Exploring the vertical dimension of dynamic beam steering

Abstract

This paper investigates the properties of a cellular mobile radio system with the capability to dynamically adapt the downtilt at the base station on a per terminal basis. We compare several realization options of this vertical beam steering and explore the impacts of downtilt, vertical half-power beam width (HPBW) and inter-site distance (ISD) on spectral efficiency and cell coverage. We show that our approach improves performance in single-cell environment and can achieve a significant amount of interference avoidance already without any kind of coordination between cells.