The Flexibility Benefit

Smart antennas therefore have to produce some tangible cost/performance benefits
over and above conventional passive antenna solutions. One potential benefit is flexibility,
which is the ability to adapt to changing coverage requirements and a changing
interference environment. The flexibility comes from using DSPs to process incoming
signals (signal strength, C/I, and angle of arrival) to determine the optimum antenna
coverage/visibility footprint.

The job essentially means doing a lot of parallel processing. (Distributed DSP architectures
are good at this.) The algorithms involved are similar to the algorithms used in
direction finding, antimissile missile systems (where speed and angle of arrival need to
be determined), and medical ultrasound imaging. 305