MIMO-a solution for advanced wireless access?

The application of smart antenna technology to wireless communication systems has attracted considerable attention over the last decade or so, as a means of capacity enhancement. Here, the application of space-time processing using a single antenna array at the base-station has been considered in order to obtain interference reduction (both co-channel and multipath) as well as range extension. The application of dual antenna array architectures to create multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configurations, has attracted considerable interest both within academia and industry as a means of providing significant capacity gains over conventional array-based enhancement methods. This paper provides an introduction to these MIMO communication systems and explains how such capacity gains can be achieved using this technology