Effects of antenna radiation pattern on the performance of the mobile handset

Abstract

The performance of mobile phones is important in mobile networks, particularly in environments characterized by severe multipath fading effects. Thus, it is important to know what antenna characteristics might improve the performance of mobile phones. The effects of the properties of the antenna radiation pattern on the performance of the antenna in different environments are presented. Measured signal distributions and synthetic antenna radiation patterns have been used in the analysis. In the synthesis, no superior way of improving the performance of a mobile terminal could be found by means of different radiation patterns. However, some small improvements can be found. As the main beam is narrowed, the performance becomes slightly better. Also, tilting the beam somewhat above the horizontal level increases the performance. The more the polarization of the antenna is vertical, the better the performance. Therefore, polarization diversity with maximum ratio combining might be useful in compensating handset tilting.