Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio channel measurements

Abstract

We present results from the first field test to characterize the mobile multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio channel. We measured the capacity, normalized to a single antenna system, and fading correlation between antennas of a system with 4 antennas on a laptop computer and 4 antennas at a rooftop base station. The field test results show that close to the theoretical 4 times the capacity of a single antenna system can be supported in a 30 kHz channel with dual-polarized, spatially-separated base station and terminal antennas. For this 4/spl times/4 MIMO system the degradation in capacity due to fading correlation is small even with correlation coefficients as high as 0.5. Close to the theoretical 4 times capacity was achieved under a variety of test runs, including suburban drives, highway drives, and pedestrian routes, both close to the base station and inside a house a few miles from the base station. Therefore, these results show that it may be possible to provide in excess of 1 Mbps in a 200 kHz mobile radio channel (for the 3G wireless TDMA system EDGE) with the appropriate base station antennas.