Prediction and Measurement of Multiuser MIMO-OFDM Channel in Rural Australia

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has recently conducted a technology demonstration of a novel fixed wireless broadband access system in rural Australia. The system is based on multi-user multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MU-MIMO-OFDM). It demonstrated an uplink of six simultaneous users with distances ranging from 10 m to 8.5 km from a central tower, achieving 20 bits/s/Hz spectrum efficiency. This paper reports on the analysis of channel capacity and bit error probability simulation based on the measured MU-MIMO-OFDM channels obtained during the demonstration, and their comparison with the results based on channels simulated by a novel geometric optics based channel model suitable for MU-MIMO-OFDM in rural areas. Despite its simplicity, the model was found to predict channel capacity and bit error rate probability accurately for a typical MU-MIMO- OFDM deployment scenario.