MIMO effect evaluation for aeronautical WiMAX in airport at 5.1GHZ

A new high-speed aeronautical digital communication system called Aeronautical Mobile Airport Communication System (AeroMACS) is currently being considered. This paper describes a study to evaluate the MIMO effect of different antenna configurations for this system in an airport environment. We first proposed an index to evaluate MIMO antenna systems. We then measured transmission coefficients between antennas mounted on an aircraft representing a mobile station and a road vehicle representing a base station at Sendai Airport, and then based on these measurements we compared the channel capacities between SISO, 2×2 MIMO, and 2×6 MIMO antenna systems. We also evaluated channel capacity under multipath rich and poor environments. We conclude that 2×6 MIMO antenna systems are the most effective under any conditions.