Performance Evaluation of 8×8 Multi-User MIMO-OFDM Testbed in an Actual Indoor Environment

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems have attracted much attention as they can provide increased channel capacity within a limited frequency band. In some important applications, such as wireless LAN and cellular systems, MIMO systems will likely operate in environments for which a single base station should simultaneously communicate with many users. Such applications require development of multiuser(MU)-MIMO techniques. The prior work on MU-MIMO systems have resulted in derivation of the ideal channel capacity as well as various proposed schemes for transmission control and scheduling. In order to incorporate MU-MIMO technologies into commercial systems, extensive evaluations are needed, since the amount of system parameters in MU-MIMO is much larger as compared to the Signleuser(SU)-MIMO. Due to such a volume of system parameters, the performance of MU-MIMO in actual systems is still not well understood. This paper describes MU-MIMO testbed which can deal with 8times8 MIMO-OFDM transmission based on the IEEE 802.11a signal format. We have conducted experiments in an actual indoor environment in order to evaluate the frequency utilization for downlink scheme implemented in the MU-MIMO testbed. Finally, we discuss the effectiveness of MU-MIMO for SU-MIMO when the number of receiving antennas is changed