Switched beams versus beam pointing for boosting the downlink capacity of UMTS FDD

In this paper the switched beam method is compared with beam pointing. Using extensive system simulations it is shown that both methods achieve a capacity gain over a 3-sectored reference system of more than 170%. As the capacity achieved with the two systems is nearly the same but the complexity of beam pointing is significantly higher, I conclude that switched beams are the appropriate method for boosting the downlink capacity of UMTS FDD.