Estimating MIMO capacities from broadband measurements in a cellular network

We provide a new efficient method to evaluate spectral efficiencies from wireless channel soundings. Measurements are done in a limited cellular network using 3 sites with an ISD of 750 m. Each site has 3 sectors and is equipped with cross-polarized panel antennas. In the preprocessing phase, we take advantage of the high number of elements at the measurement array to compute a virtual cross polarized 2×2 setup with omnidirectional coverage at the receiver. We then apply findings from the mid 1990s to denoise the data by an adaptive thresholding method. This approach gains roughly 10 dB of SNR and enables us to evaluate capacities also for well shaded locations with a high path loss. At a fixed evaluation SNR of 10 dB, our setup achieves 5.7 bps/Hz which compares well to earlier findings from Manhattan. Exploiting both effects, the received power and the structure of the MIMO channel, best server capacities are calculated to 15 bps/Hz while the corresponding SISO setup only achieves 7.6 bps/Hz.