Capacity of multi-antenna array systems in indoor wireless environment

Previous studies have shown that a wireless system using n transmitting and n receiving antennas can achieve a capacity n times higher than a single-antenna system in an independent Rayleigh fading environment. We explore the capacities of multiple-element antenna arrays (MEAs) in a more realistic propagation environment simulated via the WiSE ray-tracing tool. We impose an average power constraint and collect statistics of the capacity with optimal power allocation, C/sub wf/, and the mutual information with an equal power allocation, I/sub eq/. In addition, we present expressions for the asymptotic growth rates C/sub wf//n and I/sub eq//n as n/spl rarr//spl infin/ for two cases: (a) independent fadings and (b) correlated fadings at different antennas. We find that C/sub wf//n and I/sub eq//n converge to constants C/sub wf/* and I/sub eq/*, respectively in case (a), and to C/sub wf//sup 0/and I/sub eq//sup 0/ in case (b). We observe that C/sub wf//sup 0/ and I/sub eq//sup 0/ predict very closely the slopes observed for simulated channels, even for moderate n (i.e., 16).