Antenna Selection for Next Generation IEEE 802.16 Mobile Stations

The IEEE 802.16/WiMAX standard has fully embraced multi-antenna technology and can, thus, deliver robust and high transmission rates and higher system capacity. Nevertheless, due to its inherent form-factor constraints and cost concerns, a WiMAX mobile station (MS) should preferably contain fewer radio frequency (RF) chains than antenna elements. This is because RF chains are often substantially more expensive than antenna elements. Thus, antenna selection, wherein a subset of antennas is dynamically selected to connect to the limited RF chains for transceiving, is a highly appealing performance enhancement technique for multi-antenna WiMAX terminals. In this paper, a novel antenna selection protocol tailored for next-generation IEEE 802.16 mobile stations is proposed. As demonstrated by the extensive OPNET simulations, the proposed protocol delivers a significant performance improvement over conventional 802.16 terminals that lack the antenna selection capability. Moreover, the new ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: ICC
• Authors: Chun Nie, Zhifeng Tao, Neelesh B. Mehta, Andreas F. Molisch, Jinyun Zhang, Toshiyuki Kuze, Shivendra S. Panwar
• Keywords: Antenna Selection, Antenna Selection Capability, Communications, ICC 2008, IEEE 802.16