Performance evaluation of MIMO systems using dual-polarized antennas

Exploiting the radio channel in mobile communications systems in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) manner has been shown to highly increase the system capacity. The access to such a MIMO channel usually involves spatially separated antennas of the same polarization at the transmitter and the receiver side. In this paper, we focus on the potential of dual-polarized antennas in mobile radio systems, which avoid undesired antenna spacings and promise increased system performance for certain environments. Therefore, a channel model is presented for data transmission over Ricean fading channels using antenna arrays with spatially separated antenna elements of the same polarization and spatially separated dual-polarized antenna elements, respectively. The performance of these MIMO channels is evaluated based on multiplexing data streams over the available antenna branches and a joint detection of these data streams at the receiver.