Time-Varying MIMO Channels: Measurement, Analysis, and Modeling

The temporal variation in measured multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless channels with moving communication nodes is analyzed. A wide-band 8 times 8 sounder is employed to measure the response of indoor and outdoor channels at 2.55 and 5.2 GHz. The rate of channel temporal variation is then quantified in terms of information theoretic metrics that indicate the loss in channel quality as transmit and receive channel state information becomes increasingly outdated. Finally, these metrics are used to investigate the ability of two different modeling strategies-a random matrix model and a physical time-varying cluster model-to capture the channel temporal variation