Wide-Sense Stationarity of Mobile MIMO Radio Channels

Tests for the wide-sense stationarity (WSS) of multivariate random processes are developed and applied to measured multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radio channel responses. Evolutionary spectral density functions are used to estimate the time-dependent power spectral density, and analysis of variance procedures are applied to determine whether the first and second moments of the data series exhibit statistically significant changes over short intervals. It is found that while the assumption of WSS is met in 40%-70% of half-second intervals for a single element at the transmitter and receiver, only 2%-12% of intervals with two elements at the transmitter and receiver are jointly WSS; furthermore, the occurrence of non-WSS intervals is not dependent on the antenna separation. The analyses also show that WSS intervals are interspersed with long non-WSS intervals.