Time reversal in wireless communications: a measurement-based investigation

Interference caused by other users in a multi-user environment degrades the system performance significantly. Conventionally, user separation in a multi-user environment is achieved by signal separation in time, frequency or code. The use of multiple elements antenna (MEA) systems can apply separation of the users in space by targeting the transmitted power to the user of interest. Inevitably in that case, the separation is not ideal and there is interference on the other users in the systems. Moreover in a wideband transmission, frequency selective fading causing inter symbol interference (ISI) is a big challenge for point to point wireless communications. In this paper, we study the feasibility of applying the time reversal technique (TR) in multiple input single output (MISO) systems to alleviate the effect of ISI. The ability of TR to focus the signal on the receiver of interest in a multi-user environment is also considered. The studies are supported by measured complex channel impulse responses with 10 MHz bandwidth centered at 2.14 GHz. For an 8times1 MISO system, using TR the root mean square delay spread is reduced by a factor of 2. To evaluate the capability of the TR in reducing the ISI, simulation of the bit error rate (BER) was made. The irreducible BER of the TR-MISO system was shown to be lower than that of the SISO system by at least an order of magnitude. By using TR and assuming that two users are communicating simultaneously with the same BS the two signals have 17 dB of isolation