Measured Adaptive Matching Performance of a MIMO Terminal With User Effects

Absorption and impedance mismatch due to the proximity of a user as well as certain propagation channel characteristics can severely degrade the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) performance of multiantenna terminals in real usage scenarios. In this context, we investigated the potential of adaptive impedance matching (AIM) to mitigate performance degradation from these effects based on channel measurements involving a terminal prototype in three user scenarios and two propagation environments. First, optimal AIM state for the terminal in a given user-channel setup was found by post-processing the measured channels. The optimal state was then experimentally verified with two Maury Microwave mechanical tuners. The results show that by employing AIM instead of 50- Ω termination, the average capacity is increased by up to 25%. Moreover, the observed capacity gains can be partly explained by physical mechanisms underlying the propagation conditions. Furthermore, the achieved gains with real tuners are only marginally affected by the tuners' actual insertion losses, estimated to be 0.1-0.7 dB. Therefore, we conclude that AIM can be a viable solution to enhance MIMO terminal performance.