Design and evaluation of a 2 × 2 MIMO repeater

In this paper the design and measurement-based evaluation of an amplify-and-forward 2 times 2 MIMO repeater is presented. During the design phase, simulations were made to study different scenarios and repeater parameter settings. The evaluation of the repeater was made using field trials in Kista, Stockholm, Sweden. Three scenarios were considered; coverage, outdoor-to-indoor, and LOS MIMO rank enhancement. The overall results showed good improvement in received signal strength, ranging from only a few dB up to 25 dB depending on the particular measurement scenario. Moreover, the concept of repeater-aided rank enhancement in LOS also showed good results.