Analysis of MIMO channel measurements in urban areas

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology is ready for deployment in commercial cellular networks in the very near future. Therefore, the need of incorporating this technology into radio network planning and optimization tools rises dramatically for network operators. In this contribution we show results of the validation of advanced ray tracing simulations with channel sounding measurements in the 2.53 GHz frequency band. These measurements were carried out inside the EASY-C project with the objective to learn more about coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission in a real world testbed. We compare simulated and measured eigenvalue characteristics for various MIMO scenarios. As result we can conclude that carefully performed Geometrical Optics based ray-tracing simulations are a suitable prediction model to reflect main characteristics of these scenarios. A further objective of these experiments is to get insight into the physical structure of the radio channel.