The performance of polarization diversity schemes at a base station in small/micro cells at 1800 MHz

The aim of this paper is to evaluate experimentally the relationships between cross-polarization discrimination (XPD), signal cross correlation, and polarization diversity gain with horizontally/vertically (HV) polarized reception at the base-station (BS) end at 1800 MHz. The performance of the horizontal/vertical polarization diversity scheme was also compared with a diversity scheme with +/-45 degrees slanted polarizations and horizontal space diversity at 1800 MHz in a personal communication system (PCS) mobile network. A measurement campaign was conducted in small/micro cells in different types of areas, taking into account the influence of mobile antenna inclination. According to the measurements, XPD values for horizontal/vertical polarizations vary between 5-15 dB, depending on the environment. Furthermore, XPD values depend highly on the radio propagation path between the BS and mobile station (MS) due to line-of-sight (LOS) and nonline-of-sight (NLOS) situations. Signal cross correlations of horizontal and vertical polarizations in both LOS and NLOS situations were clearly below 0.7, which is the generally accepted value to have a reasonable improvement at the receiving end with diversity. Finally, the results showed that almost equal diversity gain and system performance in a PCS network at 1800 MHz can be achieved in small/micro cells in different environments with +/-45 degrees slanted polarizations at the BS end when comparing results with horizontal space diversity. The performance of horizontal/vertical polarization diversity scheme was approximately 1 dB worse than horizontal spare diversity.