC algorithm is used to estimate the DOA of
signals.
A. MUSIC Algorithm
In wireless transmission, the receiving antennas can collect
more signals that can be emitted by several sources; MUSIC
detects frequencies in a signal by performing Eigen
decomposition on the covariance matrix of a data vector Y of
M samples obtained from the samples of the received
signal[5]. The key to MUSIC is its data model

y As v
Where V is a vector of M noise samples, S is a vector of N
signal amplitudes (N=2), and A is the M N Vandermonde
matrix of samples of the signal frequencies. If we assume a
zero-mean signal and white noise, then the covariance of Y
has the form

Ry E{ yy H } ARs AH 2 I
Here,

Rs E{ss H } is the N N signal autocorrelation

matrix, I is the M M identity matrix, and is the noise

variance. From the Eigen decomposition of Ry , we use the

The efficiency does not depend on the total number of

samples, m but does depend on M. As Mincreases, efficiency
and computation time increase. We pick M=8, because larger
values do not significantly improve the efficiency.
B. Analysis of DOA Estimation
For all adaptive array smart antenna simulations, the 5000
input signals of the training sequence have signed values of 1
or 1 to simulate a transmitter sending binary values.
Although there are 5000 sampling instants, the results only
show up to 200 intervals due to the extremely high rate of
convergence of the system. The step-size parameter for the
LMS algorithm is set to 0.008, to keep simulations as realistic
as possible, for those simulations with more than one
multipath, each multipath experiences a different gain, which
contains both amplitude and phase components. It was found
that the amplitude of the gain had the most effect on the
system, with the phase having little to no effect.
The carrier frequency f of transmitted training
c

sequences is set to 400 MHz, which means the value of the

wavelength is set to 0.75m. To satisfy an element spacing d
of /2 then means that d is set to 0.375m. For simulations with
only one transmitted signal, the propagation delay from
transmission to reaching the first antenna element is set to
100s, and for those with a second transmitted signal, the
second propagation delay is set at 150s.
IV. SIMULATION RESULT

Eigen vectors associated with the N maximum Eigen values to

define the signal subspace (the column space of A), and use
the other Eigen vectors to define the noise subspace, un . From
the orthogonality of the signal and noise subspaces, finding
the peaks in the estimator function

Using the analysis specification, the simulation is performed

to analyse the behaviour of smart antennas in the presence of
white signals with different DOAs. We have taken two
different cases as one white signal and two white signals. In
this two cases we are giving different DOAs as 2, 3, 4. Based
on this, we are taken the steering of a beam.
A. One White Signal Case:

J ( w)

1
[a(w)] ununH [a(w)]
H

For various w values yields the strongest frequencies, where

a(w) refers to the columns of A.
MUSIC assumes that the number of samples Mand the
number of frequencies Nare known. The efficiency of MUSIC
is the ratio of the theoretical smallest variance, given by the
Cramer-Rao Lower Bound (CRLB), to the variance of the
MUSIC estimator:

To ensure that the system worked correctly, the first

simulation investigated was the reception of one signal with
o

the one path that arrives at the base station at an angle of 60 .

A gain with amplitude of 0.5 dB was introduced to the input
signal as it was propagated to the antenna. Figure 1, 3, 5
illustrates that the received signal error converges at
approximately 54 dB sample intervals and reaches 0.01 after
43 intervals. The mean received signal error after convergence
lies approximately at 0.0006.
Figure 2, 4, 6 shows that beam pattern of the system
o

cff

varCRLB ( w i )
varMUSIC( w i )

correctly steers the main beam in the direction of 30 , 60 with

maximum beam strength of 2. This is due to the signal
experiencing a gain of amplitude 0.5, which reduces the
power of the signal by half. To counter this, the beam adjusts

its gain to the inverse of the signal power in order to receive a

signal similar to the original signal.

DOA1
DOA2
DOA3

3DOA
0
30

330

60

300

1.5

0.5

90

270

120

240

150

210
180

Fig. 4 Smart antenna simulation beam pattern for 1 white signal with 3 DOA

Fig. 1 Smart antenna simulation received signal error for 1 white signal with
2 DOA

DOA1
DOA2

2DOA
0
30

330

60

300

1.5

0.5

90

270

120

240

150

210
180

Fig. 5 Smart antenna simulation received signal error for 1 white signal with 4
DOA

Fig. 2 Smart antenna simulation beam pattern for 1 white signal with 2 DOA
DOA1
DOA2
DOA3
DOA4

4DOA
0
30

330

60

300

1.5

0.5

90

270

120

240

150

210
180

Fig. 3 Smart antenna simulation received signal error for 1 white signal with 3
DOA

Fig. 6 Smart antenna simulation beam pattern for 1 white signal with 4 DOA

B. Two White Signal Case:

The final smart antenna simulation is the most complex and
provided the most unexpected results. In this simulation we
transmit 2 training sequences, each with three multipath
components. However, second and third multipath
components of each signal are both set to arrive at the antenna
array one sample period behind the first multipath.
nd

rd

Essentially, this means that the 2 and 3 multipath is arriving

at the base station at the same time but from different
directions.
From figure 7, 9, 11 although there were three multipaths for
each signal in the system, only two sets of received signal
errors are being displayed. That is, only four unique weight
vectors exist. This is because the weight vectors for the
second and third multipaths are exactly the same due to these
signals arriving at the same time. This means that for
multipath components of the same signal that arrive at the
same time, only one weight vector is needed.

Fig. 8 Smart antenna simulation beam pattern for 2 white signals with 2 DOA
each

After this finding, it was expected that the main beam would
either be directed in the direction of the closest multipath or
the one with the greatest gain. However, the beam pattern
shown in figure 8,10,12 displays the three different beam
rd

patterns but the patterns for the 3 multipath of both signals

nd

rd

have two main lobes in the correct directions of the 2 and 3

multipaths. The gains of these beams are half what they would
normally be and swapped between the multipath components.
The smart antenna simulations confirmed that smart system
have an ability to distinguish between signals of interest and
interferers by directing beams in the directions of the desired
signals and nulls in the directions of the interferers.

Fig.9 Smart antenna simulation received signal error for 2 white signals with
3 DOAs each

3DOA
0
30

330

60
4

300

DOA1
DOA2
DOA3
DOA1
DOA2
DOA3

of sig
of sig
of sig
of sig
of sig
of sig

1
1
1
2
2
2

90

270

120

240

150

210
180

Fig.7 Smart antenna simulation received signal error for 2 white signals with
2 DOAs each

Fig. 10 Smart antenna simulation beam pattern for 2 white signal with 3 DOA

signals increasing with direction of arrivals increasing which

results the more chance of increasing the interference and
reducing the signal strength.
REFERENCES
[1] Al-Ardi, E.M., R.M. Shubair and M.E. Al-Mualla,
Investigation of high-resolution DOA estimation
algorithms for optimal performance of smart antenna
systems, Proceedings of the 4th International
Conference
on
3G
Mobile
Communication
Technologies, IEEE Xplore Press, pp: 460-464, June
2003.

Fig.11 Smart antenna simulation received signal error for 2 white signal with
4 DOA

4DOA
0
30

330

60
5

300
4

90

DOA1 of sig 1
DOA2 of sig 1
DOA3 of sig 1
DOA4 of sig 1
DOA1 of sig 2
DOA2 of sig 2
DOA3 of sig 2
DOA4 of sig 2

270

120

240

150

210
180

Fig. 12 Smart antenna simulation beam pattern for 2 white signal with 4 DOA

IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the problem of estimating directions of arrival
(DOAs) of multiple sources observed on the background of
white noise by using MUtiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC)
algorithm. This demonstrates the systems user oriented
steering abilities. Using this approach reduces the interference
substantially and hence increases the capacity of the system.
Smart antenna simulation is done by considering multiple
paths with multiple directions of arrivals of signals. The
simulations confirmed that smart system have an ability to
distinguish between signals of interest and interferers by
directing beams in the directions of the desired signals and
nulls in the directions of the interferers. If the number of white

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