An Overview of MIMO Communications-A Key to Gigabit Wireless AROGYASWAMI J.PAULRAJ,FELLOW.IEEE,DHANANJAY A.GORE, ROHIT U.NABAR,MEMBER.IEEE,AND HELMUT BOLCSKEL,SENIOR MEMBER,IEEE Invited Paper gI-Ghsme LANS demand nea cebie.T h起 -f-vic)and ge.Igno 1-Gb/s data rate requirement i unattractive.if not impossible.In this paper.we provide an overview an emerging technology,known as mu L INTRODUCTION interest in OS e ments a reality s (w d h udio/visu 10 Mb/s.with 50-100 Mb/s becoming available soo However,even 50 Mb/s is inadequate when faced with the f this pane developeda MIMO wireless system (physical layer and division DM modulation for D.G LOS e s.The system is designed for a cellul h the Con 0018-21904s20.0002004EE PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE VOL 92.NO.2.FEBRUARY 2004 dod on Fobruary 10,2010 at 11:50 tom IEEE Xploro.apply
An Overview of MIMO Communications—A Key to Gigabit Wireless AROGYASWAMI J. PAULRAJ, FELLOW, IEEE, DHANANJAY A. GORE, ROHIT U. NABAR, MEMBER, IEEE, AND HELMUT BÖLCSKEI, SENIOR MEMBER, IEEE Invited Paper High data rate wireless communications, nearing 1-Gb/s transmission rates, is of interest in emerging wireless local area networks and home audio/visual networks. Designing very high speed wireless links that offer good quality-of-service and range capability in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environments constitutes a significant research and engineering challenge. Ignoring fading in NLOS environments, we can, in principle, meet the 1-Gb/s data rate requirement with a single-transmit single-receive antenna wireless system if the product of bandwidth (measured in hertz) and spectral efficiency (measured in bits per second per hertz) is equal to 10 . As we shall outline in this paper, a variety of cost, technology and regulatory constraints make such a brute force solution unattractive if not impossible. The use of multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver, popularly known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless is an emerging cost-effective technology that offers substantial leverages in making 1-Gb/s wireless links a reality. This paper provides an overview of MIMO wireless technology covering channel models, performance limits, coding, and transceiver design. Keywords—Capacity, channel models, multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO), MIMO orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM), performance limits, receiver design, space–time coding, spatial multiplexing. I. INTRODUCTION High data rate wireless communications, nearing 1-Gb/s transmission rates, is of interest in emerging wireless local area networks (WLANs) and home audio/visual (A/V) networks. Currently, WLANs offer peak rates of 10 Mb/s, with 50–100 Mb/s becoming available soon. However, even 50 Mb/s is inadequate when faced with the Manuscript received October 16, 2002; revised November 6, 2003. A. J. Paulraj is with the Information Systems Laboratory, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305 USA (e-mail: apaulraj@stanford.edu). D. Gore is with Qualcomm Inc., San Diego, CA 92121 USA (e-mail: dgore@qualcomm.com). R. U. Nabar and H. Bölcskei are with the Communication Technology Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland (e-mail: nabar@nari.ee.ethz.ch; boelcskei@nari.ee.ethz.ch). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JPROC.2003.821915 demand for higher access speeds due to the increase in rich media content and competition from 10-Gb/s wired LANs. Additionally, future home A/V networks will be required to support multiple high-speed high-definition television (HDTV) A/V streams, which again demand near 1-Gb/s data rates. Another challenge faced by WLANs and home A/V environments as well as outdoor wireless wide area network (WWAN) systems for fixed/nomadic access is non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation, which induces random fluctuations in signal level, known as fading. Designing very high speed wireless links that offer good quality-of-service (QoS) and range capability in NLOS environments constitutes a significant research and engineering challenge. Ignoring fading for the moment, we can, in principle, meet the 1-Gb/s data rate requirement if the product of bandwidth (measured in Hz) and spectral efficiency (measured in b/s/Hz) equals 10 . As we shall describe in the following, a variety of cost, technology, and regulatory constraints make such a brute force solution unattractive, if not impossible. In this paper, we provide an overview of an emerging technology, known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless, that offers significant promise in making 1-Gb/s wireless links in NLOS environments a reality. Several efforts are currently underway to build sub-Gb/s NLOS broadband wireless systems. In WWANs (corresponding standards are currently under development by IEEE 802.16), Iospan Wireless (founded by the first author of this paper and acquired by Intel Corp.) successfully developed a MIMO wireless system (physical layer and medium access control layer technology) using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation for NLOS environments. The system is designed for a cellular plan with a reuse factor of two and delivers a peak spectral efficiency of 12 b/s/Hz. Current chipsets offer 13-Mb/s goodput in a 2-MHz channel. Future releases will support a goodput of 45 Mb/s in a 7-MHz channel. The system is 0018-9219/04$20.00 © 2004 IEEE 198 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 92, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2004 Authorized licensed use limited to: ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH. Downloaded on February 10, 2010 at 11:50 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply
aimed at fixed and sing ho the International Tele achievable spectral eff ency in SIS links.First.the s du the Unive sal Mobile Te ommunications System (UMTS d considerations.These limits are a facto k SNR limit in a wireless receiver rarely exceed nofurhcTdctais.Preiminaryctfo efincoverlyE&02L流do 30-3 of the difficulty in building (atr (WNG)group .With he exception of lospan's product.the celluar systems is capped due to the presenceo SINR is aggres serveas a good leaming base for next-ge eneration gigabi high multicell spectral efficiency.Also ch in the than the received SNR imi h A.Organization of the pape tion b/s/Hz (a (LOS)links have ched spec tral effic uD to NLOSenvironments.In Section IV,we study the cap a sys rely nd E gains resulting om the use MIMO advan MIMO s Section yU explores fund age of hig mental performance limits i h-gain mmunicating on ar r the implication realize B.Notation ency of The"stand for transposition,con ba NLOS stands for th m×mid ty matrix,U of bandwidth is easier to obtain n the range 6 GH and Tr(A)stand for the Frobenius nom ninant and race.respectively.of the marixA.denotes the Eu path render NLOS links unusable.Since transmit cappec ed ou ation)loss ex a a2 fine the mnI rvec(A) ent of 3.0.the ran of wo (or cell area by a or of our)for eve of a tributed (i.i.d.)N(0.02/2). 28 MHz bandwidth system used today,the MHz syst drop by II.BUILDING GIGABIT WIRELESS LINKS sults in freg As noted n the preceding.in principle cess trans t power required)in fading NLOS link output (SISO)wireless link by employing sufficiently high bandwidth of six to nine times the link handwidth is needed n orde sucha simplisti there are sev pproach ems AN OVERVIEW OF MIMO COMMUNICATIONSA KEY TO GIGABIT WIRELESS y10.2010at1150t m IEEE X灯ore. Rost
aimed at fixed and nomadic/low mobility applications with cell sizes up to 4 mi. In mobile access, there is an effort under the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) working group to integrate MIMO techniques into the high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) channel, which is a part of the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) standard. Lucent Technologies recently announced a chip for MIMO enhancement of UMTS/HSDPA, but has released no further details. Preliminary efforts are also underway to define a MIMO overlay for the IEEE 802.11 standard for WLANs under the newly formed Wireless Next Generation (WNG) group. With the exception of Iospan’s product, the other efforts in MIMO technology are expected to take three to four years to reach deployment status. These efforts can serve as a good learning base for next-generation gigabit wireless systems. In this paper, we outline the value of MIMO technology in the development of viable gigabit wireless systems and provide an overview of this technology. A. Organization of the Paper The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II discusses the design tradeoffs in building gigabit wireless systems and highlights the leverages of MIMO technology. Section III introduces a MIMO channel model for NLOS environments. In Section IV, we study the capacity gains resulting from the use of MIMO technology, while Sections V and VI review signaling and receiver design for MIMO systems, respectively. Section VII explores fundamental performance limits in communicating over MIMO channels. In Section VIII, we briefly review MIMO-OFDM, an increasingly popular modulation technique in broadband MIMO wireless channels. We present our conclusions in Section IX. B. Notation The superscripts , , and stand for transposition, conjugate transposition, and elementwise conjugation, respectively. denotes the expectation operator while is the convolution operator with . stands for the identity matrix, denotes the all zeros matrix of appropriate dimensions. , det , and Tr stand for the Frobenius norm, determinant, and trace, respectively, of the matrix . denotes the Euclidean norm of the vector . stands for the element in the th row and th column of . For an matrix , we define the 1 vector vec . A complex random variable is if and are independent identically distributed (i.i.d.) . II. BUILDING GIGABIT WIRELESS LINKS As noted in the preceding section, we can, in principle, reach 1-Gb/s link speed in a standard single-input singleoutput (SISO) wireless link by employing sufficiently high bandwidth along with coding and modulation that achieves the required spectral efficiency. However, there are several problems with such a simplistic approach. Let us start by discussing how transmit power and receive signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constraints limit the maximum achievable spectral efficiency in SISO links. First, the transmit power in a terminal used by or located near human beings is limited to less than 1 W in indoor environments due to biohazard considerations. These limits are about a factor of ten higher in outdoor tower-based base stations. Second, the peak SNR limit in a wireless receiver rarely exceeds 30–35 dB because of the difficulty in building (at reasonable cost) highly linear receivers with low phase noise. More generally, the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) in cellular systems is capped due to the presence of cochannel interference. It is well known that aggressive cellular reuse with a low target SINR is advantageous for achieving high multicell spectral efficiency. Also, channel fading in the presence of imperfect power control and peak power limitations at the transmitter results in the peak achievable SINR being lower than the received SNR limit of 30–35 dB. The average SINR in a cellular reuse scheme lies in the range of 10–20 dB at best. This implies that increasing the spectral efficiency in a SISO NLOS cellular network beyond a peak value of 4–6 b/s/Hz (average value of 2–4 b/s/Hz) is not possible. In pure line-of-sight (LOS) links, practical SISO systems have reached spectral efficiencies of up to 9 b/s/Hz. However, such systems rely on fixed point-to-point links with very high gain directional antennas and Fresnel clearance to almost completely eliminate fading. The advantage of high-gain antennas in reducing the transmit power constraint is not available in NLOS environments, where large angle spread due to scattering can make such antennas highly inefficient. Let us next consider the implications of simply using the appropriate bandwidth and spectral efficiency product to achieve 1-Gb/s date rate. Consider a system that realizes a nominal spectral efficiency of 4 b/s/Hz over 250-MHz bandwidth, so that the data rate is 1 Gb/s. Two hundred fifty megahertz of bandwidth is scarce, if not impossible to obtain, particularly in frequency bands below 6 GHz, where NLOS networks are feasible. Two hundred fifty megahertz of bandwidth is easier to obtain in the 40-GHz frequency range. However, at frequencies higher than 6 GHz, the increased shadowing by obstructions in the propagation path render NLOS links unusable. Since transmit power and receive SNR are capped as pointed out above, a 250-MHz bandwidth will mean a reduction in range. Assuming a path (propagation) loss exponent of 3.0, the range reduces by a factor of two (or cell area by a factor of four) for every factor of eight increase in bandwidth. Therefore, compared to a 10-MHz bandwidth system used today, the range of a 250-MHz system will drop by a factor of 3 and the cell area by a factor of nine. On the positive side, a high bandwidth results in frequency diversity, which reduces the fade margin (excess transmit power required) in fading NLOS links. We should finally note that in a cellularized system, a total bandwidth of six to nine times the link bandwidth is needed in order to support a cellular reuse plan. This clearly places impossible bandwidth demands on SISO gigabit wireless systems. PAULRAJ et al.: AN OVERVIEW OF MIMO COMMUNICATIONS—A KEY TO GIGABIT WIRELESS 199 Authorized licensed use limited to: ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH. Downloaded on February 10, 2010 at 11:50 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply
。 200 0.9 180 10 07 140 120 0 0.4 80 0 03 40 0.1 No.of antenn Fig.1. t and range of MIMO tecl aehyotiagthatGBk wire The performance improvements rest the se f nal app are in general not feasible due to e redu <and a erae SNR limits in practic id e each fthese leverages in the follo ing considering a vidth s tems.MIMO wireless constitutes ate A.Array Gain performance gains delivered by MIMO.Cons ider a ravleigt ssing a fading NLOS ink with an average receive SNR of 20d n an inc u to a co smit antennas)let the coberence band idth be 20 MHz ).The bandwidth the transmitter and rece ver.respectively and dependsonth e antenn age capacit s the cult to maintain eded to support 1-Gb/s link s The rang B.Diversity Gain ih10- channel fl equired bandwidth of 220 MHz. of the referene e system.On the other hand,a 2-MHbandwidth nd still o the re ange.Clearly.MIM nology offers a sub ial per is preferred over time/frequen diversity as i e tha mit the MIMO channel the spe signal is suitabl 10×10 s not nec arily required to reach spe ctral efficiencies in ude variability in comparison to a SISO link and we 吃 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE VOL.92.NO.2.FEBRUARY 2004 Authorized liceneod use limited to:ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH.Downlosdod on February 10.2010 at 11:50 trom IEEE Xplore.apply
Fig. 1. Bandwidth requirement and range of a 1-Gb/s link using MIMO technology. We summarize our discussion by noting that Gb/s wireless links in NLOS (and perhaps cellularized) networks using conventional approaches are in general not feasible due to peak and average SNR limits in practical receivers. Additionally, there is a serious range penalty to be paid for high bandwidth systems. MIMO wireless constitutes a technological breakthrough that will allow Gb/s speeds in NLOS wireless networks. The following example is designed to illustrate the performance gains delivered by MIMO. Consider a Rayleigh fading NLOS link with an average receive SNR of 20 dB and a constant total transmit power (independent of the number of transmit antennas). Let the coherence bandwidth be 20 MHz (typical value for indoor scenarios). The bandwidth needed to ensure 99% link reliability is obtained by computing the 1% outage capacity (see Section IV for details). Fig. 1 plots the bandwidth and range of symmetrical MIMO links (i.e., links with an equal number of transmit and receive antennas ) needed to support 1-Gb/s link speed. The range is normalized to unity with reference to a SISO system with 10-MHz bandwidth. For , we have a standard SISO link with a required bandwidth of 220 MHz, and a reduction in range to 35% of the reference system. On the other hand, a 10 10 MIMO system can deliver 1-Gb/s performance with only 20-MHz bandwidth and still support 80% of the reference range. Clearly, MIMO technology offers a substantial performance improvement. Note that a MIMO system does not require additional transmit power or receive SNR to deliver such performance gains. Furthermore, the spectral efficiency achieved over a 20-MHz bandwidth by the 10 10 MIMO channel is 50 b/s/Hz, which shows that high transmit power is not necessarily required to reach spectral efficiencies in excess of 10 b/s/Hz. We note that the downside of using a MIMO system is the increased transceiver complexity. The performance improvements resulting from the use of MIMO systems are due to array gain, diversity gain, spatial multiplexing gain, and interference reduction. We briefly review each of these leverages in the following considering a system with transmit and receive antennas. A. Array Gain Array gain can be made available through processing at the transmitter and the receiver and results in an increase in average receive SNR due to a coherent combining effect. Transmit/receive array gain requires channel knowledge in the transmitter and receiver, respectively, and depends on the number of transmit and receive antennas. Channel knowledge in the receiver is typically available whereas channel state information in the transmitter is in general more difficult to maintain. B. Diversity Gain Signal power in a wireless channel fluctuates randomly (or fades). Diversity is a powerful technique to mitigate fading in wireless links. Diversity techniques rely on transmitting the signal over multiple (ideally) independently fading paths (in time/frequency/space). Spatial (or antenna) diversity is preferred over time/frequency diversity as it does not incur an expenditure in transmission time or bandwidth. If the links composing the MIMO channel fade independently and the transmitted signal is suitably constructed, the receiver can combine the arriving signals such that the resultant signal exhibits considerably reduced amplitude variability in comparison to a SISO link and we get th-order diversity. Extracting spatial diversity gain in the absence of channel knowledge at the transmitter 200 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 92, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2004 Authorized licensed use limited to: ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH. Downloaded on February 10, 2010 at 11:50 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply
is possible using suitably designed transmit signals.The nding technique is known as space-time coding (1-(4). C.Spatial Multiplexing Gain MIMO channels offer a linear (in min(Mr.Mp))increas individual y(t) D Interference reduction arises due to freo the desired signal's channel.Exact kno wledge of the inte where the goal is to minimize the in erference energy sent time-varying nature of the eland use the assumption deseribed Consider a signal wavefront w)impinging at angleon and thereby i s multicell ca note al the ly due conflicting demandson the spatial degrees of freedom (o width of and is repr w(t)=t)einet (3 design. wheres the complex envelope of the signal (with band- III.MIMO CHANNEL MODEL B to be consider (t),the signal received at the second antenna is then given ive antem by at time t- ·.The osite mimo channel response is v2(t)=h(t)e-j2x in()(d/) (4) given by the MxMr matrix H(,t)with whe H,)= 2,(T,t) are identical,except for pha at depends LhNgI(T,t)hg2(T;t).hunMr(T,t) ed by of simplicity we assume a single bounce based scattering antenna is given by modelandconsicderascCatererlocatedtanglcanddelay S(.(3).The same scatterer appears t ne h(r,t)*s()nt,i=1,2.,MR(2) with re spect to the transmit ante nna array.Thus,given th where is additive noise in the receiver. the the third one.TheMr PAULRAJL:AN OVERVIEW OF MIMO COMMUNICATIONS-A KEY TO GIGABIT WIRELESS 201 limited to:ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH. ry 10,2010 at 11:50 from IEEE Xplore.Rostn
is possible using suitably designed transmit signals. The corresponding technique is known as space–time coding [1]–[4]. C. Spatial Multiplexing Gain MIMO channels offer a linear (in ) increase in capacity for no additional power or bandwidth expenditure [5]–[8]. This gain, referred to as spatial multiplexing gain, is realized by transmitting independent data signals from the individual antennas. Under conducive channel conditions, such as rich scattering, the receiver can separate the different streams, yielding a linear increase in capacity. D. Interference Reduction Cochannel interference arises due to frequency reuse in wireless channels. When multiple antennas are used, the differentiation between the spatial signatures of the desired signal and cochannel signals can be exploited to reduce interference. Interference reduction requires knowledge of the desired signal’s channel. Exact knowledge of the interferer’s channel may not be necessary. Interference reduction (or avoidance) can also be implemented at the transmitter, where the goal is to minimize the interference energy sent toward the cochannel users while delivering the signal to the desired user. Interference reduction allows aggressive frequency reuse and thereby increases multicell capacity. We note that in general it is not possible to exploit all the leverages of MIMO technology simultaneously due to conflicting demands on the spatial degrees of freedom (or number of antennas). The degree to which these conflicts are resolved depends upon the signaling scheme and transceiver design. III. MIMO CHANNEL MODEL We consider a MIMO channel with transmit and receive antennas. The time-varying channel impulse response between the th ( ) transmit antenna and the th ( ) receive antenna is denoted as . This is the response at time to an impulse applied at time . The composite MIMO channel response is given by the matrix with . . . . . . . . . . (1) The vector is referred to as the spatio-temporal signature induced by the th transmit antenna across the receive antenna array. Furthermore, given that the signal is launched from the th transmit antenna, the signal received at the th receive antenna is given by (2) where is additive noise in the receiver. Fig. 2. Schematic of wavefront impinging on an antenna array. Under the narrowband assumption the antenna outputs and are identical except for a phase shift. A. Construction of the MIMO Channel Through a Physical Scattering Model In the following, we derive a MIMO wireless channel model from a simplistic physical scattering description. For convenience, we suppress the time-varying nature of the channel and use the narrowband array assumption described in brief below. Consider a signal wavefront impinging at angle on an antenna array comprising two antennas spaced apart (see Fig. 2). We assume that the impinging wavefront has a bandwidth of and is represented as (3) where is the complex envelope of the signal (with bandwidth ) and is the carrier frequency in radians. Under the narrowband assumption, we take the bandwidth to be much smaller than the reciprocal of the transit time of the wavefront across the antenna array, i.e., . Denoting the signal received at the first antenna by , the signal received at the second antenna is then given by (4) where is the wavelength of the signal wavefront. It is clear from (4) that the signals received at the two antennas are identical, except for a phase shift that depends on the array geometry and the angle of arrival of the wavefront. This result can be extended to arrays with more than two antennas in a straightforward way. We emphasize that the narrowband assumption does not imply that the channel is frequency-flat fading. We shall next make use of the narrowband assumption in constructing the MIMO channel below. For the sake of simplicity we assume a single bounce based scattering model and consider a scatterer located at angle and delay with respect to the receive array and with complex amplitude (see Fig. 3). The same scatterer appears at angle with respect to the transmit antenna array. Thus, given the overall geometries of transmit and receive arrays, any two of the variables , , and define the third one. The PAULRAJ et al.: AN OVERVIEW OF MIMO COMMUNICATIONS—A KEY TO GIGABIT WIRELESS 201 Authorized licensed use limited to: ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH. Downloaded on February 10, 2010 at 11:50 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply
S(0.+) C.Real-World MIMO Channels In thereal world.the statistics of H can deviate sig- intly fron ly LOs)co Thes ts ha MIMO channels.A number of MIMO channel nts have been across the globe [1217 Tx Rx Mn=2 MIMO channel for a fixed broadband ess syster D: spread A se MIMO channel im can now be constructed as (is a function of and) (SUD)models reflective of the three terrains (urban. S(0,T)a(0)bT(6)T-7drdo and committee for fixed broadband wireless applications. D.Frequency-Flat Versus Frequency-Selective Fading b()are the Mx anda If the bandwidth-delay spread product of the channel sat. isfies BTma≥0.l,the channel is generally said to be and cannot adequately model al observed channel effects A more general model is toassume multiple bounces.i. =Hrye-sdr (7) and f with Ray ing cond es at tw enc spaced su anart are 1/B.we can write (5)as related. The spatial statistics of H(f)will depend H)s0.r(0)(r)-Hx). cient antenna Furthermore,we take the combined resp (to n the (f)for different fre ments of H can be assumed to be independent zero 12 IV.CAPACITY OF MIMO CHANNELS H-HM V(0,1).Sum get The Shannon capacity of a communication channel is the PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE VOL.92.NO.2.FEBRUARY 2004 Authorized liceneod use limited to:ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH.Downlosdod on February 10,2010 at 11:50 trm IEEE Xplore.apply
Fig. 3. Construction of the MIMO channel model from a physical scattering description. MIMO channel impulse response can now be constructed as ( is a function of and ) (5) where is the maximum delay spread in the channel, is the combined response of pulse shaping at the transmitter and matched-filtering at the receiver, and and are the 1 and 1 array response vectors at the receiver and transmitter, respectively. The single bounce based scattering model in (5) has a number of limitations and cannot adequately model all observed channel effects. A more general model is to assume multiple bounces, i.e., energy from the transmitter uses more than one scatterer to reach the receiver. If we use a double (or multiple) scattering model, the parameters , , and in (5) become independent of each other. B. Classical Frequency-Flat Rayleigh Fading i.i.d. MIMO Channel Model Assuming that the delay spread in the channel is small compared to the reciprocal of the signal bandwidth, i.e., , we can write (5) as (6) Furthermore, we take the combined response to be ideal, so that and henceforth focus on only. With suitable choices of antenna element patterns and array geometry, using a double scattering model, the elements of can be assumed to be independent zero mean unit variance circularly symmetric complex Gaussian random variables, i.e., i.i.d. . Summarizing, we get , the classical i.i.d. frequency-flat Rayleigh fading MIMO channel, which is known to be accurate in NLOS environments with rich scattering and sufficient antenna spacing at transmitter and receiver with all antenna elements identically polarized. C. Real-World MIMO Channels In the real world, the statistics of can deviate significantly from due to a variety of reasons including inadequate antenna spacing and/or inadequate scattering leading to spatial fading correlation, the presence of a fixed (possibly LOS) component in the channel resulting in Ricean fading, and gain imbalances between the channel elements through the use of polarized antennas. These effects have been modeled in [8]–[11] and have been shown to have a significant impact on the performance limits of MIMO channels. A number of MIMO channel measurements have been carried out across the globe [12]–[17]. Fig. 4 shows a measured time-frequency response of an MIMO channel for a fixed broadband wireless access system at 2.5 GHz. Parameters extracted from such measurements include path loss, Ricean -factor, fading signal correlation, delay spread, and Doppler spread. Clearly there is a tremendous variety in real channels. A set of six channels known as the Stanford University Interim (SUI) models [18], reflective of the three terrains (urban, suburban, and hilly) in the continental United States, have been developed and adopted by the IEEE 802.16 standards committee for fixed broadband wireless applications. D. Frequency-Flat Versus Frequency-Selective Fading If the bandwidth-delay spread product of the channel satisfies , the channel is generally said to be frequency selective [19]. Otherwise, the channel is said to be frequency flat. The variation of the matrix-valued transfer function (7) will depend on the delay spread and, hence, on the coherence bandwidth (approximated by the reciprocal of the delay spread). For frequencies and with , we have under Rayleigh fading conditions vec vec , i.e., the channel responses at two frequencies spaced sufficiently apart are uncorrelated. The spatial statistics of will depend on the scattering environment and the array geometry at both the transmitter and receiver. With rich scattering and sufficient antenna spacing, the channel matrix is i.i.d. for all frequencies, i.e., . We note, however, that the correlation between the for different frequencies depends on the power delay profile of the channel and the delay spread. IV. CAPACITY OF MIMO CHANNELS The Shannon capacity of a communication channel is the maximum asymptotically (in the block-length) error-free transmission rate supported by the channel. In the following, we will examine the capacity benefits of MIMO channels. We begin by introducing the discrete-time (sampled) MIMO input–output signal model. 202 PROCEEDINGS OF THE IEEE, VOL. 92, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2004 Authorized licensed use limited to: ETH BIBLIOTHEK ZURICH. Downloaded on February 10, 2010 at 11:50 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply