Multi site MIMO channel analysis at 4.85GHz in outdoor environment

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system has been actively investigated to enhance wireless data transmission in outdoor environments. Micro/Macro-cell services such as WLAN/WiMAX have been much attention because they achieve a high throughput. Since proliferation of these services are expected, base stations (BSs) need to be located at various heights and locations in outdoor environments. Although many publications have reported measurements of the channel state information (CSI) in outdoor environments, the relationship between the BS heights or locations and the transmission performance in MIMO systems has not yet been fully investigated. Moreover, when the number of BSs increases per area, inter-cell interference problem occurs. Such an interference deteriorates the communication quality. In this paper, the experiment is conducted in urban area, in Japan, and the CSI was obtained using 4 × 4 MIMO-OFDM signals. We present signal to noise ratio (SNR), channel capacity and eigenvalues in MIMO channels, when the BS heights and locations are changed. We clarify that eigenvalues are one of important parameters for not only the channel capacity in MIMO channels but also inter-cell interference by the analysis using the measured MIMO channels.