Design and Testing of a Cylindrically-Conformal Array for Semi-Smart Antenna Base Stations

This paper presents a novel approach for improving the system capacity performance of cellular networks by using the concept of semi-smart antennas. A cylindrically-conformal base station antenna array has been designed to test the feasibility of achieving the desired radiation patterns. In comparison to the typical smart-antenna approach, semi-smart antenna technology has proven to be of much lower complexity and has minimal impact on the cellular system architecture