Impact of Transmit Array Geometry on Downlink System-Level Performance of MIMO Systems

—For a cellular system with a fixed number of transmit antennas at each base station, we investigate how the system-level performance varies as a function of the geometry of the transmit array used at each base station. Our results show that the system-level performance of a cellular system can be significantly improved by using transmit antenna geometries other than the uniform linear arrays that have been investigated extensively in the literature so far. For example with 4 transmit antennas at each base station, we show that the spectral efficiency for achieving a 5 percentile user data rate of 2 Mbps (in a 5 MHz bandwidth) is improved by 58% when a non-uniform, linear array is used instead of a traditional uniform linear array. Key Words: Array Gain, Array Geometry, OFDM, SIC, Spatial multiplexing, System Performance.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: VTC
• Authors: Afif Osseiran, Kambiz C. Zangi, Dennis Hui
• Keywords: Base Station, Communications, Transmit Antennas, Uniform Linear Array, VTC 2008