Features of the Digital Block of a Hardware Simulator for MIMO Radio Channels

The aim of the French regional research project SIMPAA2, which continues the former national research SIMPAA project, is the realization of a hardware simulator of MIMO propagation channels for UMTS and WLAN applications. The simulator must reproduce the behavior of the radio propagation channel, thus making it possible to test "on table" the mobile radio equipments. The advantages are: low cost, short test duration, possibility to ensure the same test conditions in order to compare the performance of various equipments. Two digital architectures are proposed and analyzed depending on the different environment characteristics.