Modifications of the IST-WINNER channel model for Beamspace processing and parasitic arrays

The IST-WINNER (WIM) channel model provides a complete measurement-based wideband description of the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) channel and it has become the most popular modelling tool for wireless system analysis. Some disadvantages that can be detected in the WIM software realization is that on the one hand the definition and incorporation of sophisticated arrays is quite complicated and on the other hand it is not structurally simple to assume and evaluate an antenna array with parasitic elements. Many studies propose the use of parasitic elements to improve beamforming capabilities. Moreover Beamspace MIMO (BS-MIMO) with the use of Electronically Steerable Passive Array Radiators (ESPAR) has been recently proposed to implement MIMO transmission schemes with a single Radio Frequency (RF) chain and compact sized arrays. This paper proposes certain modifications that allow the use of WIM for the evaluation of such systems. These modifications provide also a simpler and general way to define arrays of arbitrary geometry and finally achieve faster execution time of the model in MATLAB.