Experimental investigation of scatterer‐array‐based decorrelation technique applied to real multiple‐input multiple‐output base station

Abstract

In this paper, a scatterer‐array‐based decorrelation method for improving the multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) performance is proposed for a real application of base station (BS) operating at 780 MHz with a 20‐MHz communication bandwidth. The antenna correlation is reduced by loading a scatterer array designed to increase the MIMO array's effective inter‐element spacing. As a result, the diversity measure is improved, which in turn benefits the MIMO capacity. This method is demonstrated first in simulation to check its performance, which shows about 4% and 20% improvements in MIMO capacity over 20‐MHz communication bandwidth in single‐cell and multi‐cell scenarios, respectively. Then it is applied to a real BS in a realistic urban micro scenario for experimental verification, showing a noticeable throughput improvement without degrading the power coverage of the BS. Note that this is the first time that the scatterer‐array‐based decorrelation technique has been applied to increase the MIMO throughput of a real BS in a real‐life scenario, which thoroughly demonstrates the promising application potential of this technique.