Patent ID: 8405547

Claim:
A self-provisioning antenna system comprising: a primary antenna bank and a secondary antenna bank, each of said banks comprising one or more directional radiating elements, said primary antenna bank further comprising means of controlling its orientation and a transmit/receive port coupled via a field modem to a communications medium, and said secondary antenna bank further comprising means of controlling its orientation and a receive-only port coupled via said field modem to a communications medium; a field controller, comprised of a low-noise microprocessor and a communications interface, coupled to said primary and secondary antenna banks by one or more sets of control lines, and for receiving, acknowledging, and executing commands from a central server to configure the respective orientations of said primary and secondary antenna banks utilizing said means of controlling the orientation of said primary antenna bank and said means of controlling the orientation of said secondary antenna bank, said field controller thence connected via said field modem to said communications medium; a central server, coupled via a central modem to said communications medium, for receiving field signal quality metrics from said primary antenna bank and said secondary antenna bank via said field modem, calculating one or more values to determine an optimal configuration for the respective orientations of said primary antenna bank and said secondary antenna bank based on said field signal quality metrics, and transmitting commands over said communications medium to said one or more field controllers to implement said respective optimal configurations for said primary antenna bank and for said secondary antenna bank.