Capacity growth of multi-element arrays in indoor and outdoor wireless channels

Abstract

We demonstrate the capacity growth of multiple-element antenna arrays (MEAs) in a realistic propagation environment using WiSE, an experimental ray tracing tool. WiSE is used to construct the channel response for MEAs operating at 1.9 GHz for two situations: (a) (16-16)-MEAs located inside an office building and (b) (4, 4)-MEAs located in an outdoor fixed wireless loop. We define effective degrees of freedom (EDOFs) as parallel spatial modes of transmission for an MEA. We quantify the increase in both the number of EDOFs and capacity with transmit power, received SNR, and antenna spacing. More EDOFs are present when receiving MEAs are physically closer to the transmitting MEA, regardless of the scattering effect.