Low-complexity Mimo Channel Simulation by Reducing the Number of Paths

The simulation of frequency-selective multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) channels is computationally expensive. Especially on a real-time simulation platform the number of paths that can be realized is limited by the available processing power. This paper presents a new algorithm, that reduces the number of paths in the channel impulse responses while preserving the original power delay profile (PDP) of the channel. The new path-reduction algorithm can be applied to synthetically generated channels as well as measured channels. The performance of the algorithm is evaluated for scenario F of the I-Metra channel model as well as for a channel measured in the suburban village of Weikendorf near Vienna by comparing the PDPs of the original channel and the reduced path number channel. Further, bit error rate evaluations with a MIMO WiMAX link-level simulator are carried out and compared. The simulation results show that the reduced path number channels show close performance to the original channels.