Introduction

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What is a Smart Antenna?

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The main idea is that interferers rarely have the same location as the user. By maximizing the antenna gain in the desired direction and simultaneously placing minimal radiation pattern in the directions of the interferers, the quality of the communication link can be significantly improved. In personal and mobile communications, the interferers are the users other than the desired user. A smart antenna has an adaptive/non-fixed lobe pattern. This feature distinguishes it from the common antennas [1].

Why Smart Antennas ?
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The wireless personal communications market, especially the cellular telephone segment has been growing exponentially for years. The growing will go on and the potential is enormous. But there are obstacles to making this vision a reality.
They are:

1. Quality of service.
2. Traffic capacity.
3. Cost of service

The smart antenna technology is a promising approach to these problems. It offers:

1. Increased capacity.
2. Extended range.
3. Better link quality.
4. Longer battery life in the mobile unit, mobile user location estimation, communication security, etc.

Types of Smart Antennas
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The basic types of the Smart Antennas are:

1. Switched beam systems.
2. Dynamically phased array.
3. Adaptive array.

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