Importance

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Abstract

A method and apparatus for increasing the capacity of wireless broadcast communications system from a central studio to a plurality of users in a service area is disclosed. Given a source signal whose high information rate exceeds the practical information carrying capacity of the available broadcast channel bandwidth, the invention increases the effective capacity of the broadcast system to effectively communicate such a source signal. The high-rate signal is split into several low-rate signals such that each can be accommodated within the allocated bandwidth. These low-rate signals are transmitted from spatially separated transmitters, all radiating into the service area in the same frequency channel. Each receiver uses a plurality of antennas to receive these multiple cochannel signals that arrive from different directions-of-arrival. The receiver exploits the directions-of-arrival differences of these cochannel signals to separate them into the individually transmitted signals. The separated signals are then demodulated to extract the information signals which are then combined to obtain the original high-rate source signal. Thus, the broadcast information capacity can be increased several-fold.

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First Claim