CAPACITY OF TIME-SPACE SWITCHED CELLULAR RADIO LINK SYSTEMS FOR METROPOLITAN-AREA NETWORKS

Using multipoint-radio link systems constitutes a viable alternative to copper and optical fibres for high-capacity local distribution of telephone and data traffic. In the paper, a novel architecture for a fixed cellular radio system is proposed. The proposed system uses electronically steerable antennas to combine time and 'space' multiplexing. Assuming an urban environment and a high user density, the performance of the system is estimated for some simple propagation and interference models. Results indicate that, owing to the time-space multiplexing technique, the performance exceeds the performance of conventional multipoint systems by an order of magnitude. Owing to the unique features of the system, several central stations may be operated at the same site at the same frequency, to boost the capacity even more.