Antenna Selection and Transmit Beamforming Switching Scheme for a MIMO System Operating Over a Varying Rician Channel

In this paper, we investigate a switching scheme involving antenna selection and transmit beamforming modes for a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system operating over a varying Rician channel. It is shown that that beamforming outperforms antenna selection when line of sight (LOS) component dominates the channel. Also transmit beamforming is superior over antenna selection at high values of signal to noise ratio (SNR). When the number of transmitting antennas is increased the switching point moves to higher values of SNR. The switching point also goes up to higher values of SNR when the non-LOS component is increased.