Dual-Polarized Ricean MIMO Channels: Modeling and Performance Assessment

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new channel model and mutual information approximation for dual-polarized Ricean MIMO channels, enabling performance comparison with single-polarized systems and identifying conditions for superiority.

Contribution

The paper proposes a novel statistical channel model and mutual information approximation for DP Ricean MIMO channels, facilitating performance analysis and system design.

Findings

DP MIMO can outperform SP MIMO at certain SNR levels

The model accurately predicts SNR thresholds for performance gains

Results validated with real channel measurements at 2.53 GHz

Abstract

In wireless communication systems, dual-polarized (DP) instead of single-polarized (SP) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission is used to improve the spectral efficiency under certain conditions on the channel and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In order to identify these conditions, we first propose a novel channel model for DP mobile Ricean MIMO channels for which statistical channel parameters are readily obtained from a moment-based channel decomposition. Second, we derive an approximation of the mutual information (MI), which can be expressed as a function of those statistical channel parameters. Based on this approximation, we characterize the required SNR for a DP MIMO system to outperform an SP MIMO system in terms of the MI. Finally, we apply our results to channel measurements at 2.53 GHz. We find that, using the proposed channel decomposition and the approximation of the MI, we are able to reproduce the (practically relevant) SNR values above which DP MIMO systems outperform SP MIMO systems.