UNIT-IV

MIMO WIRELESS SYSTEM

1. Introduction to MIMO systems

Multiple-input multiple-output, or MIMO, is a radio communications technology

or RF technology that is being mentioned and used in many new technologies
these days.

Wi-Fi, LTE; Long Term Evolution, and many other radio, wireless and RF
technologies are using the new MIMO wireless technology to provide increased
link capacity and spectral efficiency combined with improved link reliability
using what were previously seen as interference paths.
 Typical modern WiFi router using MIMO technology with multiple antennas

A channel may be affected by fading and this will impact the signal to noise ratio.
In turn this will impact the error rate, assuming digital data is being transmitted.
The principle of diversity is to provide the receiver with multiple versions of the
same signal. If these can be made to be affected in different ways by the signal
path, the probability that they will all be affected at the same time is considerably
reduced. Accordingly, diversity helps to stabilise a link and improves
performance, reducing error rate.

Several different diversity modes are available and provide a number of

advantages:
 Time diversity: Using time diversity, a message may be transmitted at
different times, e.g. using different timeslots and channel coding.
 Frequency diversity: This form of diversity uses different frequencies.
It may be in the form of using different channels, or technologies such as
spread spectrum / OFDM.
 Space diversity: Space diversity used in the broadest sense of the
definition is used as the basis for MIMO. It uses antennas located in
different positions to take advantage of the different radio paths that exist
in a typical terrestrial environment.

MIMO is effectively a radio antenna technology as it uses multiple antennas at

the transmitter and receiver to enable a variety of signal paths to carry the data,
choosing separate paths for each antenna to enable multiple signal paths to be
used.
It is found between a transmitter and a receiver, the signal can take many paths.
Additionally by moving the antennas even a small distance the paths used will
change. The variety of paths available occurs as a result of the number of objects
that appear to the side or even in the direct path between the transmitter and
receiver. Previously these multiple paths only served to introduce interference.
By using MIMO, these additional paths can be used to advantage. They can be
used to provide additional robustness to the radio link by improving the signal to
noise ratio, or by increasing the link data capacity.

MIMO configurations or formats:

The different MIMO formats - SISO, SIMO, MISO and MIMO require different
numbers of antennas as well as having different levels of complexity. Also
dependent upon the format, processing may be needed at one end of the link or
the other - this can have an impact on any decisions made.
SISO - Single Input Single Output
SIMO - Single Input Multiple output
MISO - Multiple Input Single Output
MIMO - Multiple Input multiple Output

SISO
The simplest form of radio link can be defined in MIMO terms as SISO -
Single Input Single Output. This is effectively a standard radio channel -
this transmitter operates with one antenna as does the receiver. There is no
diversity and no additional processing required.

A SISO system showing how the system allows a single input to the
transmission medium and a single output from it
SISO - Single Input Single Output
The advantage of a SISO system is its simplicity. SISO requires no
processing in terms of the various forms of diversity that may be used.
However the SISO channel is limited in its performance. Interference and
fading will impact the system more than a MIMO system using some form
of diversity, and the channel bandwidth is limited by Shannon's law - the
throughput being dependent upon the channel bandwidth and the signal to
noise ratio.
SIMO
The SIMO or Single Input Multiple Output version of MIMO occurs where
the transmitter has a single antenna and the receiver has multiple antennas.
This is also known as receive diversity. It is often used to enable a receiver
system that receives signals from a number of independent sources to
combat the effects of fading. It has been used for many years with short
wave listening / receiving stations to combat the effects of ionospheric
fading and interference.

SIMO has the advantage that it is relatively easy to implement although it

does have some disadvantages in that the processing is required in the
receiver. The use of SIMO may be quite acceptable in many applications,
but where the receiver is located in a mobile device such as a cellphone
handset, the levels of processing may be limited by size, cost and battery
drain.

There are two forms of SIMO that can be used:

 Switched diversity SIMO: This form of SIMO looks for the
strongest signal and switches to that antenna.
 Maximum ratio combining SIMO: This form of SIMO takes both
signals and sums them to give the a combination. In this way, the
signals from both antennas contribute to the overall signal.

MISO
MISO is also termed transmit diversity. In this case, the same data is
transmitted redundantly from the two transmitter antennas. The receiver is
then able to receive the optimum signal which it can then use to receive
extract the required data.

A MISO system providing multiple transmit antennas to enable transmit

diversity
The advantage of using MISO is that the multiple antennas and the
redundancy coding / processing is moved from the receiver to the
transmitter. In instances such as cellphone UEs, this can be a significant
advantage in terms of space for the antennas and reducing the level of
processing required in the receiver for the redundancy coding. This has a
positive impact on size, cost and battery life as the lower level of
processing requires less battery consumption.
MIMO
Where there are more than one antenna at either end of the radio link, this
is termed MIMO - Multiple Input Multiple Output. MIMO can be used to
provide improvements in both channel robustness as well as channel
throughput.

As a result of the use multiple antennas, MIMO wireless technology is able

to considerably increase the capacity of a given channel while still obeying
Shannon's law. By increasing the number of receive and transmit antennas
it is possible to linearly increase the throughput of the channel with every
pair of antennas added to the system. This makes MIMO wireless
technology one of the most important wireless techniques to be employed
in recent years. As spectral bandwidth is becoming an ever more valuable
commodity for radio communications systems, techniques are needed to
use the available bandwidth more effectively. MIMO wireless technology
is one of these techniques.
MIMO System model

In a MIMO system, same data is transmitted through multiple antennas over the
same path in the same bandwidth. Because of this each signal reaches the
receiving antenna through a different path, resulting in more reliable data. The
data rate also increases by a factor determined by the number of transmit and
receive antennas.

The receiver is designed to take into account the slight time difference between
receptions of each signal as they travel through different paths, any additional
noise or interference, and even lost signals.
MIMO Receivers:
1). MIMO Zero-Forcing (ZF) Receiver
2). MIMO MMSE Receiver

MIMO Zero-Forcing (ZF) Receiver

Properties of the Zero-Forcing Receiver Matrix FZF
a)

b)
Noise Amplification in ZF receivers:

i.e. MMSE Receiver

Example:
Advantages of a MIMO system:

 A MIMO system provides better signal strength even without clear line-
of-site as they utilize the bounced and reflected RF transmissions.
 The higher throughput allows better quality and quantity of video sent
over the network.
 Multiple data streams reduces the number of lost data packets, which
results in better video or audio quality.

Typical MIMO Configurations:

 2x2 MIMO (two transmit antennas, two receive antennas)

 3x3 MIMO (three transmit antennas, three receive antennas)
 4x4 MIMO (four transmit antennas, four receive antennas)
 8x8 MIMO (eight transmit antennas, eight receive antennas)
MIMO Techniques:

a) Spatial multiplexing
The spatial multiplexing (SM) scheme transmits different signals from
each transmission antenna, so that the data rate is increased without any
change in frequency band or transmission power. Figure shows a
representation of an SM transceiver with two transmission
antennas and two receiving antennas. Two independent data symbols
are transmitted by each transmission antenna.

The signals received by the antennas consist of the sum of the

transmitted data. Received signals can be expressed as

Using a matrix expression, it can be written as

where r is the received symbol vector, H is the channel matrix, s is the

transmitted symbol vector, and n is AWGN.

To detect received symbols, detection processing is required. There are

various methods currently in use for detection processing, including
maximum likelihood (ML), zero forcing (ZF), minimum mean-square
error (MMSE), successive interference cancellation (SIC), and ordered
SIC (OSIC)

b) Pre-coding
Precoding is a technique that exploits transmit diversity by weighting
the information stream, i.e. the transmitter sends the coded information
to the receiver to achieve pre-knowledge of the channel. The receiver
is a simple detector, such as a matched filter, and does not have to know
the channel state information. This technique will reduce the corrupted
effect of the communication channel.

For example you are sending the information ‘s’ and it will pass
through the channel, ‘h’, and add Gaussian noise, ‘n’. The received
signal at the receiver front-end will be r=sh+n;

The receiver will have to know the information about ‘h’ and ‘n’. It will
suppress the effect of ‘n’ by increasing SNR, but what about ‘h’? It
needs information about the channel, ‘h’, and this will increase the
complexity. The receiver (mobile units) has to be simple for many
reasons like cost or size of mobile unit. So, the transmitter (the base
station) will do the hard work and predict the channel.

Why do they call it "coding"? It is a preprocessing technique that

performs transmit diversity and it is similar to equalization, but the
main difference is that you have to optimize the precoder with a
decoder. Channel equalization aims to minimize channel errors, but the
precoder aims to minimize the error in the receiver output.

MIMO Beamforming:
For many years antenna technology has been used to improve the
performance of systems. Directive antennas have been used for very
many years to improve signal levels and reduce interference.
Directive antenna systems have, for example, been used to improve the
capacity of cellular telecommunications systems. By splitting a cell site
into sector where each antenna illuminates 60° or 120° the capacity can
be greatly increased - tripled when using 120° antennas.
With the development of more adaptive systems and greater levels of
processing power, it is possible to utilise antenna beamforming
techniques with systems such as MIMO.
Beamforming techniques can be used with any antenna system - not
just on MIMO systems. They are used to create a certain required
antenna directive pattern to give the required performance under the
given conditions.

Smart antennas are normally used - these are antennas that can be
controlled automatically according the required performance and the
prevailing conditions.

Smart antennas can be divided into two groups:

 Phased array systems: Phased array systems are switched and
have a number of pre-defined patterns - the required one being
switched according to the direction required.
 Adaptive array systems (AAS): This type of antenna uses what
is termed adaptive beamforming and it has an infinite number of
patterns and can be adjusted to the requirements in real time.

MIMO beamforming using phased array systems requires the overall

system to determine the direction of arrival of the incoming signal and
then switch in the most appropriate beam. This is something of a
compromise because the fixed beam is unlikely to exactly match the
required direction.
Adaptive array systems are able to direct the beam in the exact direction
needed, and also move the beam in real time - this is a particular
advantage for moving systems - a factor that often happens with mobile
telecommunications. However the cost is the considerable extra
complexity required.
2. Transmitter diversity, Receiver diversity
3. Channel state information

Different kinds of CSI

4. Capacity in fading and nonfading channels

5. Basic concept of OFDM techniques