Active Antenna Array Characterization for Massive MIMO 5G Scenarios

The main objective of this work is to present a characterization and measurement system using multi-sine to study active antenna array behavior. In the multi-sine approach, a main tone and a tickle tone will be explored. The tickle tones will be used as a reference to characterize each antenna element, which will allows us to study them in terms of amplitude and phase. For this purpose, each antenna element will be excited by a main tone (same frequency at each element) and a tickle tone (different frequency at each element) with lower power. The experimental setup was fully implemented using an of the shelf software defined radio (SDR) approach. With the aid of a synchronized measurement system, a conventional 16 element array was characterized and results are presented and discussed, showing that this approach is relevant for this kind of application.