Sensitivity of the MIMO Channel Characterization to the Modeling of the Environment

An important factor in electromagnetic wave propagation simulation, performed by a 3D ray-tracing method is the modeling of the environment. Results being sensitive to descriptive accuracy, this paper presents a study on the effect of indoor environment modeling precision on multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel characterization. In order to give some diversity to the results, the investigation takes into account two unfurnished indoor environments. The first environment investigated is the entrance hall of a building at the University of Poitiers, while the second is a more confined environment and is represented by the first floor of the authors' laboratory. For these two indoor environments, four levels of description are proposed in order to establish the geometrical and electrical modeling impact on MIMO channel characterization. Results are obtained by analyzing the capacity, variation in correlation, multipath richness and eigenvalues in relation to the polarization, the presence of line-of-sight (LOS) or non-LOS (NLOS) configurations. The effects of the spacing between antennas and the number of transmitter and receiver antennas are also investigated.