Evaluation of the Performance of Multiantenna Terminals Using a New Approach

In this paper, an advanced experimental plane-wave-based method (EPWBM) for evaluation of the performance of multiantenna systems is considered. The method enables a statistical antenna evaluation without performing long routes of radio-channel sounder measurements to be carried out separately for each antenna under test. The EPWBM utilizes the joint contribution of the estimated signal spectrum and the simulated or measured complex three-dimensional (3-D ) radiation patterns of antennas under test. The proposed method enables more comprehensive antenna evaluation in a shorter time period compared to direct measurements. For validation purposes, the results obtained with the EPWBM are compared with the results of direct radio-channel measurements. The method is shown to be sufficiently accurate for comparing the performance of different antenna configurations. The average difference between the two methods is below 1 dB when estimating the diversity gain of two-element antennas. Further, the maximum difference between the methods in multiple-input multiple-output analysis is below 1 b/s/Hz in estimating mean capacity