Design of a compact hardware platform for broadband MIMO channel measurement

A universal compact hardware platform for broadband MIMO channel measurement which includes the baseband and RF transceivers is developed in this paper. The developed platform can support bidirectional channel measurement with up to 6×6 MIMO configuration flexibly by the TDD manner. Cyclically shifted symbols designed based on the Chu sequences are sent from the transmitter simultaneously, while at the receiver, the collected data is transferred to PC via USB bus for channel matrix extraction and channel capacity analysis. The carrier of the RF transceiver is 3.45GHz and the channel bandwidth is up to 100 MHz. Using the hardware of the measurement system, a 4×4 MIMO channel with different kinds of polarized antennas has been constructed in the microwave chamber. Channel capacity comparison of differently polarized MIMO system is given based on the measured data. The experiment results show that the platform developed works well.