The performance assessment of new mobile radio base station (BS) trans
ceiver concepts with adaptive intelligent antennas requires realistic
directional radio channel models. An appropriate model is derived from
the results of an extensive uplink sounding campaign performed at 1.9
GHz in a urban macrocell within the City of Frankfurt. In the experim
ents the wideband sounder RUSK XL was applied for synthetic aperture r
eception. The directional multipath propagation is characterised by me
ans of delays, directions of arrival (DOA) at the BS antenna array and
mean powers of the multipath components. The coupled delay-DOA-power
information is determined by an adaptation of the 2-D unitary ESPRIT a
lgorithm. It can be used directly to configure fading simulators for m
ultiple antenna reception which reflect real-world small-area radio ch
annel properties in simulations at the link level. Additionally, proba
bility distribution functions for excess delays, DOAs and mean powers
are derived from the measurement results. They are useful for consider
ation of directional propagation effects in investigations of the cell
ular system behaviour.