The article investigates the usage of adaptive directed antennas for the Mobile Broadband System (MBS). The advantages and problems are considered. Solutions for the problems are proposed and evaluated with respect to cost, feasibility and efficiency. The MBS is a wireless cellular network operating at 60 GHz. It has been developed in the European collaborative RACE II project R2057, addressing techniques and technology (especially GaAs MMIC, i.e. millimetre-wave monolithic integrated circuits) as well as system concepts. A major feature of MBS is to transparently transport ATM cells over the air interface at bit rates of 34 Mbit/s per carrier.

A proposal for an intermediate hop radio network is presented which is a mobile station-mobile station (MS-MS) link allowing a network based on the mobile broadband system (MBS). The MBS operating at 60 GHz is most likely to rely on line of sight (LOS) connections, which results in the problem of shadowing. The proposed network architecture is compared with conventional cellular radio networks as well as with ad-hoc radio networks by a performance analysis, that has been carried out by an analytic approach and a simulation. All necessary protocols have been specified in SDL.

Several location management strategies applicable in cellular networks are presented. Analytical modelling approaches for signalling cost minimisation are discussed. Results of a GSM based case study are given that are applicable to cellular radio systems of the 3rd generation like MBS and UMTS. A hybrid dynamic strategy is proposed for a public MBS.>