Indoor MIMO Channel Sounding at 3.5 GHz

International audienceThe MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) technique, using multiple antennas at emission and reception, is a good solution for wireless communication systems to improve data rates and the quality of service. This technique was adopted in the latest wireless systems standards (4G, WLAN, WiMAX). It exploit the spatial degree of freedom of wireless communications and thus see multipath as an opportunity [1]. However, the performance of MIMO systems is very dependent on the propagation channel. In fact, MIMO systems perform better when deployed in rich scattering environments like indoor. Thus, the study of the transmission channel is required in this context.In this paper, wideband double directional channel [1] measurements were performed at 3.5 GHz in indoor environment. This frequency band is licensed for the WiMAX system in Europe but could be used also for the 5G mobile systems. A large number of MIMO measurement are found in the literature, but there is always a need for more measurement data to obtain realistic MIMO channel models [2]. These channel models will help wireless system designers to evaluate precisely the performances of MIMO systems for future wireless communication standards [3].This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, we present the measurement setup. Then, in Section III, the measurement campaign, the ray tracing tool and the measurement results are described. Finally, Section IV concludes this paper and draws some perspectives of this work