Experimental Validation of Capacity Preserving Design for MIMO Arrays

MIMO radio communications presents a paradigm shift for antenna array design. This is because system performance depends on how a pair of antenna arrays jointly affect the eigenvalue distributions of MIMO channels. Very little experimental work has been done to confirm what characteristics MIMO arrays must have so that channel capacity is preserved. This work presents field experiments with a MIMO testbed that test two alternative MIMO array design approaches. The first approach is to construct arrays whose elements each have omnidirectional radiation patterns. The second approach is to construct arrays whose elements each cover a spatial sector. Results show conclusively what some of the necessary characteristics are for capacity preserving MIMO arrays.