The influence of channel models on simulated MIMO performance

The paper shows that the simulated performance of MIMO systems is strongly influenced by the choice of the channel model. We investigated the performance of uncoded 4×4 and 6×8 MIMO systems without channel knowledge at the transmitter when using either measurement data directly, the well-known ´Kronecker´ model or a novel channel model that eliminates some of the deficiencies of the ´Kronecker´ model. We found up to 5 dB difference in the required SNR for a specific target BER for the different channel models considered. The popular ´Kronecker´ model, apart from predicting the mutual information inaccurately, also renders the BER erroneously when compared to measurement, whereas the novel channel model performs better in both quantities.