Multiple Antenna Enhancements via Symbol Timing Relative Offsets (MAESTRO)

MAESTRO, a novel transmission scheme using multiple synchronized transmitters, is introduced in this paper. A non-zero (but known) symbol timing offset is introduced between the signals transmitted from the different transmitters to improve the performance of MIMO systems. This leads to a reduction in interference and it is shown that an advanced receiver can utilize this information to extract significant performance gains. This transmission scheme may be used in conjunction with different kinds of receivers. In particular, comparisons are made to the joint detection MMSE receivers, to the MIMO VBLAST MMSE receiver as well as to the MIMO VBLAST MMSE receiver with ordered successive interference cancellation. It is shown that under certain conditions the MAESTRO system could achieve close to 6dB of performance gain in comparison to an equivalent system with no timing offset.