Cluster Power Variation Estimation for MIMO Channel Modeling in Crowded Indoor Environment

In recent years, MIMO channel models for the crowded areas such as indoor offices, shops, and outdoor hot spot environments have become a topic of great interest. In the crowded environments, the propagation paths are blocked frequently by users walking around the mobile terminal, and it causes severe shadowing and fading of channel. In this paper, to take the impact of pedestrians on the channel model into consideration, we proposed the estimation method of clusters´ power variation properties from the channel sounding data. We carried out the MIMO channel sounding experiments in a cafeteria in a weekday lunch time in the 3 GHz band assuming the use of LTE based cellular systems. We estimated the propagation parameters of clusters from the measured data and estimated the cluster power variation properties. The measurement results showed that the mean cluster power varied from -11.3 dB to 1.3 dB compared to the no pedestrian environment. The mean cluster powers tended to decrease as the clusters´ propagation delay increased. The cluster power variation standard deviations. ranged from 0.9 dB to 2.4 dB and the cluster power variation correlation times ranged from 0.7 sec. to 1.1 sec.