Multiple transmit multiple receive (MTMR) capacity survey in Manhattan - Electronics Letters

Introduction: Iilformation theory research has show1 that multiple transmit multiple receivc (MTMR) arrays can achieve enormous capacity gains over single-antenna systems by exploiting multipaths in the rich scattcring wircless channel [I , 21. Practical signalling schemes have been proposed which achieve a large fraction of the Shannon capacity, and one such scheme is the Bell Labs Layered Space Time (BLAST) scheme [I, 31. Previous measurements have focused on suburban areas [4, 51. ln this Letter we present the results of a survey of narrowband MTMR channel measurements for an area of Manhattan. The base array was mounted lO0m above street level, and the terminal array was mounted on a van at a height of 1.5m. We evaluate the Shannon capacity of the MTMR channel for a plausible configuration of two and four antennas for handheld, and sixteen antennas for laptop terminal devices. To observe the relative merit of a given MTMR channel, the measured capacity is compared to the capacity given a Rayleigh i.i.d. channel.