Verifying ray tracing based CoMP-MIMO predictions with channel sounding measurements

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology is ready for deployment in commercial cellular networks in the very near future. Thus, the need of incorporating this technology into radio network planning and optimization rises dramatically for network operators. The main question to answer is how accurate MIMO channel models reflect the real MIMO channel. In this contribution we verify a detailed ray tracing channel simulator with channel sounding measurements in the 2.53 GHz range by comparing simulated and measured eigenvalue characteristics for various Single-User (SU) downlink scenarios in a Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) environment. From our comparison we can conclude that carefully performed Geometrical Optics based ray tracing simulations are an adequate prediction model to reflect main characteristics of SU-MIMO channels even in a CoMP scenario.