MIMO radio channel measurements: performance comparison of antenna configurations

In this paper we present results from the first field test to characterize the mobile multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio channel. We measured the capacity, normalized to a single antenna system for different antenna configurations using 4 transmit and 4 receive antennas at both the base station and terminal in a mobile environment. We compare results for a base station rooftop antenna array consisting of dual-polarized spatially separated antennas, a vertically-polarized multibeam antenna array, and a dual-polarized multibeam antenna array. The field test results show that close to the theoretical 4 times the capacity of a single antenna system can be supported in a 30 kHz channel with dual-polarized, spatially-separated base station and terminal antennas.