An Efficient SDMA Scheme Applied in Hot Spots
Using Uniform Circular Array
Ying-Kang Zhang, Yang Xiao
Institute of Information Science, Beijing Jiaotong University
Beijing, China
dakang_828@163.com , yangxiao0513@163.com
Abstract—in this paper, based on the analysis of the UCA
beamforming algorithm, an efficient SDMA scheme using the
uniform circular array (UCA) with 8 elements is proposed. As
the scheme devised, the cell is sectored by 2 crossed beam groups
formed by UCA and the large elevation area of the cell is
covered by UCA omni-directional pattern. With SDMA
technique applied in the sectors, the cellular capacity can be
increased nearly 5 times with low co-channel interference. The
simulation results verify that, the scheme is of good feasibility in
implementation and has a practical worth to be applied in hot
spots.
I. INTRODUCTION
0B
With the rapid growth of the mobile users and new multi-
media information services, the current 3G system are still
facing the challenge of further increased communication
capacity. Particularly at hot spots, such as airport waiting
room, conference center or business districts, efficient
measures are desired to cope with the multiplied traffic loads.
Compared with the traditional schemes such as Frequency
Division Multiple Access (FDMA), Time Division Multiple
Access (TDMA), and Code Division Multiple Access
(CDMA), Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) is able to
further improve the spectrum utilization by fully using the
spatial diversity of the signal transmitting direction. As the
main applications of SDMA, the techniques of smart antenna
and MIMO have attracted worldwide interests for a long time
[1]. However, the smart antenna technique requires complex
procedures of estimating the DOA of signal and tracking the
motions of the users in real-time which greatly restricts the
efficiency of the system [2]; in MIMO technique, the channel
also need to be estimated and, moreover, at the receiver side,
multi-antennas are required to be mounted which increases the
complexity and cost of the receiver and, hence, constrains its
application severely [3].
Cell sectorization, a common application of SDMA
technology, is already widely applied in current 3G system. It
utilizes directional antennas to form fixed beams to divide the
cell into several sectors and, hence, the channel capacity can
be multiplied effectively [4]. Compared with smart antenna
and MIMO, cell sectorization has distinct features of simple
configuration, rapid response and flexible processing. The
This project is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China: (No. 60572093) and the Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral
Program of Higher Education (No. 20050004016)
978-1-4244-5309-2/10/$26.00 ©2010 IEEE 3949
current cell sectorization systems mainly adopt the Uniform
Linear Array (ULA) as the directional antenna. However,
since the azimuth coverage of ULA is limited (at most 120°),
more than 3 sets of ULA are required to cover the whole cell.
Currently, 3-sector scheme is the most common technique
applied in the cell sectorization systems [1] [5]. However,
when more sectors are divided, the cost and processing load of
the base station will be multiplied due to the increase of the
array antennas, and the inter-sector co-channel interference
caused by the pattern overlaps will be deteriorated. Moreover,
with the increase of the sectors, the inter-sector handoffs
caused by the mobile moving across the sector will be
intensified. Especially at the hot spots, the areas near the
bottom of the array antenna, where is the intersection of the
sectors, will experience high frequent handoffs which effects
the efficiency of the base station greatly.
Compared with ULA, Uniform Circular Array (UCA) has
unique features of realizing the 360° antenna coverage with
fewer array elements [6]. Furthermore, UCA is able to form
omni-directional pattern as well as beam. The existing
algorithms of UCA pattern synthesis mainly focus on the
beamforming method in the 1D azimuth direction [7-9].
Nevertheless, the properties of the formed beams in the
elevation direction are rarely concerned.
In this paper, a SDMA scheme of cell sectorization based
on UCA is designed. First, aiming at forming the beam group
covered the 360° azimuth of the cell, the current algorithm of
UCA beamforming [7] is implemented and the 2D pattern of
the formed beam is analyzed. Concerning the poor
performance of the formed beam’s pattern in the larger
elevations, in our design, UCA omni-directional pattern is
suggested to cover the large elevation area of the cell with
exclusive channels assigned. Based on this proposal, since the
areas near the bottom of the antenna are combined by the
omni-directional pattern, the problem of the frequent inter-
sector handoffs can be relieved. To cope with the problems of
the decline of antenna gain and the pattern overlaps at the
border of the formed beams, 2 crossed beam groups which
have an angular rotation of half beam width are utilized to
realize the cell sectorization. As the system designed,
exclusive group of channels is assigned for each beam group
so that the inter-sector co-channel interference can be
suppressed efficiently. Finally, a SDMA scheme of cell
sectorization using 8 elements UCA is investigated in our
simulation. As the scheme designed, the cell is divided into 2
groups of 5-sector (10 sectors) and 1 omni-directional area.
Employing SDMA technique in each group of sectors, the
cellular channel capacity can be increased to nearly 5 times.
The simulation results verify that, the proposed scheme can
ensure the level of co-channel interference below -17dB.
II. MODEL OF UNIFORM CIRCULAR ARRAY
1B
Referring to (2), Fomni (ϕ ) is a 1D function about the
elevation ϕ . For ϕ ∈ [0, π / 2] , actually Fomni (ϕ ) is a section
of J 0 ( x ) in the domain of x ∈ [0,2πR / λ ] . Fig.2 illustrates the
antenna gains of the omni-directional patterns in the ϕ
direction which formed by 5 different R / λ equaling to 0.1,
0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5.
III. ANALYSIS OF THE UCA BEAMFORMING
2B

R θ0 = 0
A. Algorithm of UCA beamforming
θs
6B

O Only considering the direction on the circle plane of

θ
UCA, i.e. ϕ = 0° , the 2D pattern F (θ , ϕ ) is degenerated into
ϕ the 1D pattern F (θ ,0) with the form as
N
F (θ ,0) = ∑ wn exp[ jβR cos(θ − θ n )] (3)
Users’ n=0
signal Literature [7] proposes a method of UCA pattern synthesis in
Figure 1. Geometry of the uniform circular array
which the DFT of the optimal excitation array W o ,

As Fig.1 shown, Uniform Circular Array (UCA) consists

(
represented as Wˆ o = wˆ o , wˆ o ,..., wˆ o
0 1
T
)
, can be solved via
N −1

of N isotropic elements spaced on a circle paralleling to the following analytic expression

N −1
ground with radius R. The angle of the circle is divided into N π

uniform intervals of θ s = 2π / N . As the angle of one element ∑ exp(− j 2πkn / N )∫ π F (θ，0) exp[− jβR cos(θ − θ )]dθ
−
0 n
wˆ ko = k =0
N −1
is specified as θ 0 = 0 , the angle of the n-th element is 2πN ∑ J 0 (2 βR cos(πn / N )) cos(2πkn / N )
θ n = 2πn / N . Assuming wn is the excitation of the n-th k =0

T
(4)
element, then the excitation array is W = ( w0 , w1 " wN −1 ) . where F0 (θ ,0) is the expected 1D pattern which need to be
Locating the spherical coordinates system on the UCA, the initiated as follows forms in forming a beam whose mainlobe
direction-of-arrival (DOA) of the users’ signals can be width is θ w and pointing direction is θ c .
represented by 2-D angle (θ ,ϕ ) , where θ is defined as the
azimuth and ϕ as the elevation. Without the consideration of F0 (θ ,0) = 0, θ − θ c > θ w / 2; F0 (θ ,0) = 1, θ − θ c ≤ θ w / 2 (5)
the mutual coupling between elements, the pattern function of In current cell sectorization system, the cell is divided by
UCA has the form as [6] a beam group which consists of M orthogonal beams covering
N −1 the 360° azimuth. Utilizing above method, the m-th beam can
F (θ , ϕ ) = ∑ wn exp[ jβR cos ϕ cos(θ − θ n )] (1) be formed via the setting of θ w and θc as
n=0
where β = 2π / λ ( λ is the wavelength). F (θ , ϕ ) is the 2D θ w = 2π / M , θ c = 2πm / M , m = 1,..., M (6)
pattern of UCA about the two variables θ and ϕ . In our simulations, the beam group with M=5 is formed as
Fig.3 illustrated.
When identical excitations are employed on all the
elements, i.e. W = (1,1"1)T , the omni-directional pattern of
UCA defined as Fomni (θ , ϕ ) can be formed:
N −1
Fomni (ϕ ) = ∑ exp[ jβR cos ϕ cos(θ − θ n )] ≈ J 0 (βR cos ϕ ) (2)
n =0
where J 0 (x ) is the Bessel function of the first kind of 0-order.

Figure 3. Antenna pattern of beam group

B. Analysis of the 2D pattern of the formed UCA beam

Utilizing the beamforming algorithm represented in last
section, we simulate the beams whose parameters are
initialized as N = 8 , θ w = 60° and θ c = 0° . The 2D pattern of
the beams can be obtained via substituting the solved W o
Figure 2. Omni-directional patterns of UCA

3950
into (1). Fig.4(a)-(d) show the 2D patterns of the beams
formed by different R / λ respectively equaling to 0.1, 0.3,
0.4 and 0.5. In these figures, The ranges of the azimuth and
elevation are θ ∈ [ −180°,180°] and ϕ ∈ [0,90°] .
(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Figure 4. 2D patterns of the formed beams
As Fig.4 shown, in the area approaching to ϕ = 0° , the
beam is of narrow mainlobes and low sidelobes; however,
the performance of the beam is deteriorated as ϕ increased.
Additionally, with the growth of R / λ , the antenna gain in
larger elevation keeps rising (refer to Fig.4(a)-(c)). When
R / λ over 0.4, high sidelobes emerge which cause the
patterns more complicated.
Plenty of our simulations verify that, in larger elevations,
available beams cannot be formed; however, in smaller
elevations, UCA is able to form more desired beams having
high gain mainlobes especially in R / λ < 0.3 .
IV. DESIGN OF SDMA ASCHEME BASED ON UCA
3B
A. Background of cell sectorization
8B
Antenna
arrays ϕ = 0°
Cell ϕ 1) Select the parameters of N, R and M.
Area of large Area of small
elevation elevation
Sector
Figure 5. Geometry of the cell sectorization system
As the cell sectorization geometry shown in Fig.5, the
antenna array is located above the center of the cell.
According to the difference of the elevations ϕ , the cell can
be divided into areas of large elevation and small elevation.
In cell sectorization systems, since users’ uplink and
downlink signals are transmitted and received in the
difference fixed beams, SDMA technique can be employed
between the sectors. Referring to the working principle of cell
sectorization, the base station needs to monitor users’ signal
3951
strengths all the time. When user’s signal is once detected or
the user is moving across the sectors, the base station will
handoff the user’s uplink and downlink signals into the
specified beam which containing the strongest signals.
The existing cell sectorization systems mainly adopt the
three-sector scheme in which three 120° beams are formed by
ULA. However, the cell sectorization schemes applying ULA
have many limitations: First, since the beam coverage of
ULA is limited (the most 120°), more than 3 sets of ULA are
required that greatly increases the cost and processing burden
of the base station. Second, referring to Fig.3, at the border
of each beam, the antenna gain declines severely and the co-
channel interference can be caused by the pattern overlaps
especially when more sectors divided. Third, with the
increase of the sectors, the inter-sector distances will be so
close that more frequent handoffs will be triggered especially
in the large elevation area.
B. Design of cell sectorization based on UCA
9B
In this subsection, a cell sectorization scheme based on
UCA is researched. In our design, the cell is devised to be
sectored by the beam group formed by UCA. Concerning to
the poor performance of the beams in the larger elevation, we
utilize UCA omni-directional pattern to cover the large
elevation area of the cell which is called as the omni-
directional area. Moreover, to cope with the low antenna gain
and severe co-channel interference existing at the border of
each beam, 2 crossed beam groups which have an angular
rotation of half the beam width are formed to divide the cell
into 2M sectors. Additionally, the cellular channels are
devised to be divided into 3 exclusive groups which are
distributed respectively to the 2 beam groups and the omni-
directional pattern. As a result, the co-channel interference
caused by the pattern overlaps between the 2 beam groups
and the omni-directional pattern can be avoided.
According to above design, a practical scheme of cell
sectorization applying 8 elements UCA is investigated.
Referring to Section II and III, the patterns of the omni-
directional and the beams are varied with different R, and the
selection of M determines the width of the beam. Hence, in
our simulations, sufficient simulations with various
parameters are implemented to find out a desired scheme in
which the degree of co-channel interference is minimized.
The procedure of the implementation based on our scheme is
as follows:
10B
2) Obtain the excitation array of the UCA omni-
1B
directional pattern as W 0 = (1,1,...,1) .
3) Solve the excitation arrays of the 2 crossed beam
12B
groups ( W 1 , W 3 ,…, W 2 M −1 ) and ( W 2 , W 4 ,…, W 2 M ) via the
method represented in Section III in which the beamforming
parameters of the 2M beams are initiated as
θ w = 2π / M , θ c = πm / M , m = 1,..., 2 M (7)
In this paper, we propose a scheme in which the
parameters are selected as: N=8, R = 0.25λ and M=5.
Employing above procedure with the proposed parameters,
the excitations W 0 - W 10 can be solved and the patterns can be
obtained by substituting the excitations into (1).

Figure 6. 2D patterns of the omni-directional and beam
Via the simulations, the 2-D patterns of the omni-
directional and one beam is simulated as Fig.6 shown which
represents the patterns’ 3D figures projected to the plane in
the elevation direction. As Fig.6 marked, the elevation ranges
covered by the sectors and omni-directional area are
respectively about ϕ ∈ [0°，42°] and ϕ ∈ [42°，90°] . And the
maximum co-channel interference occurs in sectors caused by
the sidelobes of the beams is about -20dB.
Figure 7. 1D patterns of the beam groups
The 1D patterns of the 2 crossed beam group are
simulated and shown in Fig.7 in which the boundary lines of
the divided sectors are marked. The azimuth ranges of each
sector are about 36°. Since different channels are applied
between the 2 beam groups, the co-channel interference is
cause merely by the pattern overlaps between the beams in
the same beam group. As Fig.7 shown, the maximum co-
channel interference occurs at the boundary of each sector
which is below -17dB.
8 9
7 10
6 0 1 Conference on Signal Processing, 2004, pp: 451-454.
5 2
4 3
(a) (b)
Figure 8. (a) The cellular division; (b) The whole pattern of the UCA
Based on above scheme, the division of the cell is
illustrated in Fig.8(a) where 0 is the omni-directional area and
1-10 are the sectors. As the scheme proposed, the channel
3952
capacity is divided into 3 groups respectively assigned to the
users in area 0, (1, 3, 5, 7, 9) and (2, 4, 6, 8, 10). Accordingly,
the cellular channel capacity can be increased nearly 5 times
via implementing the SDMA technique in the 2 groups of
sectors. Fig.8(b) is the bottom view of the whole pattern of
UCA based on the spherical coordinates where the origin is
on the center of the bottom, the longitude and latitude
correspond to the azimuth and elevation and the radius
represents the antenna gain. The configuration of the
proposed SDMA system is given in Fig.9 where W 0 - W 10 are
the excitations attached to the users’ signals in area 0-10.
Element 0 1 … 7
UCA
…
Channel group 1 Channel group 2 Channel
group 3
W1 W 3 … W
9
W2 W4 … W
10
W0
Users of Users of Users of Users of Users of Users of Users of
area 1 area 3 … area 5 area 2 area 4 … area 10 area 0
Figure 9. Configuration of the SDMA system
V. CONCLUSION
4B
This paper proposes a SDMA scheme of cell sectorization
based on UCA. With the application of UCA, the cell
coverage can be realized by fewer array elements and, hence,
the cost and processing load of the system can be reduced
greatly. As the scheme devised, since the area near the
bottom of the antenna is combined by the UCA omni-
directional pattern, the problem of the frequent inter-sector
handoff can be relieved. In the paper, a practical scheme of 8
elements UCA is proposed, in which the cellular capacity
increases nearly 5 times and co-channel interference is below
-17dB. In conclusion, the proposed scheme has more
practical worth especially in hot spots.
VI. REFERENCES
5B
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[2] J. Litva and T.K. Lo, Digital Beamforming in Wireless
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Time Coded Wireless Systems,” IEEE Transaction On Communication,
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[4] D. Gesbert, “Effect of Sectorization on the Spectrum Efficiency of
Cellular Radio Systems,” IEEE Transaction On Vehicular Technology,
Vol. 41, No.3, 1992, pp. 217-225.
[5] Y. Xiao, L.Y. Lu and S.H. Hu, “Downlink multi-beamforming control
for the smart antennas of TD-SCDMA base stations,” 7th International
[6] H.L.V. Trees, Optimum Array Processing: Detection, Estimation, and
Modulation Theory, Part IV, New York, John Wiley& Sons, Inc., 2002.
[7] R. Vescovo, “Constrained and unconstrained synthesis of array factor
for circular arrays,” IEEE Transaction on Antennas and Propagation,
Vol. 43, No. 12, 1995, pp. 1405-1410.
[8] H. Steyskal, “Digital Beamforming Aspects of Wideband Circular
Arrays,” IEEE Aerospace Conference 2008, pp. 1-6.
[9] D. Chen, B.F. He, “A fast synthesis method for the circular arrays,”
European Conference on Antennas and Propagation, 2009, pp. 3476-
3478.