Line-of-Sight 2×nr2 \times n_r MIMO With Random Antenna Orientations

Line-of-sight (LoS) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) gives full spatial-multiplexing gain when the antenna array geometry and orientation are designed based on the interterminal distance. These known design methodologies that hold for antenna arrays with fixed orientation do not provide full MIMO gains for arbitrary array orientations. In this paper, we study LoS MIMO channels with random array orientations when the number of transmit antennas used for signaling is 2. We study the impact of common array geometries on error probability, and identify the code design parameter that describes the high signal-To-noise ratio (SNR) error performance of an arbitrary coding scheme. For planar receive arrays, the error rate is shown to decay only as fast as that of a rank 1 channel, and no better than SNR-3 for a class of coding schemes that includes spatial multiplexing. We then show that for the tetrahedral receive array, which uses the smallest number of antennas among nonplanar arrays, the error rate decays faster than that of rank 1 channels and is exponential in SNR for every coding scheme. Finally, we design a LoS MIMO system that guarantees a good error performance for all transmit/receive array orientations and over a range of interterminal distances

Efficient Beam Alignment in Millimeter Wave Systems Using Contextual Bandits

In this paper, we investigate the problem of beam alignment in millimeter wave (mmWave) systems, and design an optimal algorithm to reduce the overhead. Specifically, due to directional communications, the transmitter and receiver beams need to be aligned, which incurs high delay overhead since without a priori knowledge of the transmitter/receiver location, the search space spans the entire angular domain. This is further exacerbated under dynamic conditions (e.g., moving vehicles) where the access to the base station (access point) is highly dynamic with intermittent on-off periods, requiring more frequent beam alignment and signal training. To mitigate this issue, we consider an online stochastic optimization formulation where the goal is to maximize the directivity gain (i.e., received energy) of the beam alignment policy within a time period. We exploit the inherent correlation and unimodality properties of the model, and demonstrate that contextual information improves the performance. To this end, we propose an equivalent structured Multi-Armed Bandit model to optimally exploit the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. In contrast to the classical MAB models, the contextual information makes the lower bound on regret (i.e., performance loss compared with an oracle policy) independent of the number of beams. This is a crucial property since the number of all combinations of beam patterns can be large in transceiver antenna arrays, especially in massive MIMO systems. We further provide an asymptotically optimal beam alignment algorithm, and investigate its performance via simulations.Comment: To Appear in IEEE INFOCOM 2018. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1611.05724 by other author

Indoor off-body wireless MIMO communication with dual polarized textile antennas

Off-body data communication for firefighters and other rescue workers is an important area of development. The communication with a moving person in an indoor environment can be very unreliable due to channel fading. In addition, when considering off-body communication by means of textile antennas, propagation is affected by shadowing caused by the human body. By transmitting and receiving signals using multipleinput, multiple-output antennas (MIMO communication) a large improvement in reliability of the wireless link is obtained. In this contribution, the performance of wireless data communication using quadrature phase shift keyed (QPSK) modulated data in the 2.45 GHz ISM-band is evaluated in the case of firefighters walking indoor and communicating by means of a compact dualpattern dual-polarization diversity textile patch antenna system integrated into their clothing. Simultaneous transmit diversity (at the firefighter) and receive diversity (at the base station) up to fourth order are achieved by means of orthogonal space-time codes, providing a maximum total diversity order of 16. The measurements confirm that MIMO techniques drastically improve the reliability of the wireless link. Measurements are compared for three test persons of significantly different sizes. For equal transmitted power levels, the bit error rates for the 2×2 and 4 × 4 links are much lower than for a system without diversity, with the 4 × 4 system clearly providing the best performance

A Study of the Impact of Various Geometric Factors on the Capacity of Short Range Indoor MIMO Communications Channels

MIMO antenna array systems have been proposed as a means of increasing the spectral efficiency of wireless systems. However, their performance is likely to be sub-optimal if typical uniform antenna array structures are arbitrarily positioned; as they depend on spatial multiplexing. This is particularly true for indoor environments in which transmission ranges are short resulting in a strong correlation of the main propagation paths, especially the line-of-sight components. This makes it difficult to achieve successful spatial multiplexing which depends on a decorrelated set of signal components. Thus, the physical propagation channel and geometry of the antenna arrays, especially the inter-element spacing, can determine how effectively spatial multiplexing can be realised. This thesis investigates MIMO communications channels involving a single transmitter and receiver operating in a simple indoor environment using a ray-tracing simulation model. The results and analysis provide system designers with an understanding of the limits of MIMO system performance in the context of both the geometric properties of the arrays and the propagation conditions. These results serve to explain the often contradictory results that appear in the wider literature on MIMO systems. Guidelines for the deployment of standard array structures in an indoor environment are provided. An original solution to optimising MIMO system performance by adjusting the geometry of uniform linear arrays is described. This is done using an iterative search method based on the Metropolis algorithm in which individual array elements are repositioned. It is demonstrated through computer simulation that capacity levels, similar to those predicted by the theory for ideal Rayleigh channels, are possible to achieve with realistic modifications to uniform linear arrays

Evaluation of performance of mobile terminal antennas

Fast development of new mobile communications equipment results in demand for fast and reliable evaluation methods to estimate the performance of mobile terminals because the performance of antennas located on the terminals varies in different multipath propagation environments. Two methods presented in this thesis provide new possibilities in antenna design because, from now on, the performance of new antennas can be tested already before a prototype antenna is constructed by using existing radio channel libraries and simulated radiation patterns of the antennas. The performance can be estimated by calculating the mean effective gain (MEG) of the antenna using the elevation power distribution or by a plane wave -based method using sets of incident plane waves and the radiation pattern of an antenna. In addition to different propagation environments, the effects of the user on performance can be included in the evaluation. In this thesis, estimating the MEG of different antennas using the elevation power distribution and the power patterns of the antennas is shown to be an accurate and fast method by comparing the results with direct radio channel measurements. The mean difference between the methods is −0.18 dB with standard deviation of 0.19 dB. The usefulness of the evaluation method is demonstrated by evaluating the performance of several antennas located on mobile terminals. The antenna evaluation provided important and unique knowledge of the effect of both the environment and the user on performance. Because in calculating the radiation efficiency of the antenna we assume uniform incident field, the efficiency can result in a performance estimation that does not correspond to real usage situations. Therefore, including the environmental effects in the evaluation procedure is important, although the effect of the antenna is more important than the effect of the environment on MEG. It was noticed with calculated Gaussian-shaped beams that tilting or changing the beamwidth of a mobile terminal antenna has an effect of about 2 dB on MEG in multipath environments. Matching the polarization of the antenna to that of the environment can improve the performance more. A novel incident plane wave -based tool has been developed for evaluating the performance of antenna configurations designed for diversity and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems. In this thesis, the instantaneous joint contribution of incident field consisting of a number of extracted plane waves and the complex three-dimensional radiation pattern of the antenna is shown to be accurate and extremely fast way to estimate the diversity advantages of different antenna configurations in time-variable radio channels. The difference between the diversity gains achieved by the plane wave -based method and by the direct radio channel measurements is on average less than 0.9 dB. Moreover, the radio channel can be exactly the same for all antenna configurations under test. Furthermore, this thesis includes evaluation of the performance of different MIMO antenna configurations. The studied antenna configurations have been selected from the 16×64 MIMO channel measurement data. A novel way of using one omnidirectional reference antenna in a normalization procedure is shown to be reasonable especially in cases of antenna arrays consisting of directive elements. Three different propagation environments are used as evaluation platforms. The azimuth orientation of mobile terminal antennas may influence the performance of a MIMO antenna configuration significantly. In MIMO configurations compact dual-polarized receiving antennas provide capacity performance almost equal to the arrays employing single polarization.reviewe

The Random Line-of-Sight Over-the-Air Measurement System

As our society becomes increasingly connected, a growing number of devices rely on wireless connectivity. The type, use and form factor of these devices range from wearables to entire vehicles. Additionally, the fifth generation of wireless communication (5G) introduces new communication bands, also at higher frequencies. At these millimeter-wave frequencies, large portions of bandwidth are available which are needed in order to increase the data rates.In this scenario, testing and verifying the wireless communication performance has an increasingly important role. In modern devices, testing needs to be performed over-the-air (OTA), as direct conducted measurements to the antenna ports become unfeasible. Moreover, there is still ongoing research to understand how testing should be performed for devices with large form-factors, such as vehicles, as well as for higher frequencies. The proposed methods are mainly based on techniques for mobile phone testing at the current communication bands, i.e., sub-6 GHz. However, scaling and adapting these methods to work for future needs presents challenges. A possible solution to meet the future testing requirements is offered by the following hypothesis: "If a wireless device is tested with good performance in both pure-LOS and RIMP environments, it will also perform well in real-life environments and situations, in a statistical sense". The rich isotropic multipath (RIMP) and the random line-of-sight (random-LOS) are therefore identified as the two representative edge environments for testing. This thesis focuses on the random-LOS environment, and its practical realization to test the wireless performance of different devices. The thesis is divided into three main parts. The first part describes the practical realization of random-LOS OTA measurement setups. Three different setups are presented, a virtual planar array and two reflector antennas. One reflector system is aimed at vehicular testing for frequencies below 6 GHz, while the other targets smaller devices at 28 GHz. The second part of the thesis focuses on numerical and experimental verification of the random-LOS measurement setups. In the verification, numerical simulations and measurements of the test zone variations are compared for the proposed OTA measurement systems.The third and last part focuses on how passive and active measurements can be performed using a random-LOS measurement setup. The measurements demonstrate the application of the designed OTA measurement systems for passive antenna measurements, as well as active 2x2 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) measurements on a complete vehicle