Antenna selection algorithms for MEA transmission systems

The use of multiple element antennas (MEA) at the transmitter and receiver offers a possibility to substantially increase the throughput of a fading channel. Recent publications show that for a moderate number of transmit/receive subchannels, the outage throughput of MEA transceivers improves substantially when a big set of transmit or/and receive antennas is available to select a suitable subset of antennas which is subject to channel realisation. Optimal subset selection is, however, numerically intensive and hardly feasible for a big number of antennas and a moderate number of subchannels. In this contribution, we present a suboptimal selection algorithm which yields an important complexity reduction and may enable a real-time selection. Numerical results suggest that such a sub-optimal selection yields a negligible loss compared to the optimal strategy in the case of frequency flat channel. A possible extension for frequency selective channels is also indicated.