Industrial embrace of smart antennas and MIMO

In this article we provide a practical standardization related viewpoint on beamforming and MIMO technologies. In particular, we address the status in different industry-driven standardization for a (3GPP and IEEE 802) and discuss the rationale for possible adoption or use of such technologies in current or future wireless systems. We draw attention to some practical system-level and implementation aspects that need to be resolved before a successful application of beamforming or MIMO in real systems.