Empirical characteristics of urban macrocell multiple-input multiple-output channel at 2.53 GHz

Radio channels having multipath richness allow multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems to achieve significant capacity gain. Most studies have investigated MIMO channel characteristics by normalizing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) out of the channel matrix. However, non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios with rich multipath often experience low SNR. On the other hand, scenarios with line of sight (LOS) usually have high SNR but low multipath richness. The relationship between SNR and multipath richness are studied in this paper using urban environment measurements conducted at 2.53 GHz in downtown Oulu, Finland within a bandwidth of 100 MHz. We investigate a variety of MIMO channel parameters including the small-scale fading characteristics, delay dispersion, and correlation property as well as wideband channel capacity during as the transition from the LOS to the NLOS cases. Also, the polarization dependency on the LOS/NLOS condition is investigated.