Relative channel reciprocity calibration in MIMO/TDD systems

Channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) can greatly improve the capacity of a wireless MIMO communication system. In a time division duplex (TDD) system CSIT can be obtained by exploiting the reciprocity of the wireless channel. This however requires calibration of the radio frequency (RF) chains of the receiver and the transmitter, which are in general not reciprocal. In this paper we investigate different methods for relative calibration in the presence of frequency offsets between transmitter and receiver. We show results of theses calibration methods with real two-directional channel measurements, which were performed using the Eure-com MIMO Openair Sounder (EMOS). We demonstrate that in a single-user MIMO channel and for low signal-to-noise (SNR) ratios, the relative calibration method can increase the capacity close to the theoretical limit.