Method and Apparatus for Improving Land MobileRadio (LMR) Base Site Coverage Using Sectorized Antenna

A land mobile radio (LMR) base site, comprising:

• a receiver;
• a base site controller having a microprocessor;
• a wide beamwidth sectorized receive antenna operatively coupled to the receiver;
• the microprocessor of the base site controller being configured to:
• operate a receiver function, including a receiver combining function, on one or more elements associated with the wide beamwidth sectorized antenna, to generate a group of intermediate outputs;
• and
• apply a comparator function on the group of intermediate outputs to generate an LMR base site receiver output.

A land mobile radio (LMR) site, comprising:

• a prime site controller;
• a first subsite having a first LMR base site deployed with a single transmit/receive (TX/RX) wide beamwidth sectorized antenna, the single TX/RX wide beamwidth sectorized antenna being operatively coupled through a duplexer coupled to a transmitter and a receiver of the first LMR base site;
• a second subsite having a second LMR base site deployed with a second single transmit/receive (TX/RX) wide beamwidth sectorized antenna, the second wide beamwidth sectorized antenna being operatively coupled through a second duplexer coupled to a transmitter and a receiver of the first LMR base site;
• the prime site controller having a processor configured to initiate one of:
• a receiver combining function comprising a selection diversity technique on a first input to the first receiver, and a termination to GND at an input to the second receiver input, thereby performing a pass-through function which operationally transforms the receiver function for each subsite into a single branch receiver;
• and;
• a receiver combining function comprising a maximum ratio combining across both of the first and second receivers, and a comparator function on only one receiver input of the first and second receivers to output an output stream or value.