Implementation of 2 × 2 MIMO in an LTE module for the ns3 simulator

Advanced communication techniques such as Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) transmission are considered as possible extensions to the existing next generation cellular networks. However, their performance evaluation is either restricted to abstract analysis or limited to simplified scenarios with a small number of nodes. Instead, a comprehensive evaluation of these techniques in a network scenario is needed to capture the overall system performance. Inspired by this motivation, we present the implementation of a 2×2 MIMO transmission module in the well known ns3 simulator. We describe in full detail the classes involved and the related methods, and we present a performance evaluation campaign. We verify that the simulation results closely match the analysis, where available. At the same time, our simulation module offers the advantage of extending the analysis where this becomes impractical. Moreover, thanks to the modularity of the ns3 simulator, our code can be merged with any other evaluation at any point of the protocol stack, from the lower layers to the application.