A signaling scheme and estimation algorithm for characterizing frequency selective MIMO channels

This paper presents a signaling scheme and channel estimation algorithm designed to characterize frequency selective MIMO channels. This scheme has been implemented in a wideband MIMO radio testbed and used to measure the achievable channel capacity in an indoor office environment. Also, we report the achievable capacity for a real hardware platform at a particular combination of channel, SNR, antenna separation and location. This is repeated over a large number of spatially unique antenna placements and locations to give a statistically representative set measurements for the environment. The data sets generated in the measurement campaign gives an indication of the variability of achievable capacity and not just the average channel capacity. This allows future studies to investigate the characteristics of a typical poor channel and how they cause a degradation in system performance.