PDF of this tutorialIf the azimuth antenna patterns from the two ports do not overlay and sometimes appear to be mirror images of one another, the dual-polarized antenna is said to have a tracking problem. The tracking problem can be polarization-dependent, which may be related to the type of element used in the construction of the antenna. Tracking errors between the receive and receive diversity antenna adversely affect diversity gain (in much the same way as using vertically polarized antennas—in a space diversity scheme—that do not have the same gain or horizontal beamwidth). In both cases, one antenna will continually receive a higher signal strength over a specific portion of the coverage area. The benefit of having the second receive diversity port will be small, due to an imbalance in the gain of the two antennas over similar coverage areas.
