MIMO wireless networks with directional antennas in indoor environments

We perform an experimental characterization of an indoor MIMO system with directional antennas (our prototype multi-sector antennas). The study reveals that, even without antenna directivity gain, the directionality of signals changes the MIMO channel structure and provides a way to improve MIMO throughput performance. It also shows that it is sufficient for the improvement to consider only a small subset out of all possible antenna direction combinations. Finally, our study shows that it is possible to achieve both throughput gains and interference reduction, thus increasing network spatial reuse.