Abstract
This dissertation presents and develops the Intelligent Picocell as a solution for high bit rate, efficient bandwidth indoor wireless communication. The research has examined different aspects of the indoor radio propagation environment and system implementation in order to highlight key benefits of the proposed architecture. Explosive growth in demand for indoor wireless communications motivates research into this novel radio architecture. The architecture should be capable of tailoring capacity and coverage to the needs of the specific indoor environment, while maximising spectral efficiency. The Intelligent Picocell is based on an evolution of the distributed antenna concept to provide macrodiversity, microdiversity and interference cancellation. The architecture is fully scalable to large numbers of users and can provide plug-and-play operation, with no need for detailed system planning beyond the antenna locations. The research examines different aspects of picocell system performance and design, including: Investigation on the indoor radio environment. Through measurements, the effects of building features on path loss and shadowing are analysed and propagation models are proposed for simulating picocell systems. Analysis of the Intelligent Picocell architecture, two algorithms are proposed for interference reduction, one based on a distributed narrowband optimum combiner and the other on a dynamic channel assignment and allocation scheme. Through simulation, it was demonstrated that the mobile transmitted power for an Intelligent Picocell is lower than the power required in a distributed antennas system. It was also shown that the capacity of the system depends on the number of antennas distributed in the building. Key words: Intelligent picocell, adaptive antennas, diversity, distributed antennas, dynamic channel allocation, propagation measurements.