IEEE 802.11N MIMO-prototyping with dirty RF using the hardware-in-the-loop approach

Modern wireless systems employ highly integrated hardware. Especially for the processing at radio frequencies, this high integration causes many undesired effects of signal distortion and degradation that must be simulated comprehensively before finalizing the system design. However, often the model accuracy is not sufficient to obtain sound results of the simulations; and in the case of sufficiently accurate models the simulation times get immense. A way out is to use real radio frequency hardware and digital physical layer simulations together in a hardware-in-the-loop system. Short simulation times and real-world radio characteristics are the unbeatable advantage of the hardware-in-the-loop approach.