Reproduction of Arbitrary Multipath Environments in Laboratory Conditions

We discuss the synthesis of arbitrary multipath environments in a spherical volume of space (test zone), with a limited number of feed antennas (probes). The probes can be of any type, e.g., simple dipoles. The required number of probes is proportional to the area of the sphere enclosing the test zone. The signal received by a two-port mobile terminal antenna model placed in the test zone is examined through simulations, using measured real-world propagation channel data. We study how the received signal and the channel capacity are affected by truncation errors and a certain noise level in the probe excitations. This kind of synthesis enables the testing of mobile terminals under realistic operating conditions in laboratory environments. The synthesis is not limited to far-field scenarios, but near-field effects can be generated as well.