Clever Dumb Antenna: Passive multi-beam antenna for broadband wireless communication

Abstract

A passive multi-beam antenna system with beamforming technology that can be used to increase quality of service, network capacity, and spectrum to meet the current and future data usage and network capacity demands is presented. The system presented can produce as many as 32 narrow high gain beams within a 90 or 120 degree sector with beam crossing set to be between 3 to 15 dB. Each beam provides a capacity and throughput multiplication over a traditional sector, resulting in a spectrum multiplication of as many as 32 times. With the use of multiplexers several channels can be combined and transmitted. Each beam can provide multi-band/ multi-channel transmission with a single antenna system to further enhance user capacity and throughput.