On the importance of the MIMO channel correlation in underground railway tunnels

Abstract — This paper deals with MIMO channel modeling according to the correlation level in underground railway tunnels for various antenna configurations for the transmitting and receiving arrays. MIMO channel matrices have been computed with a 3D ray-tracing based software at 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz in two different tunnel environments: 1) a 1-track empty tunnel with a square cross section, 2) a 1-track tunnel with a square cross section in which a train is parked between the transmitter and the receiver. In this paper, two different strategies are investigated to model the MIMO channel using the Kronecker and the Weichselberger correlation based channel models. The first one is to model the MIMO channel using a single model over the total tunnel length. The second one takes into account the correlation at the receiving side according to the transmitter-receiver distance. In the latter solution, it is possible to isolate specific areas in the tunnel with specific correlation properties and model them in an independent way to take them into account in a system simulation. In this paper, these two modeling strategies are compared in terms of channel capacity. Index Terms — MIMO channels, correlation, underground tunnels, modal theory, models, Kronecker, Weichselberger I