MIMO OFDM System Performance in Measured Indoor Environment

UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
MIMO OFDM System Performance in Measured Indoor Environment
by
Syed Adnan Raza Naqvi
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTERS OF SCIENCE
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING
CALGARY, ALBERTA
August, 2007
© Syed Adnan Raza Naqvi 2007

Abstract
The demand for higher speed and reliability for wireless LAN (WLAN) has pushed the
industry to introduce new standards in the market such as IEEE 802.11n. This future
standard makes use of MIMO and OFDM to provide higher reliability at higher speeds.
This thesis presents a practical performance analysis of a MIMO and OFDM based
WLAN, with the help of actual measurements which have been taken at residential and
office locations. The performance impact of an OFDM parameter i.e. the length of cyclic
prefix (CP) has been studied through capacity analysis and effort has been made to
optimize the CP length. The effect of different number of antenna combinations on the
performance of MIMO capacity has been analysed. This analysis also includes effect of
antenna array orientation and increasing correlation between the antennas. Conclusions
have been derived from the results of the analysis for the optimum choice of the
parameters.
ii
Acknowledgements
This work could not have been possible without the consistent support of many people.
My supervisors, Dr John Neilsen and Dr Geoffrey Messier deserve special
acknowledgement, as their support has been instrumental throughout the duration of my
stay at the university as a graduate student. Their guidance in all aspects pertaining to the
research went a long way in motivating me to complete this thesis. They were
exceptionally supportive when I had to start a job alongside my masters. They made sure
that this had minimal impact on my research.
I would also like to thank Dr Robert J. Davies who arranged for all the measurement
equipment through TRLabs, and provided his own house for taking residential
measurements which formed an essential component of my research.
Also I would like to acknowledge the efforts of Mr Carl Wong, a summer research
student at TRLabs, who took all the measurements at the house and helped me during the
measurements taken at the university.
I am grateful to TRLabs for providing me with the financial support almost throughout
my period of study.
I am also grateful to my committee members i.e. Dr Robert J. Davies, Dr. Slim
Boumaiza and Dr Susan Skone, for their time and valuable suggestions.
Finally my sincere thanks to my family i.e. my parents for their moral support and my
brother Salman Naqvi for making Canada feel like home.
iii
To my fiancée
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Table of Contents
Approval Page..................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements............................................................................................................ iii
Table of Contents.................................................................................................................v
List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... ix
List of Figures and Illustrations ...........................................................................................x
List of Abbreviations and Nomenclature...........................................................................xv
List of Symbols ............................................................................................................... xvii
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................1

1.1 Wireless LAN ............................................................................................................1
1.2 Challenges in Data Transmission within a Wireless Network ..................................3
1.2.1 Multipath fading ................................................................................................3
1.2.2 Tackling Multipath Fading using Diversity ......................................................4
1.2.3 Temporal Diversity............................................................................................5
1.2.4 Spatial Diversity ................................................................................................5
1.2.5 Frequency Diversity ..........................................................................................7
1.3 Thesis Overview ........................................................................................................7
1.4 Contributions ...........................................................................................................10
CHAPTER TWO: THE IEEE 802.11N MIMO-OFDM STANDARD:

BACKGROUND AND THEORY ...........................................................................11
2.1 Capabilities of IEEE 802.11n ..................................................................................12
2.2 Current Debate on the Specifications of IEEE 802.11n Draft.................................14
2.3 MIMO: Background and Theory .............................................................................15
2.3.1 History of MIMO ............................................................................................16
2.3.2 Advantages of using Multiple Antennas .........................................................17
2.4 OFDM Theory and Background ..............................................................................17
2.4.1 OFDM Signal Processing ................................................................................19
2.4.2 OFDM Parameters - Guard time and Cyclic Prefix ........................................20
2.5 Existing Works and Recent Developments relating to 802.11n Draft.....................23
2.5.1 Effect of Antenna Characteristics....................................................................24
2.5.1.1 Antenna Polarization..............................................................................24
2.5.1.2 Antenna Directivity................................................................................24
2.5.1.3 Study of Antenna Pattern.......................................................................25
2.5.1.4 Antenna Reconfigurability.....................................................................25
2.5.1.5 Antenna Rotation ...................................................................................25
2.5.2 Effect of Environment .....................................................................................26
2.5.2.1 Keyhole Effect .......................................................................................26
2.5.2.2 Distance .................................................................................................26
2.5.2.3 Measurements in Residential Environment ...........................................27
2.5.3 Effect of Power and SNR ................................................................................27
2.5.3.1 Impact of SNR .......................................................................................27
2.5.3.2 Power Control ........................................................................................28
2.5.4 Effect of Combining MIMO with OFDM .......................................................29
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2.5.4.1 Measurements Conducted for MIMO involving OFDM analysis .........29
2.5.5 Effect of Adding Cyclic Prefix on System Performance.................................29
2.5.5.1 Cyclic Prefix Length Analysis...............................................................29
2.5.5.2 Eliminating Cyclic Prefix ......................................................................30
CHAPTER THREE: INFORMATION THEORY AND CAPACITY AS A

MEASURE OF PERFORMANCE...........................................................................31
3.1 Basics of Information Theory ..................................................................................31
3.1.1 Mutual Information and Entropy.....................................................................32
3.1.2 Capacity...........................................................................................................36
3.2 Capacity for Practical MIMO Systems....................................................................36
3.2.1 MIMO System Model......................................................................................36
3.2.2 MIMO Capacity for Narrowband Systems......................................................38
3.2.3 Capacity of Wideband MIMO Systems (Frequency Selective Fading) ..........40
3.2.4 Capacity Measurement using the OFDM technique .......................................43
3.2.5 Capacity for Wideband SISO ..........................................................................44
3.2.6 The Outage Capacity – Used for Fading Channels .........................................45
3.3 Rayleigh and Ricean Capacity Simulations for SISO and MIMO Systems ............47
3.3.1 Effect of SNR on Capacity ..............................................................................48
3.3.2 Effect of Number of Antennas on Capacity ....................................................49
3.3.3 Effect of K Factor on Capacity........................................................................50
CHAPTER FOUR: MEASUREMENT SETUP................................................................54

4.1 Measurement Equipment Details.............................................................................55
4.1.1 Four Channel Transmitter................................................................................55
4.1.2 Four Channel Receiver ....................................................................................59
4.1.3 Antennas used in the Setup..............................................................................61
4.2 Procedure for Extracting Channel Information .......................................................62
4.2.1 PN Sequence and Channel Extraction.............................................................63
4.2.2 Pseudo Orthogonality ......................................................................................65
4.2.3 CIRs extracted from Actual Measurements ....................................................66
4.3 Other Aspects related to the Measurement System .................................................68
4.3.1 Noise Power Calculation and maintaining a minimum SNR ..........................68
4.3.2 Tackling Lack of Time Synchronization between the Transmitter and the
Receiver ...........................................................................................................69
4.3.3 Calibration .......................................................................................................70
4.4 Measurement Campaigns.........................................................................................71
4.4.1 Measurement Campaign at House Location....................................................71
4.4.2 Office Building Measurement Campaigns ......................................................75
CHAPTER FIVE: TIME DISPERSION PARAMETERS, ANALYZING DELAY

SPREAD ...................................................................................................................78
5.1 Time Dispersion Parameters....................................................................................79
5.1.1 Tap Delay Line Model.....................................................................................79
5.1.2 Moments of Power Delay Profile ....................................................................80
5.2 Calculating Delay Spread from the Measurements .................................................82
5.2.1 Noise Removal and Truncating the CIR .........................................................82
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5.2.2 Classification of the Measurement Campaigns ...............................................84
5.3 Statistical Analysis of Delay Spread Recorded at House Location .........................86
5.4 Delay Spread Plots for Office Location with the Transmitter placed in Room 2....88
5.5 Delay Spread Plots for Office Environment with the Transmitter placed in a
Hallway ..................................................................................................................91
5.6 Delay Spread and its effect on Capacity – a measure of System Performance .......92
5.6.1 Capacity Plots..................................................................................................94
CHAPTER SIX: CYCLIC PREFIX AND ITS EFFECT ON THE PERFORMANCE

OF A SYSTEM.........................................................................................................97
6.1 Measuring the effect of Cyclic Prefix on orthogonality ..........................................98
6.1.1 Orthogonality Analysis through Simulation....................................................99
6.1.2 Theoretical Orthogonality Analysis and Deriving Formula to Calculate
Power of Noise due to Loss of Orthogonality ...............................................102
6.2 Measurements analysis for Cyclic Prefix ..............................................................113
6.2.1 ICI Plots For all Measurement Locations and corresponding Sufficient
Lengths of Cyclic Prefix ................................................................................113
6.3 Cyclic Prefix and its effect on the Capacity ..........................................................118
6.3.1 Catering for the ICI and Length of Cyclic Prefix in Capacity Calculation ...119
6.3.2 Effective Outage Capacity for House Location.............................................120
6.3.3 Effective Outage Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in a
Room..............................................................................................................122
6.3.4 Effective Outage Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in the
Hallway ..........................................................................................................123
6.4 Comparing the results of Office Location with House Location...........................124
CHAPTER SEVEN: MIMO AND ITS IMPACT ON THE SYSTEM

PERFORMANCE. ..................................................................................................128
7.1 MIMO Capacity.....................................................................................................129
7.1.1 MIMO Capacity for House Location ............................................................129
7.1.2 MIMO Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in Room 2...............131
7.1.3 MIMO Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in Hallway ..............133
7.2 Strength of LOS Component and its Effect on MIMO capacity ...........................134
7.2.1 Correlation Coefficient..................................................................................134
7.2.2 The Effect of Channel Correlation on MIMO Capacity................................135
7.3 Varying the Number of Antennas in the System ...................................................138
7.3.1 Different Combinations of Transmit and Receive Antennas and their
effect on the Capacity ....................................................................................140
7.4 Antenna Array Orientation and its effect on the Capacity.....................................143
7.5 Distance between Transmitter and Receiver and its effect on the Capacity..........145
7.6 Effect of Varying Frequency Bin Spacing on the Outage Capacity ......................149
CHAPTER EIGHT: SUMMARY AND FUTURE WORK ............................................151

8.1 Summary................................................................................................................151
8.2 Future Work...........................................................................................................154
APPENDIX A – MEASURED RMS DELAY SPREAD HISTOGRAMS ....................156
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A.1 Measurements at House Location.........................................................................156
A.1.1 Transmitter and Receiver in the same Room (LOS) ....................................156
A.1.2 Receiver in a small Room (Room 2) with the Transmitter in Room 1 on
the same Floor (NLOS)..................................................................................157
A.1.3 Receiver in a Medium Sized Room (Room 3) with the Transmitter in
Room 2 on the same Floor (NLOS)...............................................................159
A.1.4 Receiver in a Medium Sized Room in the Basement (Room 8) with the
Transmitter on the First Floor in Room 1 (NLOS) ........................................162
A.1.5 Receiver in a Large Room in the basement (Room 9) with the Transmitter
on the First Floor in Room 1 (NLOS)............................................................164
A.2 Measurements at Office Location with Transmitter in the Room 2 .....................165
A.2.1 Transmitter and Receiver in the same Room (LOS) ....................................165
A.2.2 Receiver in Room 3 (Medium Sized Room) with the Transmitter in Room
2 (NLOS) .......................................................................................................167
A.2.3 Receiver in Room 4 (Large Room) with the Transmitter in Room 2
(NLOS) ..........................................................................................................168
A.2.4 Receiver in the Hallway with the Transmitter in a Room (NLOS) ..............169
A.3 Measurements at Office Location with Transmitter in Hallway ..........................170
A.3.1 Transmitter and Receiver are in the Hallway (LOS)....................................171
A.3.2 Receiver in Room 2 ( Medium Sized Room) with Transmitter in the
Hallway (NLOS)............................................................................................172
A.3.3 Receiver in Room 4 (Large Room) with Transmitter in the Hallway
(NLOS) ..........................................................................................................173
A.3.4 Receiver and Transmitter are in the Hallway (NLOS) .................................175
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................177
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List of Tables
Table 5-1 The mean value and the 95 percentile of RMS delay spread for all scenarios
for house location...................................................................................................... 87
Table 5-2 The mean value and the 95 percentile of RMS delay spread for all scenarios
of office location for Transmitter in a Room. ........................................................... 90
Table 5-3: The mean value and the 95 percentile of RMS delay spread for all
scenarios at the office location for the case when transmitter is in a hallway .......... 92
Table 6-1 Sufficient Length of cyclic prefix for different Bandwidths at various
receiver positions within the house location ........................................................... 117
Table 6-2 Sufficient Length of cyclic prefix for different bandwidths at various
receiver positions within the office location with transmitter in Room 2............... 117
receiver positions within the office location with transmitter in Hallway.............. 118
Table 6-4 Comparing extreme cases of RMS delay spread and corresponding
optimum length of cyclic prefix for House and Office locations ........................... 125
Table 7-1 The 5% Outage Capacity showed alongside the corresponding RMS delay
spread for all positions at the House Location........................................................ 131
spread for all positions at the Office Location when transmitter in Room 2. ......... 132
spread for all positions at the Office Location when transmitter is in the Hallway 134
Table 7-4 Comparing the Capacity trend with the corresponding correlation
coefficient value and delay spread for the 3 selected positions. ............................. 138
Table 7-5 Outage capacity for different combinations of antennas: Two interesting
cases. ....................................................................................................................... 141
Table 7-6 Comparing the capacity and RMS delay spread for both LOS and NLOS
scenarios for increasing distance between the transmitter and receiver. ................ 148
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List of Figures and Illustrations
Figure 1-1 Signals reflected from different objects add up at the receiver and give a
random power profile containing deep fades. Shown is a typical Rayleigh fading
envelope at 200MHz. .................................................................................................. 4
Figure 1-2 Multiple Instances of the Channel provide different characteristics................. 5
Figure 2-1 The block diagram of the Transmitter and the Receiver of an ideal OFDM
system model. ........................................................................................................... 19
Figure 2-2 Adding a blank Guard Interval. The delayed subcarrier #2 causes ICI on
subcarrier #1. [25] ..................................................................................................... 21
Figure 2-3: The concept of a cyclic prefix: the last part of the OFDM symbol is
copied as a prefix. [25].............................................................................................. 21
Figure 2-4 Cyclic Prefix ensures integer number of cycles of delayed subcarriers
which cancel out the ICI. .......................................................................................... 23
Figure 3-1 Venn diagram describing the mutual information. ......................................... 33
Figure 3-2 The frequency selective channel vector hij composed of multiple taps for
each variation in time................................................................................................ 40
Figure 3-3 The 3 Dimensional Channel Matrix H ............................................................ 41
Figure 3-4 Tap Delay line representation of Broadband MIMO System ......................... 42
Figure 3-5 Extracting Outage Capacity from a CCDF of Capacity for a simulated 4x4
MIMO flat fading Rayleigh Channel. ....................................................................... 47
Figure 3-6 Effect of SNR on the CCDF of Capacity ........................................................ 48
Figure 3-7 Effect of number of antennas in the system on the CCDF of capacity. .......... 49
Figure 3-8 Effect of Ricean K factor on CCDF of MIMO Capacity ................................ 51
Figure 3-9 Effect of Ricean K factor on CCDF of SISO Capacity................................... 52
Figure 4-1 Photograph of the four channel MIMO Transmitter ....................................... 56
Figure 4-2 The block diagram of the data generation section implemented in Matlab
at the transmitter side. ............................................................................................... 57
Figure 4-3 The block diagram of the Baseband and RF Section of the transmitter [55].. 58
Figure 4-4 Photograph of the four channel MIMO Receiver ........................................... 59
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Figure 4-5 The block diagram of the receiver. [55].......................................................... 60
Figure 4-6 Antenna array used for both transmitter and the receiver. .............................. 61
Figure 4-7 Simplified Measurement System Block Diagram........................................... 62
Figure 4-8 Auto Correlation Function for a G length PN Sequence................................. 63
Figure 4-9 Circularly shifted copies of the PN Sequence at each transmitter .................. 65
Figure 4-10 Normalized ideal Cross-correlation Output at each Receiver....................... 66
Figure 4-11 Aligned Cross-Correlation vector for Receive antenna Rx1, showing four
CIRs corresponding to the four Transmit antennas. ................................................. 67
Figure 4-12 Out of sync Cross Correlation Vector for receive antenna Rx1.................... 69
Figure 4-13 Floor plan of the main floor, indicating the positions of the receiver and
transmitter as well as the room numbers................................................................... 73
Figure 4-14 Floor plan of the basement, indicating the positions of the receiver and
transmitter as well as the room numbers................................................................... 74
Figure 4-15 Floor Layout of the Office Building (ICT 3rd Floor) .................................... 76
Figure 5-1 Tap delay line model of a CIR and the corresponding tap delay plot............. 79
Figure 5-2 The full length CIR has a small portion containing relevant samples while
the rest is just noise. .................................................................................................. 83
Figure 5-3 The relevant portion of the CIR is extracted................................................... 84
Figure 5-4 Noise only samples are removed from the Truncated CIR. ............................ 84
Figure 5-5 The CCDF plots of the RMS delay spread for different scenarios for Home
Location .................................................................................................................... 86
Figure 5-6 The CCDF plots of the RMS delay spread for different scenarios for office
location for transmitter in a Room ............................................................................ 89
Figure 5-7 CCDF plots of RMS delay spread for various office scenarios ...................... 91
Figure 5-8 CCDF plots of SISO Capacity for the House Location .................................. 94
Figure 5-9 CCDF plots of SISO Capacity for Office Location with transmitter in
Room 2...................................................................................................................... 95
Figure 5-10 CCDF plots for SISO Capacity for Office Location with transmitter in
Hallway ..................................................................................................................... 96
xi
Figure 6-1 OFDM Simulation with Cyclic Prefix insertion ........................................... 100
Figure 6-2 The three tap CIR for a Dispersive Channel ................................................. 100
Figure 6-3 Length of CP and its effect on noise variance............................................... 101
Figure 6-4 Block Diagram of Equation (6.6).................................................................. 104
Figure 6-5 Noise Variance vs. Cyclic Prefix Length; comparison between simulated
result and theoretical result. .................................................................................... 112
Figure 6-6 Variance of ICI plotted against length of cyclic prefix for system
Bandwidth of 20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz and 160MHz at house location ............... 114
bandwidth of 20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz and 160MHz at office location with
transmitter in Room 2 on ICT third floor................................................................ 115
transmitter in the Hallway of ICT third floor.......................................................... 116
Figure 6-9 Outage Capacity vs. Length of cyclic prefix for house location................... 121
Figure 6-10 Outage Capacity vs. Length of cyclic prefix for office location with
transmitter in Room 2 on ICT third floor................................................................ 122
transmitter in hallway. ............................................................................................ 123
Figure 6-12 Comparison of the CCDF curves of the RMS Delay spread for office and
house locations........................................................................................................ 125
Figure 7-1 CCDF Plots for MIMO Capacity for all positions at House Location.......... 130
Figure 7-2 CCDF Plots for MIMO Capacity Values for all positions at Office
Location when transmitter is in Room 2................................................................. 132
Location when transmitter is in the Hallway .......................................................... 133
Figure 7-4 Simultaneous plots of all the 16 CIRs and the corresponding maximum
tap vectors formed between 4 Tx antennas and 4 Rx antennas of the MIMO
system; at house location for LOS position HT1R1P2. .......................................... 136
system; at house location for NLOS position HT1R9P2. ....................................... 137
xii
system; at office location for NLOS position OT2R2P4. ....................................... 137
Figure 7-7 Outage Capacity plots for different number of antennas at various
scenarios.................................................................................................................. 139
Figure 7-8 Outage Capacity plots for different combinations of Antennas.................... 142
Figure 7-9 Receiver Antenna Array rotations with respect to the Transmit Antenna
array orientation ...................................................................................................... 143
Figure 7-10 Outage Capacity for different Antenna Array Rotations at various
scenarios.................................................................................................................. 144
Figure 7-11 Campaign followed for calculating capacity against increasing distance
between the transmitter and the receiver................................................................. 145
Figure 7-12 Delay Spread CCDF for varying distance between the transmitter and the
receiver for LOS as well as NLOS scenarios.......................................................... 146
Figure 7-13 Capacity CCDF for different distances between the transmitter and the
receiver for LOS as well as NLOS scenarios.......................................................... 146
Figure 7-14 Simultaneous plots of averaged CIRs for the 4 different distances
between transmitter and the receiver for the LOS scenario. ................................... 147
between transmitter and the receiver for the NLOS scenario. ................................ 148
Figure 7-16 Outage Capacity plotted for increasing width of frequency bins................ 149
Figure A-1 RMS delay spread histogram plots and Average CIRs for the scenario
when the transmitter and the receiver are in the same room (Room 1). ................. 157
when the receiver is in a small room....................................................................... 158
Figure A-3 RMS delay spread histogram plots for the scenario when the transmitter
and the receiver are in different rooms on the same floor. ..................................... 161
when the receiver is in a medium sized room in the basement............................... 163
when the receiver is in a large room in the basement. ............................................ 164
xiii
Figure A-6 RMS delay spread histogram plots and average CIRs for the LOS
scenario when the transmitter and the receiver are in the same room (Room 2).... 166
when the transmitter in Room 2 and the receiver is in Room 3.............................. 167
when the receiver is in a large room (Room 4) and the transmitter is in Room 2. . 169
Figure A-9 RMS delay spread histogram plots for the NLOS scenario when the
transmitter is in a small room and the receiver is in some other room. .................. 170
Figure A-10 RMS delay spread histogram plot and Average CIR for the LOS
scenario when the transmitter and the receiver are in the hallway. ........................ 172
Figure A-11 RMS delay spread histogram plot and Average CIR for the scenario
when the transmitter is in a hallway and receiver is in a medium sized room........ 173
when the transmitter is in a hallway and receiver is in a large room...................... 174
Figure A-13 RMS delay spread histogram plots and Average CIR for the NLOS
scenario when the transmitter is in the hallway ...................................................... 175
xiv
List of Abbreviations and Nomenclature
ADC Analog to Digital Converter
AWG Arbitrary Waveform Generator
BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying
CDMA Code Division Multiple Access
CIR Channel Impulse Response
CP Cyclic Prefix
dB Decibel
dBc Decibel relative to Carrier
DAC Digital to Analog Converter
FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access.
FFT Fast Fourier Transform
FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array
ICI Inter-carrier Interference
IF Intermediate Frequency
IFFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transform
ISI Inter-symbol Interference
LO Local Oscillator
LOS Line of Sight
MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output
MISO Multiple Input Single Output
NLOS Non-Line of Sight
OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
xv
OFDMA Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access
PC Personal Computer
PLL Phase Lock Loop
PCB Printed Circuit Board
PN Pseudo Noise
RF Radio Frequency
Rx Receiver
RMS Root Mean Squared
SIMO Single Input Multiple Output
SISO Single Input Single Output
SNR Signal to Noise Ratio
SVD Singular Value Decomposition
Tx Transmitter
WLAN Wireless Local Area Network
xvi
List of Symbols
C Capacity
` ( μ,σ ) Normal Distribution with mean μ and variance σ .
ρ xy Correlation Coefficient between vectors x and y.
0n A nx1 vector with all elements equal to 0
H MIMO Channel Matrix
hij Single tap CIR between jth transmit antenna and ith receive antenna
hij Multi-tap CIR vector between jth transmit antenna and ith receive antenna
iid Independent identically distributed
Ik A kxk identity matrix.
K Maximum number of frequency tones in an OFDM signal
L Maximum number of taps in a CIR
m Number of receive antennas
n Number of transmit antennas
xvii
1
Chapter One: Introduction
The field of wireless communication is evolving rapidly as the demand for faster and
reliable means of communication is rising. The use of multimedia services in wireless
systems is quickly gaining popularity, thus the need for high speed and high quality data
exchange has increased. The technological growth has been phenomenal for wireless
networks for both outdoor and indoor environments.
The cellular network being an outdoor wireless network has evolved from a simple 1st
Generation FDMA system to a complicated 3rd Generation CDMA and soon 4th
Generation technology of MIMO and OFDMA will be introduced into the market. This
evolution is primarily due to the demand for higher data rates at lower cost of bandwidth.
This has been helped by the advancement in the hardware speed which enables highly
complicated DSP algorithms to be implemented conveniently.
Wireless networks for the indoor environment have come into the spotlight since the
introduction of WLAN which has created the need for high speed data communication.
This has resulted in a many technological advancements in this area, giving rise to many
different WLAN standards, each surpassing the other in terms of data transfer speed and
reliability. The next section talks about WLAN in greater detail.
1.1 Wireless LAN
Phenomenal growth has been noticed in WLAN hardware in the past decade, evolving
quickly from novelty into necessity. This expansion can be measured from the fact
mentioned in [1] that WLAN chipset shipments in 2005 crossed the 100-million-unit
2
mark as opposed to shipments of less than 10 million units in 2001. This 10 fold increase
has been experienced in just four years.
The majority of the demand has been driven by users that connect laptop computers to
networks at the office and to the Internet while at home. Wireless Internet connections
are also available at airports, coffee shops, hotels, and other transit gathering places. This
has resulted in, Wi-Fi® technology being commonly found in notebook and laptop
computers and also in Internet access devices like routers and DSL or cable modems. A
large percentage of all notebook computers now ship with built-in WLAN.
Wi-Fi is not limited to the PC, rather, the technology has been extended to various house
hold consumer electronics applications like Internet telephony, gaming devices, music
streaming, and for in-home video transmission. This trend is gaining further momentum
due to use of new entertainment devices like compact digital video recorders and smart
Audio/Video storage appliances that collect content in one spot while they can be
enjoyed all around the home. These new applications are stretching the capability of
existing Wi-Fi networks to the limit. But the limit is likely to be extended in a large way
by the introduction of a new and emerging WLAN standard, IEEE 802.11n. This future
standard promises both higher data rates and increased reliability. The specifications of
802.11n are still in the process of being finalized by the IEEE standards-setting body. The
specification is not yet fully finalized however the draft is proving to be reasonably stable
and good progress is being made through the formal IEEE review process.
3
Keeping the future in mind, the hardware industry has already started making chips and
devices that conform to the 802.11n draft. These devices are being made available to
consumers to enable them to start building high-speed wireless networks in anticipation
of the upcoming standard while ensuring interoperability at high speeds and backward
compatibility with their existing WLAN hardware. The industry came to a tangible
agreement in early 2006, with regards to the features to be included in the high-speed
802.11n. Although the draft of 802.11n is still not final, the specification is stable enough
for 802.11n Wi-Fi cards and routers to start hitting the production line and soon be
making their way to the market.
1.2 Challenges in Data Transmission within a Wireless Network
802.11n is being designed to overcome quite a few challenges that stand in the way of
increasing data rates and reliability. Limited transmit power and signal attenuation due to
the presence of large number of obstacles are few of the physical layer challenges faced
by wireless system designers. The major cause of concern in wireless communication is a
radio-wave phenomenon called multipath fading which causes deterioration in signal
quality, thus making fast and reliable communication difficult.
1.2.1 Multipath fading
A transmitted wireless signal bounces off walls, doors, and other objects. Multiple copies
of the same signal, traveling through different routes arrive at the receiver. As shown in
Figure 1-1, multiple copies of the transmitted signal following different paths add up
constructively or destructively, causing the strength of the signal to increase or decrease.
Under destructive addition, there could be severe loss of signal strength called deep fades
4
which makes it impossible for the receiver to detect the transmitted signal. Most high
speed wireless communication schemes suffer from the multipath effect.
Figure 1-1 Signals reflected from different objects add up at the receiver and give a
random power profile containing deep fades. Shown is a typical Rayleigh fading
envelope at 200MHz.
To overcome this challenge, many innovative ideas have been put forward to improve
wireless system reliability and speed. In fact, certain techniques have been devised that
exploit the multipath phenomenon in a way that it causes an improvement in the
efficiency of a system that is suffering from multipath. This improvement in efficiency is
achieved by introducing diversity.
1.2.2 Tackling Multipath Fading using Diversity
During deep fades, the signal becomes severely attenuated and communication becomes
nearly impossible unless some less-attenuated replica of the transmitted signal is
simultaneously made available to the receiver. This phenomenon of using of replicas is

5
called diversity and it is one of the important contributors to reliable wireless
communications. Diversity makes use of the time varying nature of the wireless channel
which suggests that the deep fades occurring at one instance of time or space are highly
unlikely to occur at another instance. This can be seen in the Figure 1-2 where the deep
fades for two different instances of the channel are shown and they don’t occur at the
same moment in time.
Figure 1-2 Multiple Instances of the Channel provide different characteristics
The major techniques used to introduce diversity are mentioned below.
1.2.3 Temporal Diversity
In this technique, channel coding in conjunction with time interleaving is used. Thus
replicas of the transmitted signal are provided to the receiver in the form of redundancy
in temporal domain. However, time interleaving results in large delays when the channel
is slowly varying.
1.2.4 Spatial Diversity
Spatial Diversity or Antenna Diversity makes use of spatially separated or differently
polarized antennas. The transmitted signal replicas are provided to the receiver in the
6
form of redundancy in the spatial domain. The technique is to transmit the same signal
from multiple transmission points and receive the signal at multiple receiving points, so
that many copies of the same signal are received resulting in a more reliable received
signal after diversity combining. Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) uses this form
of diversity to improve system performance. MIMO is a practical, effective and rapidly
evolving technique used in many scattering environments for reducing multipath fading.
The classical approach is to use multiple antennas at the transmitter or receiver or both.
Thus we have multiple inputs and multiple outputs in the system. The major cause of
concern is the cost, size and power of remote units as their size need to be increased to
accommodate multiple antennas, with a separation wide enough to remove as much
correlation as possible. Generally a width of half the wavelength of the transmitted signal
is a minimum between adjacent transmit or receive antennas in a dense scattering
environment. [2]
MIMO is a very popular field of research in digital communications. Researchers are
interested in how MIMO affects the communication speed and reliability of a system.
Some analytical results published for the MIMO systems show that these systems provide
multiple independent transmission channels, and in ideal conditions where there is no
correlation between these channels, this leads to an increase in the system reliability and
speed in linear proportions with the increase in the number of antennas[3]. This
conclusion has attracted a lot of attention and the popularity of MIMO is increasing by
the day. A detailed account on the development of MIMO is given in Chapter 2.

7
1.2.5 Frequency Diversity
For frequency diversity, the fact that waves transmitted on different frequencies induce
different multipath structure in the propagation media, is exploited. Thus replicas of the
transmitted signal are provided to the receiver in the form of redundancy in the frequency
domain. But these spread spectrum techniques are ineffective when the coherence
bandwidth of the channel is larger than the signal bandwidth, or equivalently, when there
is relatively small delay spread in the channel.
One of the techniques that are used to combat the phenomenon of fading and interference
and provide diversity in frequency domain is the Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing (OFDM) technique. The basic concept of OFDM is similar to that of MIMO
i.e. to transmit signal over multiple carriers, but instead of using multiple antennas and
spatial multiplexing, the carriers are multiplexed in the frequency domain. OFDM is an
efficient way to deal with multipath as its implementation complexity is significantly
lower than many other techniques designed for such a purpose. OFDM also effectively
deals with dispersive channels by converting a frequency selective channel into many
small flat fading channels.
1.3 Thesis Overview
Having introduced the modern day wireless networks and the evolution in this
technology, it was mentioned that 802.11n would be the standard of the immediate future.
In Chapter 2 this wireless pre-standard is elaborated further and the two major techniques
used in the 802.11n (MIMO and OFDM) are discussed in theory and detail in the later
8
part of the chapter. Also discussed are the recent research developments and existing
works related to these fields.
The 802.11n is at a phase where most of its parameters have not been finalized yet. The
optimal values of these system parameters can be determined by analyzing system
performance using a metric based on information theory. In Chapter 3, information
theory is discussed and the term capacity is introduced as a performance metric which
will be used in the later chapters to characterise the performance of the system. Some
derivations are shown to obtain a capacity relation that is suited to systems utilizing
MIMO and OFDM. At the end of Chapter 3, the obtained capacity relation is then applied
to simulated Rayleigh and Ricean channels which will provide for a good comparison
with the practical channels obtained from measurements in the later part of the thesis.
After discussing the theory behind 802.11n in the first two chapters and selecting a
performance metric to evaluate 802.11n performance in Chapter 3, the thesis then enters
into the next phase which involves practical MIMO indoor channel measurements. These
measurements characterise the indoor environment where the 802.11n will be deployed.
This portion of the thesis starts with the description of the broadband MIMO radio
channel sounder in Chapter 4. This channel sounder was developed at TRLabs Calgary
and has been used in this research for the purpose of taking extensive indoor MIMO
measurements at two different indoor environments. The first set of measurements has
been taken in a two bedroom wood frame detached house in urban Calgary. The second
set of measurements has been conducted in a multi storey building at the University of
Calgary, which represents an office environment. The measurements were taken at

9
different positions within each of the two locations. The layout of the various positions is
provided in the later part of Chapter 4.
The measurements are then used to extract the channel impulse response (CIR) at each
measurement position. These CIRs provide information regarding different channel
characteristics. In Chapter 5 the time dispersion characteristics of the CIRs are examined
and a statistical analysis of the RMS delay spread of the measured channels is done. A
relationship between the RMS delay spread and system performance has been examined,
by calculating the capacity for channels having different values of RMS delay spread.
The purpose of discussing RMS delay spread is that it is an important factor while
designing an OFDM system, as it impacts the selection criteria of the required length of
the OFDM cyclic prefix (CP). This is discussed in detail in Chapter 6. The effect of
having different lengths of CP on the system performance is analysed. A derivation is
presented to calculate the inter-carrier interference (ICI) that results due to loss of
orthogonality caused by a CP that is too short. The impact of ICI on the performance of
the system is then analyzed through capacity calculations. Using the RMS delay spread
results described in Chapter 5, the optimal length of CP that maximizes the capacity is
found for different environments. This optimal CP length is then suggested for the design
of the OFDM portion of 802.11n.
The channel measurements are analysed further in Chapter 7 in order to determine
MIMO performance. The effect of different MIMO parameters, such as the number of
antennas in the system, changing the angle of the antenna arrays and altering the distance
10
between the transmitter and receiver, is investigated. The performance of the system is
then illustrated for each variation in these parameters using capacity. The parameter
combinations that give the best value of capacity are then recommended for
implementation in 802.11n.
Concluding remarks and future work is provided in Chapter 8.
1.4 Contributions
1. Detailed indoor RMS delay spread characterization is done using practical
measurements
2. A new theoretical analysis of OFDM ICI as a function of CP length is
presented.
3. Capacity analysis has been used to balance ICI with the effect that CP length
has on throughput. The optimal length of CP is obtained by balancing these
two parameters.
4. Optimal CP lengths based on real channel measurements are suggested for
residential and office environments.
5. A design estimate is provided as to the number of antennas that should be at
the access point (transmitter) and the terminal (receiver) for 802.11n.
11
Chapter Two: The IEEE 802.11n MIMO-OFDM Standard: Background and

Theory
The latest developments in WLAN technology were discussed in Chapter 1. It was
mentioned that 802.11n will be the next standard to be adopted by WLAN industry.
802.11n is not yet finalized and there are certain specifications which are still being
debated. The main focus of this thesis is to look at some of the aspects of 802.11n draft,
scrutinize them and suggest certain parametric values to optimize the performance of the
network. 802.11n, although still a draft, is already very popular and is expected to be
widely accepted once it is given the status of a standard. Before it becomes a standard it
should be made absolutely sure that all the specifications perfectly suit the environment
where this network is going to be setup and perform at its best.
The best way of searching for the right value of a parameter in a particular environment is
by practically employing a wireless measurement system in that environment. This has
been achieved by using an indoor wireless measurement system which has been
employed at two diverse environments which are common to a WLAN i.e. a residential
environment and an office environment. These measurements are then studied and
research has been done on a selected few parameters of 802.11n which are not yet
finalized. Effort has been made to suggest an optimum value for each of the parameters
being monitored, based on the measurement results.
The measurement details and the effect of different parameters on the performance of the
system are discussed in the later chapters while this chapter starts with a brief discussion
12
on the 802.11n, describing its basic capabilities in Section 2.1. The debate on the
proposed specifications of 802.11n is summarized in Section 2.2.
As it turns out 802.11n is based on two recent and popular techniques namely MIMO and
OFDM. So in order to fully understand the working of the 802.11n, it is imperative that
these techniques should be thoroughly understood. In Section 2.3 the basic theory and
background of MIMO is discussed which is followed by the discussion on OFDM in
Section 2.4. The related existing works and recent developments in these fields are listed
in Section 2.5.
2.1 Capabilities of IEEE 802.11n
802.11n has gained a lot of attention and popularity for the reason that it promises far
greater bandwidth, better range, and reliability than any of the other 802.11 standards.
The advantage of 802.11n can be found in a variety of network configurations. Many new
home based network applications are emerging and are being readily introduced in the
market. As a result the number of consumers is increasing and so are their demands,
making 802.11n an enhancement that is more of a necessity.
It is mentioned in [1] that, there are some features that are an integral part of 802.11n
draft. Supporting an OFDM implementation is one of these features. This implementation
needs to be an improvement upon the one employed in the 802.11a/g standards. A
slightly wider bandwidth and a higher maximum code rate will be used improving the
highest attainable raw data rate from 54Mbps to 65 Mbps.

13
The second key feature that is required is to incorporate MIMO, which is one of the most
widely known components of the draft specification. MIMO makes good use of multipath
with a technique known as space-division multiplexing, as described in Section 1.2.4.
The WLAN access point, while transmitting, splits a data stream into multiple parts,
referred as spatial streams. Each of these multiple streams are then transmitted through
separate transmit antennas to a set of multiple receive antennas at the terminal. The
current 802.11n draft provides for up to four spatial streams, even though it is not
required for the compliant hardware to support that many spatial streams.
If the number of spatial streams is doubled from one to two, the raw data rate also
effectively doubles. But there are some trade-offs, however, such as an increase in power
consumption and, to a lesser extent, cost. Cost can be reduced by efficiently utilizing the
resources and by using optimized parameters like the number of antennas in the system
and suitable length of CP. This is what is addressed in this thesis.
A feature of 802.11n allows the bandwidth of a WLAN communication channel to
change from 20MHz to 40MHz thus giving an option of effectively doubling the data
rates. But using a larger bandwidth will occupy more of the available spectrum thus
leaving a fewer number channels available for other devices. This is a primary trade-off.
In the case of the 2.4-GHz band, there is sufficient room for three 20-MHz channels
which do not overlap. But a 40-MHz channel there is not enough room to allow other
devices to join the network or transmit in the same airspace. Thus the net impact of
increasing the channel bandwidth on the performance of the system needs to be analyzed.
14
2.2 Current Debate on the Specifications of IEEE 802.11n Draft
Many of the specifications of IEEE 802.11n draft are still not finalized and different
proposal have been presented from the three proposal groups namely TGn Sync (Task
Group-n), WWiSE (World Wide Spectrum Efficiency) and MITMOT (Mitsubishi-
Motorola).
There are some differences between proposals by TGn Sync and WWiSE. Although both
propose the MIMO architecture, it is how they go about using it that differs. For one
example, TGn Sync wants the mandatory channel width to be 40MHz, with only two
antennas needed at minimum. WWiSE wants 20MHz mandatory, with four antennas
(with 40MHz channels as an option). WWiSE believes this will make the 802.11n
standard more backwards-compatible and regulation-friendly worldwide, as 40MHz
channels are not permitted in Japan and in areas of Europe.
In this thesis an analysis will be made by varying the bandwidth from 20 MHz to 40MHz
and beyond to 160MHz. Also the effect of increasing number of antennas at each side
from 2 to 4 is studied to contribute to the debate.
As regards the rate of data transmission, WWiSE gets to 100 Mbps net throughput by
defining a new peak rate modulation that runs at 135 Mbps. To run at 135 Mbps, WWiSE
uses the channel slightly differently from 802.11a. Where as, 802.11a divides the 20
MHz channel into 54 subcarriers, WWiSE divides it into 56 carriers. 802.11a uses 48 out
of the 54 subcarriers to carry data, and four for “pilot” carriers used to calibrate the data
carriers while for WWiSE 54 of its 56 subcarriers are used for data, and 2 are pilots. The
15
use of MIMO means that the two carriers go through two receivers each, and are as
effective as four pilot carriers through one antenna. Each of the 54 carriers can be
modulated using the same techniques as 802.11a. 40 MHz channels can also be used with
WWiSE, and it doubles the channel capacity.
So the debate between WWiSE and TGn sync is going in the right direction. Most of the
features of the 802.11n have been agreed upon while some will be finalized fairly soon.
In this thesis some assumptions are made for some of the non-finalized parameters while
configuring the measurement setup to match its behaviour to an 802.11n device.
2.3 MIMO: Background and Theory
Having discussed the salient features of the 802.11n draft, it is evident that one of the
main components of this draft is the MIMO functionality. Before proceeding with an
examination of 802.11n, it is imperative to discuss the basic details pertaining to MIMO.
Systems consisting of a transmitter, radio channel and receiver are mostly categorized by
their number of inputs and outputs. Multiple inputs or outputs to a channel are realized as
multiple antennas, polarizations or antenna modes. The most common and conventional
configuration is a single antenna at each side of the radio channel, which gives a single
input and single output system commonly abbreviated as a SISO system. With the use of
multiple antennas on either or both sides of the wireless link, MISO, SIMO and MIMO
systems can be defined in a similar manner. The MIMO definition is the superset and
contains the SISO, SIMO and MISO systems as its subsets.

16
2.3.1 History of MIMO
Using an array of antenna elements to improve a wireless connection is a technique that
dates back to 1901 when Guglielmo Marconi used it to increase the gain of the Atlantic
transmissions of Morse codes [4]. Four different 61 meter high tower antennas were used
by Marconi which were arranged in a circular array in Poldhu, England. This antenna
array was not very complicated as it did not feature phased antennas or any sort of beam
forming. A Morse signal was transmitted through this setup to Signal Hill, St. John,
Newfoundland which was at a distance of 3425 km from Poldhu. Now after nearly a
century, the array antennas are being employed in wireless communication systems to
improve performance not only in terms of range improvement but also by increasing
speed and reliability.
A patent was filed by Jack Winters at Bell Laboratories on wireless communications
using multiple antennas in 1984. Based on Winter’s research Jack Salz, also of Bell
Laboratories, published a paper on MIMO [5] in 1985. From 1986 to1995 Winters, Salz
and many others published many articles and papers on MIMO [6-11].
In 1996, Greg Raleigh [12] and Gerard J. Foschini [13] introduced new approaches and
trends to MIMO which increased its efficiency. Greg Raleigh is the founder of Airgo
Networks, which claims to be the inventor of MIMO OFDM.
In commercial operations, systems with array antennas have been reported for GSM
networks [14, 15], 3G CDMA networks [16] and fixed broadband wireless access
17
networks [17]. Many field trials with test bed antenna arrays have also been reported [18–
24].
2.3.2 Advantages of using Multiple Antennas
Spatial diversity is the primary advantage of using multiple antennas. The channel fading
due to multipath propagation can be counteracted through the use of multiple antennas. If
sufficiently spaced multiple antennas, are used at the receiver, then multiple copies of the
transmitted signal are received. Each of these copies actually propagates through
channels with different fading. The probability that all signal copies are simultaneously in
a deep fade is very small. As a result the robustness of the wireless link is increased
through spatial diversity and this can be utilized to obtain a higher data throughput.
Another advantage of multiple antennas is array gain. Increase in the antenna gain is
experienced when multiple antennas are used. This results in better range and coverage.
Thus it is useful in large office buildings, airports and other large public places where it
allows smaller number of access points to cover a larger area.
The spatial dimension provided by multiple antenna elements has another advantage that
it can be used effectively to suppress interfering signals in a way that is not possible with
a single antenna, resulting in better quality signal which leads to increased system
reliability.
2.4 OFDM Theory and Background
Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a modulation technique based on
the idea of frequency-division multiplexing (FDM). OFDM differs from FDM, in that it
18
divides the frequency band into smaller channels and each of these frequency
subchannels carries a separate stream of data. This technique is a fundamental component
of the 802.11n draft. Each sub channel has a distinct subcarrier frequency assigned to it.
These subcarrier frequencies are chosen in a way that the modulated data streams are
orthogonal to each other. Achieving orthogonality between the subchannels greatly
simplifies the design of both the transmitter and the receiver for the reason that individual
filters are not required for each subchannel, and the available frequency spectrum is
efficiently used as more channels can be packed within a given frequency band without
causing interference.
It is known since 1960 that there are many benefits of using orthogonal frequency
subbands but lack of processing power did not allow for it to be implemented. Generating
an OFDM signals requires an efficient implementation of the fast Fourier transform
(FFT) algorithm. In recent times the availability of low cost integrated digital signal
processing components has enabled a very efficient and high speed implementation of the
FFT. As a consequence the process of generating OFDM signal is realisable and has
become very popular in wideband communication.
One key principle of OFDM is that it makes the transmitted signal more robust against
inter-symbol interference (ISI) due to multipath. Transmitting a number of low-rate
streams in parallel instead of a single high-rate stream allows for combating the multipath
interference. Transmitting in narrow frequency subchannels makes the effect of the
channel roughly constant (flat) over that small interval, thus signal detection and
equalization is made fairly simple at the receiver.

19
Figure 2-1 The block diagram of the Transmitter and the Receiver of an ideal
OFDM system model.
2.4.1 OFDM Signal Processing
The step by step processing involved in transmitting and receiving an OFDM signal is
shown in Figure 2-1. While transmitting, the data is first converted into parallel streams
and then passed individually through modulators. Then a high-speed IFFT block is used
to convert the orthogonal frequency sub channels into time domain. This time domain
signal is then modified by adding a guard interval that eliminates ISI. This guard interval
is actually filled with a cyclic prefix (CP) to eliminate ICI. The concept of CP and how it
helps in eliminating the ICI will be explained in detail in the following subsection as it is
one of the important concepts in the context of this thesis.

20
Once the CP has been added, the procedure that follows is similar to the conventional
wireless systems involving a DAC followed by RF modulation.
At the receiver side the reverse process is applied. Once the signal is converted into
digital baseband, the CP is removed and then the FFT is applied to retrieve the orthogonal
frequency channels, which are then converted back into serial data stream.
Standard techniques such as channel coding, power allocation, and adaptive modulation
may be applied to each subchannel or across all subchannels. Multiple access is also
possible, using either time, frequency or coding to separate the users. The term OFDMA
implies that frequency-division multiple access is achieved by assigning different OFDM
subchannels to different users.
2.4.2 OFDM Parameters - Guard time and Cyclic Prefix
Guard time and the corresponding length of CP are important OFDM design parameters.
When an OFDM signal is transmitted over a dispersive channel, two types of difficulties
can be encountered. One difficulty is that when a system is transmitting multiple OFDM
symbols in a series, a dispersive channel could produce ISI when multipath components
of one symbol interfere with the adjacent one. This can be overcome by inserting a guard
interval between the symbols to avoid overlapping between the successive symbols. But
adding this interval gives rise to the second difficulty which is the loss of orthogonality
between subcarriers as shown in Figure 2-2. This results in inter-carrier interference (ICI)
explained in [25]. In [26] Peled and Ruiz solved this problem with the introduction of a
CP. It is suggested that instead of adding a silent guard interval, a cyclic extension of the
symbol should be inserted in that interval.

21
Figure 2-2 Adding a blank Guard Interval. The delayed subcarrier #2 causes ICI on
subcarrier #1. [25]
Figure 2-3: The concept of a cyclic prefix: the last part of the OFDM symbol is
copied as a prefix. [25]

22
To eliminate ICI, the OFDM symbol is cyclically extended in the guard interval as shown
in Figure 2-3. This ensures that the delayed replicas of the OFDM symbol always have an
integer number of cycles within the FFT interval given that the channel delay is smaller
than the guard interval. As a result the multipath signals with delays smaller than the
guard interval don’t cause any ICI or ISI. The ICI cancellation due to integer number of
cycles is explained in Figure 2-4. Comparing it with Figure 2-2, it can be seen that the
portion of CP for the delayed subcarrier #2 ensures that there are integer number of
cycles of that subcarrier within the FFT interval and it cancels the ICI which was being
produced when there was zero signal in the guard interval. Thus the CP both preserves
the orthogonality of the subcarriers and prevents ISI between successive OFDM symbols.
This eliminates the frequency selective distortion in the symbols and as a result the
equalization at the receiver is simplified. This often motivates the use of OFDM in
wireless systems.
The choice of the length of CP is directly dictated by the channel time characteristics
such as the delay spread. As already mentioned, only those multipath signals which have
delays larger than the guard time can cause ICI, thus the selection of the length of CP is
done such that the largest delays are also accommodated within that interval of time. In
Chapter 6 the relationship between the CP and the channel time characteristics will be
examined in further detail.

23
Figure 2-4 Cyclic Prefix ensures integer number of cycles of delayed subcarriers
which cancel out the ICI.
2.5 Existing Works and Recent Developments relating to 802.11n Draft.
The debate on 802.11n draft is nearing a settlement but not a lot of academic research has
been done specifically on 802.11n. However, much of the general research done on
MIMO and OFDM can be applied to the 802.11n context.
Since the purpose of this thesis is to study different components and parameters for both
MIMO and OFDM in perspective of optimizing 802.11n, the following subsections
describe recent work that has been carried out in different categories specific to MIMO
and OFDM that can be applied to 802.11n performance optimization.

24
2.5.1 Effect of Antenna Characteristics
Antennas are an important component of a wireless system, and for MIMO, since
multiple antennas are employed; their characteristics have a huge impact on the overall
performance of the system. Many studies are going on to test various properties of
antennas and their behaviour in various array topologies. In this thesis, some of the
parameters associated with the antennas in the system have been analysed. Some recent
studies in this regard are mentioned here.
2.5.1.1 Antenna Polarization
Antenna polarization is an important factor when more than one antenna are being placed
in close proximity, with an effort to minimize the correlation between them. The study in
[27] compared the effect of dual polarized antennas with that of vertically polarized
antennas. It was observed from the measurements that for LOS with the transmitter close
to the receiver, the dual polarized antennas give better performance compared to
vertically polarized antennas.
2.5.1.2 Antenna Directivity
Research has also been done on the effect of using directional antennas on the system
performance such as its capacity. Different antenna setups were used in [28] to measure
the performance of a MIMO system in various environments. Vertically polarized
uniform linear dipoles or omni-directional antennas achieved maximum capacity in
outdoor environment. In [28] it was observed that the directional antennas performed
better in the indoor environment, a result also supported by [29]. It is also mentioned that
25
increasing the distance between adjacent antennas elements of an array, increases the
capacity as the correlation between the elements is reduced.
2.5.1.3 Study of Antenna Pattern
Radiation efficiency is a metric defined as the ratio between the radiated power of the
embedded element and the maximum available power at the input port. This metric along
with capacity and correlation between the signals is studied in [30]. From the
measurements conducted in [30] it was observed that low radiation efficiency results in
degradation in capacity and if correlation between the signals received at each antenna is
reduced, the capacity improves.
2.5.1.4 Antenna Reconfigurability
A study in [31] uses the idea of reconfigurable antennas, to adjust the length of the
antennas automatically with the changing environment, to maximize capacity. The
reconfigurable antennas play a significant role in areas where there is higher diversity,
like a NLOS scattering environment with rich multipath. For LOS environments with
fewer multipaths, the reconfigurability does not achieve much improvement in capacity.
2.5.1.5 Antenna Rotation
Impact of antenna array orientation and rotation is studied in [32]. It is observed that
antenna rotation affects the capacity only for scenarios where small angular spread is
present. In another study done in [33] the rotation of antenna resulted in a random effect
on capacity. The capacity increases at angles where the angular spread is concentrated
and this concentration of the angular spread is random.

26
2.5.2 Effect of Environment
The performance of the MIMO system heavily depends on its environment. There have
been many studies related to the effect of different positions of the antenna elements.
Some of the recent studies are mentioned in this section.
2.5.2.1 Keyhole Effect
The keyhole effect occurs in an environment where the spatial diversity is drastically
reduced, eliminating the advantage of using multiple antennas in the system. The
performance of the system in such an environment is described in [34]. A practical
keyhole environment is created and measurements are taken. A keyhole effect is created
by blocking all but one possible paths of signal transmission between the transmitter and
the receiver. A tiny hole is left open to allow the transmission through this single path. It
is suggested in [34] that a true keyhole effect is created if a waveguide is inserted in this
tiny hole. It is observed that such a hole reduces the Eigen modes, and the rank of the
channel matrix, which, a hole without a waveguide does not. The reduction in these
parameters causes the capacity to decline. The same tiny hole without a waveguide does
show some reduction in capacity, but in the presence of a waveguide, the behaviour is
very close to the theoretical keyhole effect.
2.5.2.2 Distance
The distance between the transmitter and the receiver does affect the capacity of the
system. A study described in [33] concludes that for LOS, the capacity decreases with
increasing distance. Intuitively, it is suggested that at larger distances, the dominant

27
signal is the direct LOS signal while the reflections are severely attenuated. This reduces
the angular spread and increases signal correlation.
In [27] it is mentioned that by increasing the distance, the K factor of the Ricean fading
distribution decreases. A decreasing K factor causes capacity to increase. It is also
mentioned in [27] that correlation decreases, between adjacent antennas within an array,
with increasing distance between the transmitter and the receiver. This is in contrast to
the observations made in [33] that primarily suit indoor environments where the K factor
does not decrease significantly. For outdoor environment when the distance is quite large
the results from [27] hold good as the K factor does decrease appreciably to cause the
capacity to increase.
2.5.2.3 Measurements in Residential Environment
Measurements have been conducted in a residential environment as described in [35].
Standard SISO measurements have been compared with MIMO measurements in
different locations within a house. It is observed that the coverage area improves
remarkably for MIMO as compared to SISO, especially at places isolated from the
transmitter.
2.5.3 Effect of Power and SNR
2.5.3.1 Impact of SNR
It is generally observed that power is normalized when calculating capacity such that its
effect on the system capacity is not considered. However, it is an obvious fact that
received power influences SNR which has a significant effect on the overall capacity as
will be explained in Chapter 3.

28
It is generally said that, in LOS, the multiple channels are fairly correlated and in NLOS
the channels are significantly uncorrelated which has a positive effect on capacity. At the
same time SNR is much higher for LOS than for NLOS. In [36], it is said that the effect
of SNR is much more significant on the capacity than that of correlation.
In this thesis, the measurements were taken with the highest possible SNR, given the
practical limitations of the apparatus. It was made sure that the SNR at least remains
above 15dB which is an acceptable SNR level in practical systems. The effect of this
SNR was added in the capacity calculations on a filtered CIR with no noise. This
procedure is explained in Chapter 5 and 6.
2.5.3.2 Power Control
MIMO beam-forming along with power water filling (optimum power allocation) have
been employed in [35]. It is observed that by using these techniques, the coverage is
improved further at places where lower target data rates are supported. Since at such
places the gains of lower Eigen modes of the channel matrix almost diminish, this is
avoided through MIMO beam forming.
Similar observations are made in [37] where the measurements are taken in obstructed
LOS and it is observed that the capacity for uniform input power control is lower as
compared to non-uniform input power control (power water filling).

29
2.5.4 Effect of Combining MIMO with OFDM
2.5.4.1 Measurements Conducted for MIMO involving OFDM analysis
The techniques of conducting measurements for a system based on MIMO which also
includes frequency domain analysis for OFDM, have been described in [38-42].
Indoor measurements for a WLAN are described in [38] and [40] but are limited to office
environment. A 3x3 MIMO system has been used in [38] which provides double
throughput compared to a conventional single antenna system. Theoretically a 3x3
system should improve the throughput by a factor of three but because of the practical
limitations due to the coupling between the channel elements this ideal throughput
improvement can’t be achieved.
Outdoor measurements are performed in [39] and [42] and the spatial, temporal and
frequency characteristics of the channel are described.
2.5.5 Effect of Adding Cyclic Prefix on System Performance
CP is one of the key parameters in the design of an OFDM system. In this thesis, the
parameter of CP will be studied in much detail. A few recent developments in this regard
are mentioned in this section.
2.5.5.1 Cyclic Prefix Length Analysis
The effect of not using a sufficiently long CP in an OFDM system has been studied in
[43] in which the ISI and ICI phenomenon are analyzed for such systems.
The effect of increasing length of CP has been studied for an outdoor environment in [44]
in the perspective of the 4th Generation Mobile Technology. The optimum length of CP
30
has been suggested for which the performance of the system is maximized. The
performance has been measured through the channel capacity metric.
There has been very little study on the effect of CP length for an indoor environment and
this thesis will focus on such scenarios for both office and house indoor environments.
2.5.5.2 Eliminating Cyclic Prefix
There has been a lot of research going on to eliminate CP or at least be able to reduce its
length below the optimum level and still achieve good results. In [45] and [46],
techniques have been described on how to eliminate the effect of insufficient CP and
achieve good SNR. In [43], it has been shown that a CP which is half the optimum length
is sufficient for effective communication. In [47] a CP reconstruction technique
accompanied by an equalization technique has been described which sufficiently reduces
the required length of CP. A technique of exploiting the CP in order to improve the data
estimation has been described in [48]. It is suggested not to simply discard the CP at the
receiver side but instead make it useful in data estimation procedure, thus improving the
estimation performance.
It can be added to the discussion that in principle a CP can be eliminated but in that case
an ideal equalizer is required to tackle the group delay. Group delay is the frequency
domain counterpart of the RMS delay spread. It alters the signal in frequency domain and
to undo this alteration an equalizer is required. But an equalizer is usually a detriment as
it can cause noise enhancement so a trade off exist between inserting a CP and using an
equalizer.
31
Chapter Three: Information Theory and Capacity as a Measure of Performance
As mentioned, one of the main focus of this thesis is to study certain parameters involved
in the design of 802.11n WLAN and optimize them in a way so that the performance of
the system is improved. Therefore, a specific metric is required that could serve as a yard
stick to measure the performance. The metric selected for this thesis is capacity and it
will be used in the later chapters to categorize the performance of a practical
measurement system. This practical system provides a much more realistic measure of
performance compared to simulated systems which cannot perfectly model the true
behaviour of an actual system.
Capacity is a term that directly comes from information theory. So in order to better
understand capacity, it is a good idea to get some basic knowledge of the information
theory. This is what is mentioned in Section 3.1, which is followed by the derivation of
the capacity relation for MIMO for both narrowband and wideband channels in
Section 3.2.
In Section 3.3 the derived capacity relation is then applied on simulated Rayleigh and
Ricean channels. This provides for a good comparison with the practical channels
obtained from measurements in the later part of the thesis.
3.1 Basics of Information Theory
The performance of a communication system is dependant upon the exchange of
information from one point to the other. If a system is capable of transferring large
amount of information under given resources, then its performance is termed good.
32
Generally, when a source sends information over to a receiver, it is passed through a
channel which has the tendency to alter the sent information due to the addition of
channel noise. Thus at the receiver there is some uncertainty regarding the actual
information sent by the source. As a result the information arriving at the receiver is less
than what was sent by the source. The measure of this information transfer is called the
mutual information between the source and receiver.
3.1.1 Mutual Information and Entropy
Entropy is the measure of the disturbance which generates the information. The source
entropy can therefore be termed as the information generated by the source, where as the
information received at the receiver is the receiver’s entropy.
Let there be a continuous random source X which generates input symbols x with a
probability of p(x) and a receiver Y which receives the continuous random output
symbols y with a probability of p(y). Now the entropy of the source is given by [49]
H ( X ) = − ∫ p ( x) log( p ( x))dx (3.1)

X
The base of log depends upon the unit of information being transmitted by the source. If
the source is transmitting information in bits, then the log base will be 2. This is often the
case for digital communication.
Now the entropy at the receiver is
H (Y ) = − ∫ p ( y ) log( p ( y ))dy (3.2)

Y
33
The conditional entropy of the source over all possible symbols received is also termed as
residual uncertainty and is given by
H ( X | Y ) = − ∫ ∫ p ( x, y ) log( p( x | y ))dxdy (3.3)

Y X
Also the conditional entropy of the receiver for all possible input symbols generated by
the source is given by
H (Y | X ) = − ∫ ∫ p ( x, y ) log( p( y | x))dydx (3.4)

X Y
Now the mutual information is the uncertainty of the source removed by the channel due
to noise and other disturbances and is given by
I ( X ;Y ) = H ( X ) − H ( X | Y ) (3.5)
Figure 3-1 Venn diagram describing the mutual information.

34
Equation (3.5) is elaborated in Figure 3-1.
In [50] it is shown that mutual information is symmetric i.e.
I ( X ; Y ) = I (Y ; X ) = H (Y ) − H (Y | X ) (3.6)
The relationship between the source random variable x and receiver random variable y is
given by
y = x+w (3.7)
Where w represents the random noise added by the channel. Considering that both x and
w are zero mean Gaussian random variables with variances σx2 and σc2 respectively then
the conditional probability is given by
1 ⎛ ( y − x) 2 ⎞
p ( y | x) = exp ⎜ − ⎟ (3.8)
2πσ c ⎝ 2σ c2 ⎠
σc2 being the variance of the channel noise, also gives the measure of the noise power
provided the noise is zero mean.
The joint probability of the source and the receiver is given by Baye’s rule
p ( x, y ) = p ( x ) p ( y | x ) (3.9)
Putting (3.8) and (3.9) in (3.4) we get
∞
⎛ 1 ⎞
H (Y | X ) = ∫ p( x) ⎜⎝ log
−∞
2πσ c + log e ⎟dx
2 ⎠
(3.10)
which simplifies to
35
1
H (Y | X ) = log 2π eσ c2 (3.11)
2
For the random variable y at the receiver, the variance is σy2. The entropy of the receiver
Y is given by
1
H (Y ) = log 2π eσ y2 (3.12)
2
Putting (3.11) and (3.12) in (3.6) we get
1 1
I ( X ; Y ) = − log 2π eσ c2 + log 2π eσ y2 (3.13)
2 2
Since y is the sum of two independent variables as defined in (3.7) we get its variance as
σ y2 = σ c2 + σ x2 (3.14)
Putting (3.14) in (3.13) reduces it to
1 ⎛ σ x2 ⎞
I ( X ; Y ) = log ⎜1 + 2 ⎟ (3.15)
2 ⎝ σc ⎠
Here σx2 is variance of the source which can also be termed as the energy of the input
σ x2
signal. And σc2 is the power of noise. Thus the ratio 2 is actually the signal to noise
σc
ratio (SNR). Thus the mutual information can be related to the SNR as
1
I ( X ;Y ) = log (1 + SNR ) (3.16)
2
In digital communication, mutual information is a measure of the number of bits
transferred between the source and the receiver. So the unit of mutual information is bits.
36
3.1.2 Capacity
In the perspective of information theory, channel capacity is the maximum number of bits
per event that that are transferred across the channel at a given instance. The capacity
relation in statistical term is:
C= max
p( x) I ( X ;Y ) (3.17)
That is the channel capacity between the input source X and the output Y is equal to the
mutual information I(X;Y) that is maximized with respect to the probabilities of the input
symbols generated by source X. In other words the source entropy H(X) is optimized to
maximize the mutual information.
Following our discussion on mutual information, we can use (3.16) to define channel
capacity as
1
C= log (1 + SNR ) (3.18)
2
This is also termed as the Shannon’s capacity equation.
3.2 Capacity for Practical MIMO Systems
Before we discuss the capacity concepts for MIMO, it is worthwhile to describe a general
MIMO system model, which will be used in the forthcoming MIMO capacity discussion.
3.2.1 MIMO System Model
Using multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver, a communication channel is
created between each transmit and receive antenna pair. This results in multiple channels
within one MIMO system. If we have m sources at the transmitter side and n receivers at
37
the receiver side then we have a total of m × n channels which are characterized by their
respective channel vectors (impulse response). For narrowband systems, assuming flat
fading, a channel is assumed to be a single impulse with varying amplitude. Thus for a
particular instance in time we get a scalar (single) value hij for the channel between jth
transmit antenna and ith receive antenna. These channel values are represented by a
channel matrix H of the order n x m.
⎡ h11 h12 h13 " h1m ⎤

⎢h h22 h23 " h2 m ⎥⎥
⎢ 21
H = ⎢ h31 h32 h33 " h3m ⎥ (3.19)
⎢ ⎥
⎢# # # % # ⎥
⎢⎣ hn1 hn 2 hn 3 " hnm ⎥⎦
Let x = [x1 x2 …… xm]T, be the source vector. Each element of x is a Gaussian random
variable with a variance σx2. The covariance matrix for the source vector x is Qx. The
received signal vector, denoted by y = [y1 y2 …… yn]T is given by
y = Hx + w (3.20)
Where w = [w1 w2 …… wn]T is a zero mean complex white Gaussian noise vector with
each of its elements having a variance σc2. The covariance matrix for this channel noise
vector is Qc.
It can be inferred that the elements of y are also random having a variance σy2. And the
covariance matrix for the received vector is Qy.

38
3.2.2 MIMO Capacity for Narrowband Systems
The vector and matrix definitions in the previous subsection can be directly used in place
of the corresponding scalar terms used in Section 3.1.for deriving the mutual information.
The capacity for MIMO can be derived from (3.13) replacing the scalar variances σ with
determinants of the covariance matrices Q.
1
2
( 1
) ( (
C = − log 2π e ( det ( Qc ) ) + log 2π e det ( Q y )
2
)) (3.21)
where det(.) is the determinant operator. Now (3.21) reduces down to
1 ⎛ det ( Q y ) ⎞
C= log ⎜ ⎟ (3.22)
2 ⎜ det ( Qc ) ⎟
⎝ ⎠
Here Qc = E{wwH}. Where E{.} is the expected value operator and (.)H is the Hermitian
transpose operator. Also
Qy = E{yyH} = E{(Hx + w)(Hx + w)H} = HQxHH+Qc (3.23)
where Qx = E{xxH}.
Putting (3.23) in (3.22) we get
1
C = log ⎜
(
⎛ det HQ x H H +Qc ) ⎞⎟ (3.24)
2 ⎜ det ( Qc ) ⎟
⎝ ⎠
Assuming that the channel noise is IID we get Qc = σ c2 I n where In is an n x n identity
matrix. As result we have
det ( Qc ) = σ c2 n (3.25)
39
and
⎛ ⎛Q ⎞ ⎞
det ( Q y ) = σ c2 n det ⎜ I n + H ⎜ 2x ⎟ H H ⎟ (3.26)
⎜ ⎟
⎝ ⎝ σc ⎠ ⎠
Putting the results from (3.25) and (3.26) in (3.24) we get the capacity relation
1 ⎛ ⎛ ⎛Q ⎞ H ⎞⎞
C= log ⎜ det ⎜ I n + H ⎜ 2x ⎟ H ⎟⎟ ⎟⎟ (3.27)
2 ⎜ ⎜ ⎝ σc ⎠
⎝ ⎝ ⎠⎠
This equation can be further simplified by applying the assumption that all transmitted
symbols are IID and transmitted with equal power σ x2 , thus we get
1 ⎛ ⎛ ⎛ σ2 ⎞ ⎞⎞
C= log ⎜ det ⎜ I n + ⎜ x 2 ⎟ HH H ⎟ ⎟ (3.28)
2 ⎜ ⎜ ⎝ nσ c ⎠
⎟⎟
⎝ ⎝ ⎠⎠
σ x2
Here is the SNR thus we can relate the capacity for narrowband MIMO channel with
σ c2
the SNR through the following equation
1 ⎛ ⎛ ⎛ SNR ⎞ H ⎞⎞
C= log ⎜ det ⎜ I n + ⎜ ⎟ HH ⎟ ⎟ (3.29)
2 ⎝ ⎝ ⎝ n ⎠ ⎠⎠
From (3.29) the instantaneous capacity for narrowband MIMO channels can be
calculated. The following section shows how this equation can be further refined and
modified for use with wideband systems.

40
3.2.3 Capacity of Wideband MIMO Systems (Frequency Selective Fading)
The general broadband (frequency selective fading) MIMO capacity for continuous
transmission of the signal is given in [51]. This technique will be applied on the MIMO
system model.
Figure 3-2 The frequency selective channel vector hij composed of multiple taps for
each variation in time
Recalling that for the model, there are m transmit and n receive channels and a total of
m× n channels which are characterized by their respective channel impulse response
vectors (CIRs). In contrast to narrowband, the wideband systems have the channel
characterized by tap delay line impulse response. This can be seen in Figure 3-2. Thus for
a particular instance in time, we get a vector for each of the channels.
Thus the channels are represented by a matrix H whose each element in itself is a vector
denoted by hij which is the channel vector formed between the jth transmitter and the ith
receiver. The channel matrix is given by

41
⎡ h11 h12 h13 " h1m ⎤

⎢h h 22 h 23 " h 2m ⎥⎥
⎢ 21
H = ⎢h 31 h 32 h 33 " h 3m ⎥ (3.30)
⎢ ⎥
⎢ # # # % # ⎥
⎢⎣hn1 h n2 h n3 " h nm ⎥⎦
The length of each of the vectors in H is equal to the total number of tap delays in the
impulse response. If there are L tap delays per channel then the channel vector hij is given
by
⎡ hij ,0 ⎤
⎢ h ⎥
h ij = ⎢
ij ,1 ⎥
(3.31)
⎢ # ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣⎢ hij , L −1 ⎦⎥
Here hij,l is the magnitude of the lth tap of the channel vector formed between the ith
receiver and the jth transmitter. Thus the order of the H matrix is m x n x L. The channel
matrix H obtained at a particular instance of time, can also be considered as a 3-
dimensional matrix as shown in Figure 3-3.
Figure 3-3 The 3 Dimensional Channel Matrix H

42
In contrast to narrowband, a broadband channel provides additional degree of freedom
for data transmission due to this third dimension.
For each channel tap across the Lth dimension of channel matrix H, we obtain an m x .n
tap matrix. For the lth tap of the channel we obtain a tap matrix Hl. given as
⎡ h11,l h12,l h13,l " h1n ,l ⎤

⎢h h22,l h23,l " h2 n ,l ⎥⎥
⎢ 21,l
H l = ⎢ h31,l h32,l h33,l " h3n ,l ⎥ (3.32)
⎢ ⎥
⎢ # # # % # ⎥
⎢ hm1,l hm 2,l hm 3,l " hmn ,l ⎥⎦
⎣
Each of these L tap matrices operate on the source input vector through the tap delay line
representation of the broadband MIMO channel is shown in Figure 3-4. Each of the L
taps is separated from its adjacent tap by a time delay interval Δτ.
Figure 3-4 Tap Delay line representation of Broadband MIMO System
From (3.29), the capacity can be calculated only for each individual tap matrix Hl but that
will not provide for the complete system capacity. There is a need to find a way to
43
combine all the individual capacities to get full system capacity. The capacities can be
combined by using a technique used for OFDM systems. It is described in the next
subsection.
3.2.4 Capacity Measurement using the OFDM technique
Bolckei et al developed the broadband MIMO capacity for OFDM transmission [52]. The
idea is to calculate the capacity for each of the L channel matrices and combine these
capacities to form a single value of channel capacity. The capacities can be added only
for the case when all Hl’s are independent of each other. This is what is achieved through
OFDM in frequency domain as the frequency tones are made orthogonal and it can be
said that statistically independent data symbols are transmitted from different antennas at
the orthogonal frequency tones.
The first step, is to convert the tap matrix Hl into its equivalent frequency domain
representation. Assume that there are a total of K orthogonal tones in frequency resulting
in a total of K orthogonal subchannels. For each of these subchannels, flat fading is
assumed. Now the frequency tone matrix for a given tone k is represented as
H ( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) and is calculated from the tap matrices through the following
equation
H ( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) = ∑ l =0 H l exp ( − j 2π k / K )

L −1
(3.33)
The capacity for a given tone k can then be calculated using (3.29), giving
⎛ ⎛ ⎛ SNR ⎞ ⎞⎞
Ck = log ⎜ det ⎜ I n + ⎜ ⎟ H ( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) H ( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) ⎟ ⎟ (3.34)
H
⎝ ⎝ ⎝ n ⎠ ⎠⎠
44
Since each of the K frequency tones is orthogonal, the individual capacities for each tone
can be simply averaged across all the tones to retrieve the overall system capacity.
Therefore
1
∑
k −1
C= k =0
Ck (3.35)
K
This results in
1 ⎛ ⎛ ⎛ SNR ⎞ ⎞⎞
C= ∑
k −1
k =0
log ⎜ det ⎜ I n + ⎜ ⎟ H ( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) H H
( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) ⎟ ⎟ (3.36)
K ⎝ ⎝ ⎝ n ⎠ ⎠⎠
The equation (3.36) is the final form for calculating the capacity for frequency selective
MIMO systems. Here the unit of capacity is bits/sec/Hz. Since it is averaged across all
the frequency tones, thus the capacity is per unit Hz.
The capacity calculated here is for a given instance of the channel matrix H. Thus
capacity needs to be calculated separately for every instance of H in time. This is
discussed in Section 3.2.6.
3.2.5 Capacity for Wideband SISO
Although the equations derived in Section 3.2.3 for calculating capacity apply to MIMO
systems, they can also be used for other type of systems like MISO, SIMO and also
SISO.
The channel matrix H for wideband is a m x n x L three dimensional matrix. For a SISO
system we have m = n = 1 therefore the channel matrix is reduced to a single dimensional
vector of length L. The channel matrix from (3.30) is reduced to

45
H = [h11 ] (3.37)
Putting (3.37) in (3.33), we get the frequency domain representation of the channel
matrix which can then be used in (3.36) to get the SISO capacity.
3.2.6 The Outage Capacity – Used for Fading Channels
The capacity discussion thus far dealt with the static AWGN channel, which gives a
constant value of capacity for any use of the channel. This is not what we observe in
practice. The wireless channel experiences the fading phenomenon which introduces fair
amount of disturbance in the channel. Thus the state of the channel changes from use to
use and exhibits stochastic behavior. There is a direct relation between capacity and the
channel state. Channel state is defined as the capability to convey the information for a
given use of the channel. Thus, if the state changes so does the capacity.
Due to fading the channels become dynamic and their fluctuating states make capacity a
random quantity. Thus the concepts related to random numbers, like ergodicity and
outage probability, need to be applied on capacity. In [53, 54] the concepts of ergodic
capacity and outage capacity have been explained.
A random quantity is said to be ergodic within a given duration of time, if its time
average approaches the ensemble average when the time duration is made infinite.
During the time interval when the channel is considered ergodic, the instantaneous
capacities are averaged to give an ergodic capacity.
In practical communication system, the duration of use of the channel may not be long
enough for the channel to exhibit its ergodic property. The concept of Shannon’s capacity
46
relies on the average value. For the situation when ergodicity is not achieved, the number
of discrete samples is not enough for representing this statistical property of the channel;
hence the Shannon’s capacity does not exist, although for a given instance of H the
Shannon’s capacity formula still holds true.
If capacity is viewed as a random entity, the performance of the system can be
determined by the probability that the channel cannot support a given rate. This is termed
as outage probability which can be assigned to any given rate [54].
In order to calculate the outage capacity, the first step is to generate the complementary
cumulative density function (CCDF) from the instantaneous random values of capacity.
Now suppose if q% outage probability needs to be calculated, it will be equivalent to the
value of the CCDF for the probability equal to 1 − q ( 100 ) . The capacity value thus
obtained suggests that only q% capacities are lower than this value. In Figure 3-5, a
CCDF of capacity is shown for a simulated 4x4 MIMO Rayleigh channel. Extracting the
5% outage capacity denoted by C0.05 is shown. The value extracted for C0.05 = 13.6
bits/sec/Hz. This value signifies that for this system a capacity of 13.6 bits/sec/Hz is
achieved 95% of the time. Thus it is safe to associate this value with the performance of
the system as it is quite unlikely to get a falsely stated higher rating.

47
Figure 3-5 Extracting Outage Capacity from a CCDF of Capacity for a simulated
4x4 MIMO flat fading Rayleigh Channel.
3.3 Rayleigh and Ricean Capacity Simulations for SISO and MIMO Systems
In this section, some capacity CCDF plots are shown for different simulations for
narrowband Rayleigh and Ricean channels using different number of antennas in the
system. The capacity is calculated for several instances of the channel using (3.29). First
the impact of SNR is shown on the capacity. Then the effect of number of antennas in the
system is shown. This is followed by effect of the Ricean K factor on the capacity.
48
For each scenario there are several simulated instances of the channel matrix. A
collective power for all these instances of the channel matrix is calculated for a given
scenario. The square root of this power is then divided from each of the instances of the
channel matrix. In this way power normalization is achieved, preserving the variation in
the channels within the matrix as well as between the different instances.
3.3.1 Effect of SNR on Capacity
Looking at the relationship between SNR and capacity in (3.29), it appears that as SNR is
increased, the capacity should increase as well. And if we are using the dB scale to
measure the SNR, then there is almost a direct relation between the outage capacity and
the SNR in dB.
Figure 3-6 Effect of SNR on the CCDF of Capacity

49
To validate this relationship, a simulation was done considering a 4x4 MIMO flat fading
Rayleigh channel. The SNR was varied from 10 dB to 30dB and capacity was calculated.
It can be seen from Figure 3-6 that as the SNR is increased, the capacity CCDF curves
shift towards right indicating that the over all capacity of the system also has increased.
In most wireless systems, the normal range of SNR lies between 15dB to 20dB. In the
simulations in the following sections, a fixed SNR of 15dB will be used.
3.3.2 Effect of Number of Antennas on Capacity
It has been mentioned in Chapters 1 and 2 that increasing the number of antennas in the
system introduces diversity which improves the performance of the system in a fading
channel.
Figure 3-7 Effect of number of antennas in the system on the CCDF of capacity.
50
To see the effect of number of antennas in the system, a simulation was performed using
a flat fading Rayleigh channel for a 1x1 SISO system and for 2x2, 3x3 and 4x4 MIMO
systems. The SNR was kept constant at 15dB. As can be seen from CCDF plots in
Figure 3-7, the capacity improves with the increase in number of antennas.
A rough approximation can be stated from these results, that when the number of
antennas at the receiver are same as that at the transmitter i.e. m=n then MIMO capacity
is given by
Cn×m n=m
≈ nC1×1 (3.38)
where C1×1 is the SISO capacity.
3.3.3 Effect of K Factor on Capacity
In the previous two simulations, a Rayleigh flat fading channel was considered. The
results of these simulations hold good for situations when there is no line of sight
between the transmitter and the receiver. But in practice it is quite common to encounter
a situation when a direct line of sight does exist between the transmitter and the receiver.
The Ricean channel best simulates this situation.
The strength of the line of sight component is determined by the Ricean K factor. The
greater the value of K, the stronger is the line sight component. And when K = 0, there
exists no line of sight and the channel is simply a Rayleigh channel.
Now the effect the K factor on the MIMO capacity is observed in the CCDF plots shown
in Figure 3-8. These plots were generated by simulating a 4x4 MIMO flat fading Ricean
51
channel, varying the value of K while keeping the SNR constant at 15dB. It can be seen
that the capacity is the highest for K = 0, which is the case when there is no line of sight.
But as we increase the strength of line of sight component there is a negative effect on the
capacity.
Figure 3-8 Effect of Ricean K factor on CCDF of MIMO Capacity
This behaviour can be attributed to the fact that the randomness between the channels
within H decreases as a deterministic element is introduced in it which for this case is the
line of sight component. Since the capacity appreciates randomness which is the main
cause behind the generation of mutual information, therefore it decreases as the strength
of the line of sight component is increased.

52
Figure 3-9 Effect of Ricean K factor on CCDF of SISO Capacity
An interesting behaviour is observed when we look at the effect of K factor on the
capacity plots for a 1x1 SISO system in Figure 3-9. The trend shown by these curves is in
fair contrast to the one observed for the 4x4 MIMO system. For Rayleigh the majority of
capacity values are lower than for the Ricean cases. The spread of the Rayleigh capacity
values is also much larger. This is due to the fact that Rayleigh has the maximum random
behaviour and so the capacity values are expected to be widely spread. As the K factor
increases the deterministic component of the channel reduces the randomness in the
channel, thus the spread of the capacity values also reduces significantly.
53
Looking at the 5% outage capacity, it is lowest for Rayleigh and as the K factor increases
the outage capacity also increases. Thus for the case of SISO, the deterministic
component has a positive impact on the capacity.
The simulation results described in this section are primarily focused on the narrowband
flat fading channels. These results cannot be directly applied on wideband frequency
selective channels. The capacity behaviour for frequency selective fading channels will
be observed in the Chapters 5 and 7, where such channels would be obtained through
actual measurements.
54
Chapter Four: Measurement Setup
The primary objective of this thesis is to analyze the performance of an indoor wireless
LAN through examining practical MIMO measurements. One of the key requirements in
this regard is a MIMO channel measurement setup. In this chapter, this measurement
setup is introduced.
The measurement system, used to record MIMO channel information, has been
developed by a group of research associates at TRLabs Calgary [55]. This MIMO
measurement setup is actually based on an older measurement system called the IRIS
(Impulse Response Identification System) [56, 57] which was enhanced in order to make
it capable of taking simultaneous MIMO measurements. Thus, the current MIMO
measurement system can accommodate up to 4 transmit and 4 receive antennas. The main
characteristic of this measurement setup is that it simultaneously transmits signals from
all four transmit antennas and also receives the signal at all four receive antennas at the
same time. This is a characteristic that allows the system to capture all spatial impulse
responses in a single snapshot, avoiding any sort of temporal inconsistency. Such a
feature is absent in most channel sounders that make use of antenna array multiplexing
[58]. Another highlight of this system is that it can characterize channels with a
bandwidth of up to 200MHz.
In Section 4.1, a component by component explanation of the measurement system is
provided. The transmitter and the receiver sides are explained separately and some
information on the antenna arrays used in the system is also provided. The explanation of
the procedure involved in taking the measurement through the system and extracting the
55
channel information from these measurements is given in Section 4.2. The procedure
includes baseband signal processing. The properties of the pseudo noise (PN) sequence
are also discussed. The actual width of the channel vectors hij and the corresponding
dimensions of the channel matrix H are also provided. Other important issues related to
the measurements like calibration, transmitter-receiver time synchronization, and noise
threshold are discussed in Section 4.3
The measurement campaigns carried out at different locations using this equipment are
described in Section 4.4.
4.1 Measurement Equipment Details
The MIMO measurement system is designed to take indoor measurements for a 4x4
MIMO channel. As is the case for most wireless systems, this system is composed of a
transmitter and a receiver. The equipment used for both, the transmitter and the receiver,
includes digital as well as analog components. These components are described in the
following subsections.
4.1.1 Four Channel Transmitter
Figure 4-1 shows the picture of the transmitter. It is composed of two arbitrary waveform
generators (AWGs), which are Sony Tektronix AWG 520 models. Each AWG has two
output channels. Thus, two AWGs are needed for transmitting the signal to four antennas.
Each AWG channel is loaded with pre-filtered PN sequences. The length of these
sequences is 2047 chips. The PN code pulse is upsampled by a factor 5 and then passed
through a square root raised cosine filter which limits the signal bandwidth of the signal.
56
All these baseband operations are performed through Matlab. The sequence of operations
performed in Matlab is shown in Figure 4-2
Figure 4-1 Photograph of the four channel MIMO Transmitter
Pseudo-orthogonality between the four transmit channels is assured by using staggered
code delays of 414 chips between adjacent transmitted PN code sequences. The concept
of using a PN sequence and the way to maintain pseudo orthogonality is explained further
in Section 4.2.2
57
Figure 4-2 The block diagram of the data generation section implemented in Matlab
at the transmitter side.
The chip rate of the PN code is 200 Mchip/s. Hence, after upsampling by a factor of 5,
the PN code is clocked out at 1 Gs/s through the two AWGs, both of which are
synchronized to the same clock source. The chipping rate of 200 MHz results in an
approximate two-sided bandwidth of about 300 MHz. Each of the four channels is up
converted to 5.66 GHz carrier frequency using a local oscillator (LO) common to all four
transmit channels.
58
Figure 4-3 The block diagram of the Baseband and RF Section of the transmitter
[55]
The block diagram of the baseband section followed by the RF section is shown in Figure
4-3. It can be seen that an external trigger is also used for both AWGs to ensure proper
alignment of the output samples. Each output of the AWGs is connected to a low pass
filter to smooth out the signal. A mixer is used to directly upconvert the probing signal
generated from the AWGs to the desired carrier frequency. The modulation scheme
chosen for the probing signal is BPSK. After the up conversion, the output of the mixer is
fed to a power amplifier (PA) with a maximum output power level of 25dBm at 1dB
59
compression. The output power is controlled through the AWG, where the baseband
transmit power is set such that the power amplifier does not get saturated [55].
4.1.2 Four Channel Receiver
Figure 4-4 shows the photograph of the receiver which is built around a 4 channel 10GS/s
sampling Wavepro 7300 oscilloscope by LeCroy. The received signals at the output of
the four antennas are down converted to an IF of 500 MHz.
Figure 4-4 Photograph of the four channel MIMO Receiver
The scope digitizes and stores the signal from each receive antenna by sampling at 2GS/s
The sampled signal consists of 50000 samples for each of the four inputs. This data is
recorded by the Matlab application running on the code and written to disk.
60
Figure 4-5 The block diagram of the receiver. [55]
The block diagram of the receiver is given in Figure 4-5. The receiver side uses a single
conversion scheme. The signal received from the antennas is fed into the front end of the
receiver that consists of a low noise amplifier and a bandpass filter. The received signal is
then fed into a mixer that down-converts the signal into an intermediate frequency (IF) of
500 MHz. The mixer is fed with a 5.16GHz clock signal through an LO. This LO is
isolated from the LO used at the transmitter. Thus a synchronization issue arises that
needs to be tackled while processing the signal. This issue is discussed in Section 4.3.2.
The IF signal, at the output of the mixer, is then amplified using an IF amplifier. This is
passed through a low pass filter and then fed to the oscilloscope which digitizes this IF
signal by sampling at a Nyquest rate of 2GS/s, which is twice the 1GHz transmission
61
rate. Each input has 8 bits of vertical resolution. The scope uses Windows 2000 as an
operating system. The digitized IF signal is then fed into a Matlab program running on
the scope that converts the IF signal into baseband and performs all baseband signal
processing on the received signal in real time.
4.1.3 Antennas used in the Setup
Having discussed the basic components used in the measurement equipment, it is
worthwhile to discuss the antennas used with the equipment. The transmit and the
receiver antennas are identical consisting of a linear array of 4 separate monopole
antennas located along a sliding track in a truncated ground plane as shown in Figure 4-6.
The antennas are currently set with a separation of 2.6 cm corresponding to half a
wavelength at the carrier frequency of 5.66 GHz. The antennas have been tuned for
operation at 5.66 GHz with a usable bandwidth of several hundred MHz.[59] The
coupling between adjacent antennas has been measured using a network analyzer and was
about –22 dB.
Figure 4-6 Antenna array used for both transmitter and the receiver.
62
The monopole antenna element with an infinite ground plane provides a radiation pattern
that is omni-directional in azimuth. As mentioned in [59], for the antennas used in this
system, there is a truncated ground plane and also a slot between the antennas. This
influences the radiation pattern somewhat. Generally a truncated ground plane results in a
tilted elevation pattern. This is something that is experienced by most practical antenna
devices, like small handheld devices and laptop computers. These devices generally have
a very crude antenna response as the ground plane is of limited dimensions and the user
generally sets the antenna orientation for reasons that are not typically based on careful
optimization of reception.
4.2 Procedure for Extracting Channel Information
The MIMO measurement system uses a 4 transmit antennas and 4 receive antennas. Thus
there is a 4x4 channel matrix, containing 16 channel vectors (CIRs). As mentioned in
Section 4.1.1, the transmitter sends shifted copies of a fixed length PN sequence from
each transmit antenna. This is then received and correlated with the originally transmitted
PN sequence at each of the 4 receiving antennas. This correlation then gives the
estimated CIRs. This is illustrated in the Figure 4-7.
Figure 4-7 Simplified Measurement System Block Diagram

63
4.2.1 PN Sequence and Channel Extraction
A pseudo-noise (PN) sequence is a binary sequence with elements {1,-1}. If the length of
the PN sequence is G, then the auto-correlation of this sequence is triangular as shown in
Figure 4-8.
Figure 4-8 Auto Correlation Function for a G length PN Sequence
This triangular autocorrelation illustrates the fact that a PN sequence is approximately
orthogonal to its non-zero shifted copies. For a continuous time PN sequence x(t) of
length G, the autocorrelation within the duration of the PN sequence is given by
Rxx (τ ) = Gδ (τ ) (4.1)
where δ (τ ) is a continuous time impulse. The continuous time approximation is valid for
the case when the eventual signal bandwidth is high and approaches the 200MHz limit of
the measurement system. Since the PN sequences are generated by the AWGs at
200MHz, thus this approximation can be made. Normalizing (4.1) we get
Rxx (τ ) ≈ δ (τ ) (4.2)
64
Now if x(t) is transmitted through a channel h(t), it gets convolved with the channel
response. If the tap delay model of the channel is given by
L
h(t ) = ∑ alδ (t − τ l ) (4.3)
l =0
where L is the length of the channel (the total number of multipaths), τ l is lth path delay
and al is the attenuation for path l. The channel output y(t) is then given by
L
y ( t ) = x ( t ) * h ( t ) = ∑ al x(t − τ l ) (4.4)
l =0
Now the cross correlation between the transmitted signal x(t) and the received signal y(t)
is given by
∞ L
Rxy (τ ) = ∫ x(t )∑ al x(t + τ − τ l )dt
−∞ l =0
L ∞
= ∑ al ∫ x(t ) x(t + τ − τ )dt
l (4.5)
l =0 −∞
L
= ∑ al Rxx (τ − τ l )
l =0
Using the result from (4.2) we get
L
Rxy (τ ) ≈ ∑ alδ (τ − τ l ) = h(τ ) (4.6)
l =0
From the result arrived at (4.6), it can said that when the transmitted signal is a PN
sequence, then if that sequence is correlated with the received sequence, the result is the
estimated CIR.
65
4.2.2 Pseudo Orthogonality
As already mentioned, the PN sequence is orthogonal to its non-zero circularly shifted
copies. Exploiting this fact, each of the transmit antennas sends a shifted copy of the
same PN sequence. Since these copies are orthogonal, they can be separately extracted
from the received sequence. The measurement setup uses a PN sequence that is 2047
chips long. Each transmitter sends out a copy of the PN sequence that is shifted by a
value of 414 chips relative to the previous transmitter. This is shown in Figure 4-9. Each
segment of 414 chips is colour coded to show how these chips are circularly shifted for
each transmitter. The significance of the number 414 is mentioned in Section 4.3.2.
Figure 4-9 Circularly shifted copies of the PN Sequence at each transmitter
At each receiver the received sequence is circularly correlated with the original PN
sequence. Each receive antenna gets the signal from all four transmit antennas combined.
If the channel is assumed to be an ideal noiseless single tap channel, then a set of four
distinct correlation taps representing the signal from four transmit antennas will be
received. The taps will appear at a distance of 414 samples from each other showing the
amount by which they were shifted. This is shown in Figure 4-10

66
Tx1 Tx2 Tx3 Tx4
Figure 4-10 Normalized ideal Cross-correlation Output at each Receiver
Now applying this idea on the practical measurements, the actual CIRs can be distinctly
identified based on the location of the correlation peaks.
4.2.3 CIRs extracted from Actual Measurements
It was mentioned in Section 4.1.2, that the oscilloscope accumulates 50000 samples for
each of the four inputs at sampling frequency of 2GHz. This is 10 times more than the
actual frequency of transmitted sequence which is 200MHz. Thus the signal is
oversampled by a factor of 10. As a result, a 2047 length of PN sequence will be received
in 20470 samples. So from the 50000 accumulated samples per measurement per
receiver, the first 20470 samples are picked up. These samples are then correlated with
the over sampled version of the original PN sequence. The result is a vector that contains
the four CIRs for the channels between each of the four transmit antennas and the
selected receive antenna.

67
The CIRs within the vector are separated by 4140 samples. Ideally the received vector
should be aligned in a way that the CIR from the first transmit antenna should be present
at the start of the vector. But this does not happen due to the reason that the oscilloscope
just captures an arbitrary set of samples, without taking into consideration, the start of the
sequence. A procedure is applied on this vector to align the CIRs in the correct sequence.
This procedure will be briefly discussed in Section 4.3.2.
Figure 4-11 Aligned Cross-Correlation vector for Receive antenna Rx1, showing
four CIRs corresponding to the four Transmit antennas.

68
Once the alignment is achieved the vector would be of the form shown in Figure 4-11.
The vector is shown for receive antenna Rx1. The first 4140 samples of the vector are
part of the CIR between Tx1 and Rx1. The following 4140 samples constitute the CIR
between Tx2 and Rx1 and so on.
It can be observed that for each CIR, the multipath taps are mostly concentrated in 1/3rd
area of the total 4140 samples. Thus instead of storing all the samples per CIR, it makes
sense to discard some samples at the tail of each CIR. As a result the CIR is truncated to
2560 samples. Now for the capacity calculation in the later chapters, these truncated CIRs
are downsampled by a factor of 10 to remove over sampling. Thus the length of the
channel vectors hij is fixed at 256 taps. Being a power of 2, this makes capacity
calculations less computationally intensive.
4.3 Other Aspects related to the Measurement System
Having discussed most of the components and processes involved in the measurement
system, there still remain some minor but essential aspects of the system that need to be
discussed. These aspects are briefly described in this section.
4.3.1 Noise Power Calculation and maintaining a minimum SNR
The noise power at the IF output of the receiver has been calculated in [55] where a
complete link budget estimation has been done and the noise power was calculated to be -
21.35dBm. Keeping this noise power in mind, it is mentioned in [55] how the power of
the transmitting signal was controlled such that the SNR at the receiver remained above
15dB.
69
4.3.2 Tackling Lack of Time Synchronization between the Transmitter and the
Receiver
As briefly mentioned in Section 4.1.2, the clock at the transmitter is not synchronized
with the clock of the receiver. As a result a synchronization procedure is applied at the
receiver while extracting CIRs from the received sequence.
Once the correlation vector of length 20470 (example shown in Figure 4-12), containing
the four CIRs from each transmitter, is extracted from the measurements, an algorithm is
applied on this vector in Matlab. This algorithm performs a search on this vector to find
the peak of the CIR from the first transmit antenna, Tx1. This is done by exploiting the
unique spacing between the peak of the Tx4 CIR and the peak of Tx1 CIR.
Tx4 Tx1 Tx2 Tx3
A spacing
of 8050
samples
Figure 4-12 Out of sync Cross Correlation Vector for receive antenna Rx1
70
As mentioned before, the spacing between the adjacent CIRs is 4140 samples, but the
spacing between the 4th and 1st CIR is 8050 samples. This makes it a distinct case and
allows for the detection of the CIR for the Tx0. Once the position of the first tap of Tx0
CIR is determined, the whole correlation vector is circularly shifted to align this tap with
the first index of the vector as previously shown in Figure 4-11.
4.3.3 Calibration
The measurement system is composed of many components apart from the antennas that
can have some influence on the actual measured radio channel. This effect of the system
components has to be removed from the measurement data so that pure radio channel
data is obtained, without any effect of the system components. This should be mentioned
here that the antennas are considered part of the radio channel and so what ever influence
they are having on the channel data has to be taken into account.
The effect of the system components needs to be calculated, before it can be removed.
This is done through back to back calibration, in which back to back measurements are
taken for transmitter components having a wired connection with the receiver
components, bypassing the antennas. The calibration procedure is explained in [55].
The channel vector obtained through calibration for the jth transmitter and the ith receiver.
( hcij ) is then de-convolved with the measured channel vector hmij to provide the pure radio
channel vector hij. De-convolution is simply division in frequency domain. Thus if
ℑcij ( f ) is the frequency domain representation of hcij and ℑmij ( f ) is the frequency domain
representation of hmij , Then the frequency domain representation of hij is given by

71
ℑmij ( f )
ℑij ( f ) = (4.7)
ℑcij ( f )
Since ℑcij ( f ) appears in the denominator, it has to be made sure that there are no nulls in
it. Each of these 16 frequency domain calibration vectors were visually inspected to
ensure there were no nulls, thus avoiding unnecessary noise enhancement.
4.4 Measurement Campaigns
Having explained the measurement setup in detail, this section will describe the different
measurement campaigns in which the measurement setup was used. These campaigns
were carried out at different locations with contrasting environments. There were two
indoor locations chosen for the campaigns. One was that of a typical household in a
residential area of urban Calgary and the other was of a multi-storey office building.1 The
measurement campaign at the office location was actually conducted on the third floor of
the ICT building on the campus of University of Calgary. The following subsections will
describe the different measurement campaigns.
4.4.1 Measurement Campaign at House Location
The measurements were taken at a single floor wood framed house with basement and a
separated garage. The floor plans with dimensions and receiver/transmitter positions can
be seen in Figure 4-14 for the ground floor and in Figure 4-13 for the basement.
1
The measurement campaign at the house location was solely carried out by Carl Wong, who was a
summer research student at TRLabs. Carl was assisted by me during the second measurement campaign at
the office location.
72
Measurements were taken across different rooms over the two floors, with 13 receiver
positions and a single transmitter position. All positions define where the center of the
antenna array for either the receiver or transmitter is placed. A set of 50 measurements
was recorded at all of the receiver positions. To obtain the slow fading characteristics of
the channel, the antenna array at the receiver was subjected to small-scale translation
(through random shaking of the array) at the time when the set of 50 measurements were
being captured.
Many different types of measurements were taken including direct line of sight (LOS),
and non line of sight (NLOS) measurements. For LOS, there exists no obstruction
between transmitter antenna array and the receiver antenna array where as for NLOS
there are obstructions between the antenna arrays of the transmitter and the receiver.
These obstructions don’t totally remove the LOS component, but its strength is
significantly weakened. Such scenarios where the LOS component is attenuated due to an
obstruction are considered NLOS in this thesis.

73
Figure 4-13 Floor plan of the main floor, indicating the positions of the receiver and
transmitter as well as the room numbers.

74
Figure 4-14 Floor plan of the basement, indicating the positions of the receiver and
transmitter as well as the room numbers.
As can be observed from Figure 4-13 and Figure 4-14, each room is assigned a number
and a corresponding title. Each position is labelled according to the following convention.
75
If a transmitter is positioned in room a then its position will be labelled HTa. Where H is
for house location, and T is for transmitter. Within a room there is only one position of
the transmitter.
Now for the label of a receiver position, the room number where the receiver is present, is
accompanied by the position number within that room where the receiver is situated.. The
label also informs about the position of the transmitter corresponding to the receiver
position. Thus a receiver position label HTaRbPc will inform that this position belongs to
the house location and corresponding position of the transmitter is HTa. The receiver is
in Room b, at position c.
4.4.2 Office Building Measurement Campaigns
The measurements were taken on the third floor of the ICT building at the University of
Calgary campus. The outer structure of the building is made up of metal and concrete
while the room partitioning is done by dry wall with steel studs. The floor layout along
with positions of the transmitter and the corresponding positions of the receiver are
shown in Figure 4-15. There are two measurement campaigns conducted at the office
location. The first campaign was carried out by positioning the transmitter in the hallway
which is numbered as Room 1. The transmitter position for this campaign has been
marked by the label OT1. The second campaign is carried out with the transmitter in
Room 2 at position OT2.

76
Figure 4-15 Floor Layout of the Office Building (ICT 3rd Floor)
77
The LOS and NLOS measurements as defined in Section 4.4.1, have been taken for both
the campaigns. The naming convention for the labels of the receiver positions is similar
to the one followed for house location. The prefix H is replaced by O for office location.
These positions will be referred to by their labels in the chapters that follow.
78
Chapter Five: Time Dispersion Parameters, Analyzing Delay Spread
This chapter analyzes the time dispersion seen in the measurements collected from the
campaigns described in Section 4.4. In Chapter 3, it was mentioned that focus will be
placed on those design parameters associated with the IEEE 802.11n draft that can be
optimized to improve the performance of the wireless network. The length of CP is one
of the OFDM parameters that will be investigated in this thesis and an attempt will be
made to find its optimum value. In order to do this, it is required to know how much
dispersion there is in the channel as CP depends on the time dispersion characteristics of
the channel.
A multipath introduces time dispersion in the channel. This behavior is most commonly
quantified by the time dispersion parameters such as mean excess delay and RMS delay
spread. Thus in this chapter, the measurements will be analyzed through their
corresponding RMS delay spreads.
Since RMS delay spread is the main focus of this chapter, it’s important to discuss the
theory behind it. This is done in Section 5.1. The technique used to extract RMS delay
spread from the measurements is explained in Section 5.2. The RMS delay spread results
collected from the measurements are presented in Section 5.3 through Section 5.5.
In Section 5.6, the direct effect of the delay spread on the system performance will be
studied using capacity.

79
5.1 Time Dispersion Parameters
Mean excess delay and RMS delay spread are one of the key parameters which give a
good measure of the degree of dispersion in the wireless channel. These parameters can
be determined from the power delay profile of the channel. Before explaining these
parameters further, it is necessary to introduce the power delay profile which is best
described through the tap delay line model.
Figure 5-1 Tap delay line model of a CIR and the corresponding tap delay plot.
5.1.1 Tap Delay Line Model
In Figure 5-1, a tap delay line model is shown which represents the multipath behavior of
a channel. The tap delay line equation for the CIR h(t) is given in (4.3).
Delays are measured relative to the first detectable signal arriving at the receiver such
that τ0 = 0. It is shown that a tap arriving after a delay of τl has a corresponding

80
instantaneous power level of al. Each tap has a different power level associated with it
and results in a distinct over all power delay profile for a given channel.
5.1.2 Moments of Power Delay Profile
The power delay profile can be considered as a probability density function of power
with respect to the delay. It can be derived from the tap delay line equation (4.3). The
power delay profile is thus given as
L −1
∑a
2
l δ (t − τ l )
p(t ) = l =0
L −1
(5.1)
∑a
2
l
l =0
2
where al is the absolute power level of the lth tap and τ l is the corresponding time of
arrival of the lth tap. All the taps are uniformly spaced with an interval of Δτ between
adjacent taps. Thus we have
τ l = l Δτ (5.2)
Now from this power delay profile it is quite convenient to define the two time dispersion
parameters introduced before. Mean excess delay τ ( ) is the first moment of power delay
profile and is defined as
L −1
τ = E {τ } = ∑τ l Pr {τ = τ l } (5.3)
l =0
Here E{.} is the expected value operator and Pr {τ = τ l } is the probability of power at
delay τ l . From (5.1)we get

81
2
al
Pr {τ = τ l } = p(t ) t =τ = L −1
(5.4)
∑a
l 2
l
l =0
Putting (5.4) in (5.3) we get mean excess delay as
L −1
∑a
2
l τl
τ= l =0
L −1
(5.5)
∑a
2
l
l =0
The RMS delay spread (σ τ ) is the square root of the second moment of the power delay
profile and is defined in [60] as
(5.6)
where
L −1
∑a
2
l τ l2
τ2 = l =0
L −1
∑a
2
l =0
l
(5.7)
Typical values of the RMS delay spread are on the order of microseconds for outdoor
wireless channels and on the order of nanoseconds in the indoor.
One thing that should be mentioned here is that the RMS delay spread and mean excess
delay are defined from a single power delay profile which is the temporal or the spatial
average of consecutive impulse response measurements collected and averaged over a
local area. Temporal average is obtained by averaging the multiple CIRs taken at
different time instances, while spatial average is obtained from the mean of CIRs taken at
different positions within a localized area. Typically a statistical range of the multipath
82
parameters is determined for a large scale area, by taking multiple measurements at many
local areas.
In the sections that follow, analysis is done on the RMS delay spread values obtained
from measurements conducted at various locations.
5.2 Calculating Delay Spread from the Measurements
As is evident from the theoretical definition of the RMS delay spread, it is a parameter
that is associated with a single CIR. When finding RMS delay spread, the 4x4 MIMO
measurements are considered as 16 separate SISO measurements and delay spread is
determined separately for each transmit/receive antenna pair.
5.2.1 Noise Removal and Truncating the CIR
In Chapter 4 the complete procedure of extracting the CIR from the measurements has
been discussed. It is also mentioned in Chapter 4, that the sampling frequency of the
measurement equipment is 2 GHz. This means that each tap of the CIR is separated from
the other by 0.5ns. It is also mentioned that the number of taps retained for each CIR is
2560. This spans a total delay of 1280ns. For an indoor environment, it is almost
impossible to get a reflection after such a long delay. In fact for an indoor environment
even inside a very large building, a multipath reflection is unlikely to travel beyond 90m.
This distance should be covered by the reflection in 90 ≈ 300ns where 3x108 is the
3 × 10
8
speed of light. Thus it makes good sense to pick up only those reflection taps which
arrive before 300ns, and discard the rest as noise. The first 300ns (600 samples) are thus
termed as the relevant portion of the CIR. The taps beyond 1000ns are pure noise samples
83
and provide good measure of the noise level. As a result the taps from 1000ns to 1280ns
are termed as noise only samples and are used to measure the noise threshold. These two
portions of a measured example of a CIR are shown in Figure 5-2.
Relevant
Samples
containing
actual Noise only
multipath Samples
reflections used to
determine
Noise level
Figure 5-2 The full length CIR has a small portion containing relevant samples
while the rest is just noise.
The relevant portion extracted from the full length CIR is shown in Figure 5-3. From this
truncated CIR, those taps which lie below the noise threshold are set to zero and the
resulting filtered CIR is shown in Figure 5-4. This filtered CIR is then used to calculate
the RMS delay spread. The noise is filtered out because it would have caused the RMS
delay spread of the CIR to unnecessarily inflate.

84
Noise to be
cancelled
Figure 5-3 The relevant portion of the CIR is extracted.
Noise
removed
Figure 5-4 Noise only samples are removed from the Truncated CIR.
5.2.2 Classification of the Measurement Campaigns
The measurement campaigns described in Chapter 4 include three types of campaigns
that are based on the position of the transmitter and the location where the measurements
have been taken. The first kind of measurements is the one taken at the house location.
85
The second type includes the measurements taken in the office location at the third floor
of ICT building where the transmitter is placed inside a room. The third type of
measurement campaign is conducted on the same third floor of ICT building but for the
case when the transmitter is placed in the hallway instead of being in a room.
It is mentioned in Chapter 4 that within each type of measurement campaign, there are
multiple positions where the measurements were recorded. At each of these positions a
set of fifty measurements were taken. Since our measurement setup is equipped with
multiple antennas (4 transmit and 4 receive) thus for each measurement we get 16 (4x4)
CIRs corresponding to each transmit/receive antenna pair. As a result we get 16 x 50 =
800 CIRs in total for a single position which provide 800 different RMS delay spread
values for that position.
These RMS delay spread values are used to form a histogram. For each position, the
value of the RMS delay spread which is close to the largest is quite significant. Certain
design parameters, like the length of CP, need to incorporate the worst case scenario
which can be obtained from the 95th percentile of the total calculated values of RMS
delay spread per position. This can be determined using the histogram.
The delay spread histograms for all the positions are shown and described in detail in
Appendix A. The 95th percentile value of RMS delay spread for each position is also
displayed besides the histogram plots. An averaged CIR for each position is also
displayed.
86
In the following sections, the results of the statistical analysis of the RMS delay spread
will be discussed, with reference to the histogram plots described in Appendix A.
5.3 Statistical Analysis of Delay Spread Recorded at House Location
The first type of measurement campaign was held at the house location. All the different
positions where the measurements were taken are shown in Figure 4-14 and Figure 4-15
: Rx and Tx in same room
Figure 5-5 The CCDF plots of the RMS delay spread for different scenarios for
Home Location
The histogram plots for this location are described in Section A.1. The average value of
the RMS delay spread along with its 95th percentile is displayed besides the CIR plots in
87
Figure A-1 through Figure A-5. Within the house the positions are categorized into five
different scenarios based on the surroundings and on whether they are LOS or NLOS.
The results for each scenario are compared here, through a single complimentary
cumulative density function (CCDF) plot as shown in Figure 5-5.
95th Percentile value

Mean Value of
Scenario Positions of RMS Delay
RMS Delay Spread
Spread
HT1R1P1
LOS 4.25ns 6.8ns
HT1R1P2
NLOS Receiver HT1R2P1
5.95ns 9.43ns
in Small Room HT1R2P2
NLOS - Receiver HT1R3P1
in Medium Sized HT1R3P3 8.9ns 12.5ns
Room HT1R3P5
NLOS - Receiver
HT1R8P1
in Medium Sized
HT1R8P2 7.2ns 10.65ns
Room in
HT1R8P4
basement
NLOS - Receiver
HT1R9P1
in Large Room in 10.6ns 13.3ns
HT1R9P2
basement
Table 5-1 The mean value and the 95 percentile of RMS delay spread for all
scenarios for house location.
Under each scenario, the measurements were taken at two or three positions. The
measurements for these positions were similar and thus can be grouped within that
88
scenario. For each scenario the overall mean RMS delay spread and the 95th percentile
value are listed in Table 5-1.
An obvious observation that can be made is that when there exists a strong LOS
component between the transmitter and the receiver the delay spread is considerably low
with a 95th percentile value of about 6.8ns. For the case when the receiver is in a different
room the delay spread increases somewhat. This is due to the fact the LOS component is
diminished and the NLOS components become relatively stronger and provide a rich
multipath thus increasing the delay spread. However if the room in which the receiver is
placed is small then the reflections of the signal arriving at the receive antenna travel
shorter distances. These shorter multipaths provide a lower delay spread as is evident
from the curves by comparing the delay spread of the small room (Room 2) with that of
large room (Room 9). The 95th percentile value of the RMS delay spread for Room 2 is
9.4ns while that for Room 9 is 13.3ns. Thus for the worst case, the highest 95th percentile
value of the RMS delay spread is around 14ns which can be set as a lower limit for the
residential environment.
5.4 Delay Spread Plots for Office Location with the Transmitter placed in Room 2
The measurements for the office environment were done on the 3rd floor of the ICT
building at the University of Calgary campus. The floor plan along with the positions of
the transmitter and receiver are shown in Figure 4-15. The transmitter is placed at
position OT2 which is inside a medium sized room (Room 2)
The delay spread histograms for all the positions for this campaign are discussed in detail
in the Section A.2. Using these results, the 4 different scenarios within this campaign are
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compared. Figure 5-6 shows the CCDF for the RMS delay spread for all the scenarios.
All the positions falling under one scenario are represented by a single curve. The mean
RMS delay spread and the 95th percentile for each scenario are listed in Table 5-2
: Rx and Tx in same room
Figure 5-6 The CCDF plots of the RMS delay spread for different scenarios for
office location for transmitter in a Room
The delay spread for the LOS scenario is the smallest because the multipath components
are very weak compared to the LOS component. Then for the NLOS case the delay
spread depends on the size of the room and also on the type of environment within the
room. If there are many metallic objects in the room then there will be a rich scattering
90
environment. Thus we see that the case when the receiver is in the large room with a rich
scattering environment, the delay spread is the on the higher side.
Mean Value of 95th Percentile

Scenario Position RMS Delay value of RMS
Spread Delay Spread
OT2R2P1
LOS 11.95ns 17.39ns
OT2R2P2
NLOS - Receiver in OT2R3P2
19.22ns 26.2ns
Medium Sized Room OT2R3P4
30.47ns 38.04ns
Large Room OT2R4P5
24.7ns 31.4ns
Hallway OT2R1P7
Table 5-2 The mean value and the 95 percentile of RMS delay spread for all
scenarios of office location for Transmitter in a Room.
If we compare the RMS delay spread values of the LOS for house location (6.8ns) with
the LOS ones for office location (17.39ns), there is a difference of about 10ns.
Comparing the CIRs for the two scenarios from Figure A-1 and Figure A-6, it can be
seen that multipath is comparatively rich for the LOS at office location than that for the
house location. This is because Room 2 at the office location was a lab with various
metallic devices providing a rich scattering environment as compared to the environment
of Room 1 at house location which mostly contained wood furniture.

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5.5 Delay Spread Plots for Office Environment with the Transmitter placed in a
Hallway
The second set of measurements taken at the office location was done with the transmitter
placed in the hallway at position OT1. For this measurement the floor plan along with the
positions of the transmitter and receiver are shown in. Figure 4-15.
In Section A.3, the histogram plots are provided for the RMS delay spread for each
position categorized by 4 different scenarios. The mean and the 95th percentile of the
RMS delay spread is calculated and is provided alongside the average CIR for every
position in Figure A-10 through to Figure A-13.
: Rx and Tx in Hallway
Figure 5-7 CCDF plots of RMS delay spread for various office scenarios
The 4 different scenarios are compared here through a CCDF plot shown in Figure 5-7. It
can be observed that for LOS scenario the delay spread is on the lower side regardless of
the transmitter position. But looking at the NLOS scenarios we can observe that when the
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transmitter is in the hallway the delay spread values are on the higher side as compared to
the ones for which the transmitter is in a room (Room 2 and Room 4 in Figure 4-15).
Mean Value of 95th Percentile

Scenario Position RMS Delay value of RMS
Spread Delay Spread
LOS OT1R1P7 13ns 22.6ns
34ns 41.3ns
Medium Sized Room OT1R2P3
34.9ns 41.6ns
Large Room OT1R4P5
52.3ns 63ns
Hallway OT1R1P3
Table 5-3: The mean value and the 95 percentile of RMS delay spread for all
scenarios at the office location for the case when transmitter is in a hallway
The case when the transmitter is in the hallway is the one which can most commonly be
encountered in actual office environments. For this case the RMS delay spread value is
the largest and its 95th percentile value, which is about 65ns, should be considered as the
lower limit value for office locations.
5.6 Delay Spread and its effect on Capacity – a measure of System Performance
Having discussed the results of RMS delay spread at various environments under
different conditions it is worthwhile to do a quantitative analysis of the effect of this
delay spread on the overall performance of the system. One metric that gives a good
93
measure of performance is the metric of capacity. This term has been introduced in
Chapter 3.
Since in this chapter we are dealing with SISO parameters, therefore SISO capacity will
be used to evaluate system performance. The technique for calculating capacity for SISO
for wideband systems is described in Section 3.2.5. The same technique will be followed
here and (3.36) will be used to calculate the capacity. Recalling (3.36) we have
1 ⎛ ⎛ ⎛ SNR ⎞ ⎞⎞
∑ ⎟ H ( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) H ( exp ( j2π k / K ) ) ⎟ ⎟ (5.8)
k −1
C= k =0
log ⎜ det ⎜ I n + ⎜ H
K ⎝ ⎝ ⎝ n ⎠ ⎠⎠
Here we have n = 1, as there is only one receive antenna under consideration at a time. As
mentioned in Section 4.2.3, the measurement system provides us with 2560 taps for a
CIR which is sampled at 2GHz. Since the actual frequency at which the data is
transmitted is 200MHz thus there is an over sampling by a factor of ten. To remove this
over sampling, the CIR is down sample by a factor of 10, resulting in a CIR with 256
samples at 200MHz. Thus for the capacity calculation the total number of taps in a CIR =
L = 256. Each of these CIRs is power normalized such that the slow fading characteristics
of the channel are retained. For the 800 set of CIRs at each position the power is
calculated for each CIR and averaged across all the 800 CIRs. This average power is then
used to normalize each CIR by dividing it by the square root of the average power. These
normalized CIRs are then converted into frequency domain using the FFT resulting in a
frequency vector of the same length. Thus providing a total number of orthogonal
frequency tones equal to K = 256.

94
As mentioned in Chapter 4, the transmit power was adjusted, while taking the
measurements, in a way that the average SNR at the receiver was at least 15dB. This
15dB SNR value will be used while calculating the capacity.
5.6.1 Capacity Plots
Using (5.8), the capacities were calculated for all the scenarios for each measurement
campaign discussed in the previous sections.
Figure 5-8 CCDF plots of SISO Capacity for the House Location
The CCDF plot of capacity for the measurement campaign at the house location is shown
in Figure 5-8. The highest capacity curve can observed for the LOS. From Table 5-1 we
can see that RMS delay spread is lowest for LOS scenario, but a relationship between the
delay spread and the capacity cannot be established as the lowest capacity curve (receiver
95
in small room) is not obtained for the scenario where the RMS delay spread is the
highest. Rather these plots follow the same trend experienced in the simulation of
narrowband SISO capacity calculated for different values of Ricean K-factor displayed in
Figure 3-9. It was discussed in Section 3.3.3 that for SISO the capacity is higher for
higher values of K. That is exactly what is observed here. The K factor for LOS is highest
thus the capacity curve for this scenario is also the highest.
Figure 5-9 CCDF plots of SISO Capacity for Office Location with transmitter in
Room 2
96
The same behaviour is experienced for the office location as seen in Figure 5-9 and
Figure 5-10 that capacity is higher for LOS where the K factor is high.
There seems to be no direct relationship between RMS delay spread and the capacity. For
LOS scenarios generally the delay spread is low and K factor is high, but in case of
NLOS, the delay spread varies differently compared to the K factor thus the plots for
NLOS scenarios don’t show a significant trend.
Figure 5-10 CCDF plots for SISO Capacity for Office Location with transmitter in
Hallway
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Chapter Six: Cyclic Prefix and its Effect on the Performance of a System
One of the main parameters of interest in the design of the OFDM component of the
IEEE 802.11n draft is the length of cyclic prefix (CP) which is added at the start of every
symbol. This is done to avoid ISI and ICI which is caused by the dispersive channel. The
theory behind inserting the CP is already discussed in Section 2.4.2. While adding a CP
has its advantages, it is not desired to have an unnecessarily long CP as it has a negative
impact on the data rate. Thus effort is made to find the shortest length of CP where the
ISI and ICI are reduced to an acceptable level, and the desired data rate is maintained.
For selecting a suitable length that minimizes ISI and ICI, a study needs to be done on the
relationship that exists between optimal CP length and the RMS delay spread. Chapter 5
dealt with the RMS delay spread results that were calculated from actual measurements
taken in different environments. These results will be used in this chapter to elaborate the
relationship between the length of CP and the RMS delay spread.
Before dealing with that, it is worthwhile to discuss the effect of the length of CP on
orthogonality between subsequent subchannels within the OFDM signal. When this
signal is passed though a frequency selective channel, in most cases the orthogonality
between adjacent subchannels is lost. This results in ICI, which is actually the noise due
to loss of orthogonality. This is what is discussed in Section 6.1 where the effect of CP on
ICI is analyzed theoretically as well as through simulation.
Generation of ICI depends on the RMS delay spread. A discussion on the relationship
between the RMS delay spread and length of CP is presented in Section 6.2. The CIRs
98
which were obtained from the measurements described in Chapter 4 will be used to
calculate ICI for different lengths of CP. An appropriate CP length will then be selected
for each position.
In Section 6.3, the effect of the CP length on the performance of the system will be
monitored. Capacity analysis will be done to find the length of CP that maximizes
performance.
Finally Section 6.4 will present a comparative study on the measurements for both office
and house locations and will suggest a suitable CP length for both environments.
6.1 Measuring the effect of Cyclic Prefix on orthogonality
The OFDM channel consists of a number of subchannels evenly spaced across a given
frequency band. To align the analysis with the 802.11n specifications a bandwidth of
20MHz will be considered. In later sections this analysis will be extended to larger
bandwidths.
If an overview is done on the various RMS delay spread values calculated in Chapter 5, it
is observed in Table 5-2 that on average an indoor CIR in an office environment has an
RMS delay spread of around 30ns and the total duration of such CIRs range between 90
to 120ns. A CIR of such duration implies that relevant reflections occur with path lengths
that are about 30 meters longer than the LOS component. This is defendable in
commercial buildings where internal building dimensions are on that order. For the house
location, due to smaller room dimensions, most delay spread values range between 6 to
14 ns as listed in Table 5-1.

99
Now an observation will be made on the effect of introducing a CP and how it preserves
the orthogonality of an OFDM signal when it is passed through a dispersive channel.
First a simple OFDM simulation will be presented which will be followed by a detailed
theoretical analysis. It will be shown that the theoretical results match the simulation
results. For both approaches, the values of the required parameters are chosen such that
they match those proposed in 802.11n. The bandwidth is chosen to be 20MHz while the
recommended number of subcarriers in the system is 56. For simplicity the closest value
to 56 which is a power of 2 (i.e. 64) has been chosen for the study performed in this
section.
6.1.1 Orthogonality Analysis through Simulation
Figure 6-1 shows the simulation used to examine the effect of CP length on ICI. A
random input sequence x[n] is generated in frequency domain. This sequence is then
converted into a parallel input vector x, containing 64 samples of the sequence at any
given time. This vector is then fed in parallel to the IFFT block which gives the time
domain output in serial. For a 20 MHz signal, each sample in time domain is separated by
an interval of 50ns. This time domain signal is then appended with the CP following the
procedure explained in Section 2.4.2. The resulting sequence is then passed through a
simulated three tap CIR represented by channel vector h which is shown in Figure 6-2. It
can be seen that the CIR extends till 100ns and has an RMS delay spread of about 30ns.
100
Figure 6-1 OFDM Simulation with Cyclic Prefix insertion
Figure 6-2 The three tap CIR for a Dispersive Channel

101
After passing though the dispersive channel, the CP is removed and the sequence is
converted back into the frequency domain through the FFT block. Zero forcing
equalization is performed to remove channel magnitude effects. The choice of zero
forcing equalizer is basically for simplicity and due to the fact that a noise less channel is
being considered. After the channel equalization, the sequence is converted back into a
parallel set of 64 samples represented by a vector y. This parallel output sequence is then
converted in a serial sequence y[n] and compared with the corresponding sent sequence
x[n] and the difference gives the ICI. The variance of this ICI is then calculated. This
procedure is repeated for different lengths of CP and the resulting ICI variance is plotted
in Figure 6-3.
ICI Variance in dBc
Sufficient Length of
Cyclic Prefix = 2 Symbols (100ns)
0 ICI variance
taken as -95dBc
Figure 6-3 Length of CP and its effect on noise variance
It can be observed that as the CP duration becomes equal to the maximum delay in the
CIR i.e. 100ns (2 samples), the ICI reduces to zero which is represented by -95dBc in log
102
scale. At -95dBc ICI, the subchannels can be termed orthogonal. Thus a length of 2
samples or a duration of 100ns can be stated as sufficient length of CP for this channel.
6.1.2 Theoretical Orthogonality Analysis and Deriving Formula to Calculate Power of

Noise due to Loss of Orthogonality
In this section, a derivation will be done to arrive at a new theoretical formula to directly
calculate the effect of CP insertion on the noise due to loss of orthogonality.
In keeping with the symbols used while deriving the formula for capacity in Section
3.2.4, let K be the number of orthogonal frequency tones or subchannels in the system.
Let h be the CIR vector of length L which is the total number of multipaths in the system.
Here h is given by
⎡ a0 ⎤
⎢a ⎥
h= ⎢ 1⎥ (6.1)
⎢#⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ aL ⎦
where al is the magnitude of the lth tap of the channel vector h.
It is assumed that K is significantly larger than L. If the bandwidth of the subchannels is B
then the total OFDM bandwidth is KB. Hence the quadrature sampling rate required is
KB.
Let x denote the input vector of length K loaded with K data samples in frequency which
are applied in parallel to the K subchannels in every OFDM block. Let F be an FFT
transformation matrix with its elements given by

103
1 − j 2πKij
Fij = e (6.2)
K
where i is the row index and j is the column index of the matrix F
The IFFT transformation matrix will simply be FH where (.)H is the Hermitian transpose
operator. This IFFT transformation matrix is used to convert the K frequency domain
samples into K complex samples in time domain represented by a vector u given by
u = FH x (6.3)
These complex baseband symbols are upconverted and propagated to the receiver. This
propagation through the channel can be represented by a K x K circulant matrix M. A
circulant matrix is a square matrix where the first column is circularly shifted by 1
element and forms the second row, which is again circularly shifted by 1 element forming
the third row and so on. If the first column of the matrix M is given by
T
⎡⎣ m0,0 m1,0 " mK −1,0 ⎤⎦ then M is given as
⎡ m0,0 mK −1,0 " m1,0 ⎤

⎢ m m0,0 " m2,0 ⎥⎥
M=⎢
1,0
(6.4)
⎢ # # % # ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ mK −1,0 mK − 2,0 " m0,0 ⎦
The first column of M is the channel vector h padded with zeros for mL ,0 to mK −1,0 . Now
the received signal vector in time domain denoted by v is given by
v = Mu = MF H x (6.5)
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At the receiver the FFT is applied to the samples, giving the individual received symbols
from
y = Fv = FMu = FMF H x (6.6)
The block diagram of (6.6) is shown in Figure 6-4.
Figure 6-4 Block Diagram of Equation (6.6)
Now ICI is produced when the length of CP is not sufficient (less than L-1 symbols). We
need to develop a formulation to determine the eventual SNR which is affected due to
this ICI.
First let us assume that length of CP is sufficient (i.e. L-1 or more cyclic symbols
concatenated in the block of transmitted symbols). A simple example for this case is
when K=4, L=2 and the length of CP is Lcp=1. Since the length of CP is sufficient thus
orthogonal channels are possible. The matrix M is given by
⎡ a0 0 0 a1 ⎤
⎢a a0 0 0 ⎥⎥
M=⎢ 1 (6.7)
⎢0 a1 a0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣0 0 a1 a0 ⎦
Next consider the above example when L=3 and Lcp=2. Still length of CP is sufficient to
make the channel orthogonal. Here M becomes

105
⎡ a0 0 a2 a1 ⎤
⎢a a0 0 a2 ⎥⎥
M=⎢ 1 (6.8)
⎢ a2 a1 a0 0⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣0 a2 a1 a0 ⎦
Now if we reduce Lcp to 1 then the orthogonality is lost and cross talk noise is introduced.
The order of the symbols transmitted is
1 Cyclic Prefix
⎡⎣...u p (3), u (3), u (0), u (1), u (2), u (3), un (3), un (0)...⎤⎦
Note that u p (3) denotes the last symbol in the previous block. This is followed by the one
and only CP symbol u (3) . After the CP follows the present block of symbols
[u (0), u (1), u(2), u (3)] . The next symbol is un (3) which is the CP symbol of the next
block and so forth. Consequently the received time domain vector v can be written in the
form of
v = Mu + e (6.9)
where M is given by (6.8). The error e is due to the lack of one symbol in the CP. The
symbols in CP are meant to cancel the effects of the unwanted copies of the symbols in
the transmitted sequence generated due to convolution with the dispersive channel with
multipaths as explained in Section 2.4.2. It is expected that the number of unwanted
symbol copies should align with the symbols in CP in order for them to be cancelled. In
the current scenario there will be two unwanted symbols generated. While the first
symbol will match the one in the CP, thus cancelling it, the other unwanted symbol will
106
not match the symbol before the CP, which is part of the previous block. As a result the
error will be the difference between these two symbols given by
⎡ a2 ( u p ( 3) − u ( 2 ) ) ⎤
⎢ ⎥
e= ⎢ 0 ⎥ (6.10)
⎢ 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢⎣ 0 ⎥⎦
Thus (6.9) becomes
⎡ v ( 0 ) ⎤ ⎡ a0 0 a2 a1 ⎤ ⎡u ( 0 ) ⎤ ⎡ a2 ( u p ( 3) − u ( 2 ) ) ⎤
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ v (1) ⎥ = ⎢ a1 a0 0 a2 ⎥⎥ ⎢ u (1) ⎥ ⎢ 0 ⎥
+ (6.11)
⎢ v ( 2 ) ⎥ ⎢ a2 a1 a0 0 ⎥ ⎢u ( 2 ) ⎥ ⎢ 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢⎣ v ( 3) ⎥⎦ ⎣ 0 a2 a1 a0 ⎦ ⎢⎣ u ( 3) ⎥⎦ ⎢⎣ 0 ⎥⎦
Hence the noise appearing in final received vector y must be
⎡ a2 ( u p ( 3) − u ( 2 ) ) ⎤
⎢ ⎥
y noise =F ⎢ 0 ⎥ (6.12)
⎢ 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢⎣ 0 ⎥⎦
We can determine the covariance matrix of this as
⎪ ⎢ 2( p )⎥ ⎢ 2 ( p )⎥ ⎫⎪
⎧ ⎡ a u ( 3) − u ( 2 ) ⎤ ⎡ a u ( 3) − u ( 2 ) ⎤ H
⎪ ⎥ F H ⎪ (6.13)
Cy = Eu {y noise y noise
H
} = Eu ⎨F ⎢⎢ 0 ⎥⎢
⎥⎢
0
⎥ ⎬
⎪ ⎢ 0 ⎥⎢ 0 ⎥ ⎪
⎪ ⎢ 0 ⎥⎦ ⎢⎣ 0 ⎥⎦ ⎪
⎩ ⎣ ⎭
Here Eu {}
. is the expectation operator over the random variable u.
Now each element of Cy is given by

107
⎡⎣Cy ⎤⎦ = Fi ,0 Fj∗,0 a2 var ( u p ( 3) − u ( 2 ) )

2
(6.14)
i, j
Making use of the definition of F in (6.2) the above equation can be reduced to
= 2 var ( u p ( 3) − u ( 2 ) )
a
⎡⎣Cy ⎤⎦ (6.15)
i, j K
Equation (6.15) indicates that every element of the covariance matrix Cy is the same and
thus it has a rank of 1. This implies that the noise has only a single degree of freedom. It
is the same noise added to all the output channels.
Next consider how to tackle an Lcp that is deficient by 2. Hence in the current example
Lcp=0. The order of the symbols transmitted is
⎡⎣...u p (3), u (0), u (1), u (2), u (3), un (0)...⎤⎦
Following the example before, we can write
⎡ v ( 0 ) ⎤ ⎡ a0 0 a2 a1 ⎤ ⎡u ( 0 ) ⎤ ⎡ a1 ( u p ( 3) − u ( 3) ) + a2 ( u p ( 2 ) − u ( 2 ) ) ⎤
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎢ v (1) ⎥ = ⎢ a1 a0 0 a2 ⎥⎥ ⎢ u (1) ⎥ ⎢ a2 ( u p ( 3) − u ( 3) ) ⎥
+⎢ ⎥ (6.16)
⎢ v ( 2 ) ⎥ ⎢ a2 a1 a0 0 ⎥ ⎢u ( 2 ) ⎥
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ 0 ⎥
⎢⎣ v ( 3) ⎦⎥ ⎣ 0 a2 a1 a0 ⎦ ⎣⎢ u ( 3) ⎦⎥ ⎢ 0 ⎥
⎣ ⎦
Hence the noise appearing in y must be
⎡ a1 ( u p ( 3) − u ( 3) ) + a2 ( u p ( 2 ) − u ( 2 ) ) ⎤
⎢ ⎥
⎢ a2 ( u p ( 3) − u ( 3) ) ⎥
y noise =F⎢ ⎥ (6.17)
⎢ 0 ⎥
⎢ 0 ⎥
⎣ ⎦
108
The noise terms in y noise are correlated so the covariance matrix cannot be written into a
convenient diagonal matrix form. However, the diagonal terms can be determined.
var ( ynoise,0 ) =
1
K
(( a + a ) var (u
1 2
2
p ( 3) − u ( 3) ) + a22 var ( u p ( 2 ) − u ( 2 ) ) ) (6.18)
Now the general case can be considered with K symbols transmitted and a CP length
equal to Lcp. Assume that Lcp>1. The order of the symbols transmitted is
⎡⎣...u p ( K − 1), u ( K − Lcp ),..., u ( K − 1), u (0), u (1),...u ( K − 1), un ( K − Lcp ),..., un ( K − 1)...⎤⎦
The vector v containing the received symbols in time domain is given by (6.9) where M
is given by (6.4) and in terms of channel taps it shown as
⎡ a0 aK −1 " a1 ⎤
⎢ a a0 " a2 ⎥⎥
M=⎢ 1 (6.19)
⎢ # # % #⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ aK −1 aK − 2 " a0 ⎦
Since L is very small as compared to K it is obvious that the impulse response becomes
negligibly small as the index approaches K. i.e. a j = 0.

L≤ j < K
First example is for Lcp=K-1. For this case the order of the symbols transmitted is
⎡⎣...u p ( K − 1), u (1),..., u ( K − 1), u (0), u (1),...u ( K − 1), un (1),..., un ( K − 1)...⎤⎦
Since the CP length is sufficient there will be no loss of orthogonality and error vector
e=0
109
Now considering a case where the length of CP is insufficient. Let Lcp=K-4. The order of
the symbols transmitted is
⎡⎣...u p ( K − 1), u (4),..., u ( K − 1), u (0), u (1),...u ( K − 1), un (4),..., un ( K − 1)...⎤⎦
Now e is given as
⎡ 3 ⎤
⎢ ∑ aK −i ( u p ( K − 4 + i ) − u ( i ) ) ⎥
⎢ i =1 ⎥
⎢ 2 ⎥
⎢ ∑ aK −i ( u p ( K − 3 + i ) − u ( i + 1) ) ⎥
e = ⎢⎢ ⎥
i =1
(6.20)
aK −1 ( u p ( K − 1) − u ( 3) ) ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ # ⎥
⎢⎣ 0 ⎥⎦
And variance of noise appearing in y will be
{ }
var ( y noise ) = FEu ee H F H (6.21)
A more general formulation can be had while considering K=4 and Lcp=1 then
⎡ y0 ⎤ ⎡ a0 a3 a2 a1 ⎤ ⎡u0 ⎤ ⎡0 a3 a2 a1 ⎤ ⎛ ⎡ u p1 ⎤ ⎡u0 ⎤ ⎞
⎢ y ⎥ ⎢a ⎜ ⎟
⎢ 1⎥ = ⎢ 1 a0 a3 a2 ⎥⎥ ⎢⎢ u1 ⎥⎥ ⎢0 0 a3 a2 ⎥⎥ ⎜ ⎢⎢u p 2 ⎥⎥ ⎢⎢ u1 ⎥⎥ ⎟
+⎢ − (6.22)
⎢ y 2 ⎥ ⎢ a2 a1 a0 a3 ⎥ ⎢u2 ⎥ ⎢ 0 0 0 a3 ⎥ ⎜ ⎢ u p 3 ⎥ ⎢u2 ⎥ ⎟
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥⎜⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥⎟
⎣ y3 ⎦ ⎣ a3 a2 a1 a0 ⎦ ⎣ u3 ⎦ ⎣ 0 0 0 0 ⎦ ⎝⎜ ⎣ u3 ⎦ ⎣ u3 ⎦ ⎠⎟
⎡ u p1 ⎤
⎢u ⎥
Note for any Lcp, the only thing that changes is the vector ⎢ p 2 ⎥ .
⎢u p3 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ u3 ⎦
110
For Lcp=0, Lcp=1, Lcp=2, Lcp=3 the vector takes the following respective forms
⎡u p 0 ⎤ ⎡ u p1 ⎤ ⎡u p 2 ⎤ ⎡u p 3 ⎤
⎢u ⎥ ⎢u ⎥ ⎢u ⎥ ⎢u ⎥
⎢ p1 ⎥ , ⎢ p2 ⎥ , ⎢ p3 ⎥ , ⎢ 1⎥
⎢u p 2 ⎥ ⎢u p3 ⎥ ⎢ u3 ⎥ ⎢ u2 ⎥
⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
⎣⎢ u p 3 ⎦⎥ ⎣ u3 ⎦ ⎣ u2 ⎦ ⎣ u3 ⎦
Hence generalizing this to arbitrary K and Lcp is straight forward.
Now defining an upper triangular matrix G with zero diagonal
⎡0 a3 a2 a1 ⎤
⎢0 0 a3 a2 ⎥⎥
G4 = ⎢ (6.23)
⎢0 0 0 a3 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣0 0 0 0⎦
This can be directly generalized to
⎡0 aK −1 " a1 ⎤
⎢0 0 % # ⎥⎥
GK = ⎢ (6.24)
⎢0 0 " aK −1 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣0 0 " 0 ⎦
Defining a vector
⎡ u p , Lcp ⎤
⎢ # ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ u p , K −1 ⎥
w K , Lcp =⎢ ⎥ (6.25)
⎢u K − Lcp ⎥
⎢ # ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢⎣ u K −1 ⎥⎦
The noise at the output of FFT block is then given by

111
y noise = Fe = F G ( w K , Lcp − u ) (6.26)
where u is given by (6.3). The covariance matrix is found to be
Cy = Eu {e e H } = F GEu {( w K , Lcp − u )( w K , Lcp − u )

H
}G F H H
(6.27)
A simplification can be made if it is assumed that all the input channels are iid with zero
mean, unit variance, normal distribution ` ( 0,1) . Since the FFT operation is merely an
orthogonal remapping hence the elements of u should also be iid with ` ( 0,1) . For Lcp=0
we have
Eu {( w K , Lcp − u )( w K , Lcp − u )
H
} = 2I K (6.28)
Then
Cy = 2F GG H F H (6.29)
Now for Lcp=1 we have
Eu {( w K , Lcp − u )( w K , Lcp − u )
H
} = ⎡⎢⎣2I0K −1 0⎤
0 ⎥⎦
(6.30)
And for a general Lcp we get
Eu {( w K , Lcp − u )( w K , Lcp − u )
H
} = ⎡⎢⎣2I 0 K − Lcp 0 ⎤
0 Lcp ⎥⎦
(6.31)
Clearly when Lcp=K the variance becomes
Eu {( w K , Lcp − u )( w K , Lcp − u )
H
}=0 N (6.32)
112
ICI Variance in dBc
Figure 6-5 Noise Variance vs. Cyclic Prefix Length; comparison between simulated
result and theoretical result.
The covariance matrix of the ICI is calculated from (6.29). The mean of the diagonal
elements of Cy gives the variance of ICI. To check the agreement between the simulation
in the previous section and the outcome of this theoretical discussion, the same three tap
CIR h shown in Figure 6-2 is used to form G which is fed in (6.29) to obtain the variance
of ICI. Figure 6-5 shows the comparisons between the power of noise values obtained
from the simulation and those obtained from the formula in (6.29) . It can be seen that the
ICI variance curves for both the cases show good agreement and converge to 0 (-95dBc)
at the same length of CP, thus the theoretical discussion supports the simulated result.
113
Having discussed the simulated results along with theoretical study, the next phase is to
apply this theoretical method on the practical measurements. This is done in the next
section
6.2 Measurements analysis for Cyclic Prefix
The measurement campaigns described in the previous chapter provide us with CIRs and
corresponding RMS delay spreads. As mentioned in Section 5.2.1, a CIR sampled at
2GHz is obtained containing 600 symbols at a spacing 0.5ns. Following the 802.11n
recommendations focus needs to be maintained on a system with a bandwidth of 20MHz.
To achieve this, the CIR is passed through a low pass filter that reduces its bandwidth
from 200MHz to 20MHz. This gives a resolution of 50ns per tap in the time domain and
the total taps in the CIR reduce to 6. This 6 tap CIR forms the channel vector h, which is
then converted into the matrix G. and the variance of ICI is calculated using (6.29). The
effect of increasing the CP length is then monitored.
The bandwidths of 40MHz, 80MHz and 160MHz are also considered in order to observe
the effect of increasing bandwidth on the ICI and the corresponding effect of increasing
the length of CP.
6.2.1 ICI Plots For all Measurement Locations and corresponding Sufficient Lengths
of Cyclic Prefix
For house location the ICI variance was calculated for various scenarios described in
Section A.1 taking into account, all the positions within each scenario. An average value
of ICI variance was then calculated for every scenario.

114
ICI Variance in dBc

ICI Variance in dBc
ICI Variance in dBc
ICI Variance in dBc
Bandwidth of 20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz and 160MHz at house location
Figure 6-6 shows the plots for the average noise power for different scenarios calculated
for a bandwidth of 20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz and 160 MHz. In all the graphs we can see
that the noise power decreases as the length of CP is increased. This is because of the
obvious fact that as the CP is increased, the orthogonality starts to get restored and thus
the ICI decreases. Another observation that can be made is that the ICI variance is higher
for those scenarios which have a higher delay spread. This also observed for the office
location as can be seen from the ICI plots in Figure 6-7 and Figure 6-8.
115
ICI Variance in dBc
ICI Variance in dBc

ICI Variance in dBc
ICI Variance in dBc
transmitter in Room 2 on ICT third floor.
The point at which the noise variance goes to zero (-95dB) is considered as the sufficient
length of CP. This is listed in Table 6-1 for house location and in Table 6-2 and in
Table 6-3 for office location.
It can be observed from Table 6-1 that for a bandwidth of 20MHz the optimum length of
CP is 50ns (1 symbol) for all scenarios at the house location, except for the LOS scenario
116
where there is no need for a CP because the delay spread is very small and for 20MHz
there is only a single tap for the CIR.

ICI Variance in dBc
ICI Variance in dBc

ICI Variance in dBc
ICI Variance in dBc
transmitter in the Hallway of ICT third floor.
For office location for the case when transmitter is in Room 2, it can be observed from
Table 6-2, that for a bandwidth of 20MHz the sufficient length of CP is 50ns for the LOS
scenario where the delay spread is about 18ns. For the scenario when the receiver is in a
117
large room where the delay spread is highest (38ns), it can be observed that the optimum
length of CP is also largest (200ns).
Sufficient Length of cyclic prefix:

Receiver Position
Duration in ns \ No. of symbols
with corresponding RMS
delay spread 20MHz 40MHz 80MHz 160MHz
0\0 25 \ 1 25 \ 2 31.25 \ 5
LOS (6.8ns)
50 \ 1 50 \ 2 50 \ 4 56.25 \ 9
In a small room (9.43ns)
In a medium sized room 50 \ 1 50 \ 2 62.5 \ 5 62.5 \ 10
(12.5ns)
In a medium sized room in 50 \ 1 75 \ 3 75 \ 6 75 \ 12
basement (10.65ns)t
In large room in basement 50 \ 1 75 \ 3 75 \ 6 75 \ 12
(13.3ns)
Table 6-1 Sufficient Length of cyclic prefix for different Bandwidths at various
receiver positions within the house location

Receiver Position with Duration in ns \ No. of symbols
corresponding RMS delay
spread 20MHz 40MHz 80MHz 160MHz
50 \ 1 75 \ 3 87.5 \ 7 87.5 \ 14
LOS (17.39ns)
(25.2ns)
200 \ 4 200 \ 8 200 \ 16 206.25 \ 33
In a large room (38.04ns)
150 \ 3 175 \ 7 187.5 \ 15 187.5 \ 30
In the hallway (31.4ns)
receiver positions within the office location with transmitter in Room 2.
For office location when the transmitter is placed in the hallway, the sufficient length of
CP, in terms of time duration and number of symbols, is listed in Table 6-3. Focusing on
the calculations done for the bandwidth of 20MHz, it can be seen that the optimum length
of CP is 50ns for the LOS scenario where the delay spread is about 22ns and for the
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scenario when the receiver is in the hallway, the delay spread is highest (63ns) and so is
the sufficient length of CP (250ns).

Receiver Position with Duration in ns \ No. of symbols
corresponding RMS delay
spread 20MHz 40MHz 80MHz 160MHz
50 \ 1 75 \ 3 87.5 \ 7 93.75 \ 15
LOS (22.6ns)
(41.3ns)
150 \ 3 175 \ 7 175 \ 14 187.5 \ 30
In a large room (41.6ns)
250 \ 5 250 \ 10 250 \ 20 256.25 \ 41
In the hallway (63ns)
receiver positions within the office location with transmitter in Hallway.
Another interesting thing to note from these tables is that as the bandwidth is increased
then for some cases the sufficient length of CP, in terms of time duration, also increases
which gives us an impression that increasing the bandwidth does not have a positive
effect on the system. This negative impact of increasing the bandwidth on the optimum
length of CP can be observed for both locations.
6.3 Cyclic Prefix and its effect on the Capacity
ICI and length of CP have a significant impact on the performance of the system.
Therefore they need to be incorporated in the procedure of calculating capacity. This is
explained in Section 6.3.1.
Using the procedure described in Section 6.3.1, capacity is calculated for all scenarios
described in Section 6.2. For each scenario, there are multiple random values of capacity
due to fading, So that 5% outage capacity will be used to characterize system

119
performance. The concept of outage capacity and the reason for picking 5% is already
explained in Section 3.2.6. This metric gives the lower limit of the capacity and the worst
case reading for a particular scenario.
6.3.1 Catering for the ICI and Length of Cyclic Prefix in Capacity Calculation
Here a modified technique for calculating capacity will be described. Instead of keeping
SNR constant at 15dB as was done in the capacity calculations of Section 5.6, the ICI
will be incorporated to calculate SNR. Now it is known that
PSig
SNR = (6.33)
PNoise
Since the CIRs are normalised, signal power can arbitrarily be set to PSig = 1mW. For an
SNR of 15dB the noise power PNoise = 0.03mW. ICI will produce extra noise with a
power PICI which is assumed to be uncorrelated and Gaussian. The total noise power will
then be
PTotalNoise = PNoise + PICI (6.34)
And the SNR will be
PSig
SNR = (6.35)
PTotalNoise
Using this value of SNR in (3.36), the calculated capacity will reflect the effect of ICI.
The capacity is also affected by the insertion of the redundant CP symbols. If C is the
capacity calculated using (3.36), the effective capacity CEff is given as

120
⎛ LSeq ⎞
CEff = C ⎜ ⎟⎟ (6.36)
⎜ LSeq + Lcp
⎝ ⎠
Where C is calculated using the SNR calculation in (6.35). Here Lcp is the length of CP
and LSeq is the length of OFDM sequence.
For the 20MHz OFDM system the proposed number of OFDM symbols in a sequence is
56 and rounding it up to the nearest power of 2 we get LSeq = 64.
CEff is a metric that will help in selecting the optimum length of CP which will be the
length where CEff will be maximized.
It can be seen that increasing the length of CP has two contrasting impacts. It reduces ICI
thus increasing SNR which has a positive impact on the capacity. But from (6.36) it can
be observed that increasing the CP length reduces the effective capacity. Thus these two
impacts need to be balanced such that maximum effective capacity is achieved.
The plots for the effective outage capacity for the different measurement campaigns are
shown in the following subsections which indicate the optimum length of CP where the
capacity is maximized.
6.3.2 Effective Outage Capacity for House Location
As was observed in Section 5.6.1, the plot in Figure 6-9 shows that capacity is higher for
scenarios where the Ricean K factor is large. Thus we see a much higher capacity curve
for LOS.
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Figure 6-9 Outage Capacity vs. Length of cyclic prefix for house location
Now looking at the effect of CP on the curves we see that for LOS there was no need for
a CP, (see Table 6-1), thus inserting a CP only has a negative effect on the capacity. For
all the other scenarios, the optimum length of CP is 50ns (1 symbol), as listed in Table
6-1. Thus for no CP, the ICI severely effects the capacity. As the length of CP is
increased, the ICI approaches zero and a sharp increase in the capacity is observed.
Increasing the length of CP after this point only degrades capacity as only redundant bits
are added that just serve to reduce throughput. This degradation is captured in (6.36).
Thus the optimum length of CP is for the case where the optimum value of capacity is
achieved.
122
6.3.3 Effective Outage Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in a Room
Number of Symbols in Cyclic prefix (1 symbol duration = 1/(20MHz)sec)
transmitter in Room 2 on ICT third floor.
Similar to the observations made for capacity plot for house location we can see in Figure
6-10 that the highest capacity curve is obtained for the scenario where the LOS
component is the strongest.
Now if we analyze the curves closely while referring to Table 6-2 we can see that highest
capacity is achieved for each scenario when the optimum length of CP is reached.
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6.3.4 Effective Outage Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in the Hallway
Number of Symbols in Cyclic prefix (1 symbol duration = 1/(20MHz)sec)
transmitter in hallway.
Looking at Figure 6-11, we observe a similar trend in the capacity curves as we had for
the other two campaigns. The highest capacity curve is obtained for the LOS scenario
where the Ricean K factor is highest and for NLOS scenario when the receiver is in the
hallway the LOS component is the weakest, resulting in the lowest capacity curve.
Again the curves show agreement to the fact that when the sufficient CP (as listed in
Table 6-3) is reached the corresponding value of capacity is the highest.

124
6.4 Comparing the results of Office Location with House Location
Having discussed the results of all the measurement campaigns separately, it is
worthwhile to compare the extreme cases for the office location and the house location.
There are two distinct cases for both locations. One is the LOS and the other is the
NLOS. The highest RMS delay spread observed for LOS and NLOS for both the
locations is of interest as the corresponding optimum length of CP is a key parameter for
system design.
In Figure 6-12 a comparison is shown of the RMS delay spread for office and house
locations. It can be seen that for the NLOS scenario at the office location the RMS delay
spread is the highest. This is the scenario when the transmitter was in the hallway and the
receiver was also in the hallway. The RMS delay spread for this scenario is a remarkably
greater than the highest RMS delay spread for the house location. Table 6-4 gives a good
comparison between the RMS delay spread values for both the locations. For LOS case
we can see that the difference between the RMS delay spread for the Office and House
locations is much less (about 15ns) compared to the case of NLOS where the difference
is about 50 ns which is quite significant.

125
NLOS
LOS
Figure 6-12 Comparison of the CCDF curves of the RMS Delay spread for office
and house locations.
Corresponding Optimum
Measurement Location Highest RMS delay
length of Cyclic Prefix for
and Scenario spread observed
20MHz Bandwidth
LOS at House Location 6.8ns 0ns
LOS at Office Location 22.6ns 100ns / 2 symbols
NLOS at House Location 13.3ns 50ns / 1 symbol
NLOS at Office Location 63ns 250ns / 5 symbols

Table 6-4 Comparing extreme cases of RMS delay spread and corresponding
optimum length of cyclic prefix for House and Office locations

126
Table 6-4 also gives the corresponding optimum length of CP. This will help answer the
question of selecting a suitable length of CP for a given environment.
For NLOS office position of OT1R4P5 (see Figure 4-15) we observe the highest RMS
delay spread of 63ns. The corresponding optimum value for the length of CP is 250ns
that gives maximum capacity. The rule that the CP length should be four times greater
than the RMS delay spread [25] is being readily applied here.
Now for the LOS office position of OT1R1P7 the highest RMS delay spread is around
23ns and the corresponding optimum length of CP is 100ns which is again slightly more
than four times the RMS delay spread.
Looking at the residential NLOS positions of HT1R9P2 (Figure 4-14) it can be seen that
the RMS delay spread is considerably small (13ns) which only requires an insertion of
one symbol as CP. Thus a CP of length 50ns is sufficient for this location to obtain
orthogonality.
For the LOS residential location of HT1R1P1 (Figure 4-13), the RMS delay spread is 6ns
which reduces down to 0ns for a 20MHz channel bandwidth resulting in single tap CIR.
Thus it achieves perfect orthogonality without inserting a CP.
Based on these result it can be suggested, considering the substantial difference between
the RMS delay spread for the home and office locations, that there should be two sets of
values for the length of CP. For office locations the CP length should be at least 250ns
while for residential locations it can be as low as 50ns. These values are in agreement
127
with the rule of thumb mentioned in [28] that length of CP should be around 3 to 4 times
larger than the maximum RMS delay spread.
The significant difference in the values of optimum length of CP for office and house
location can be tackled by using an adaptive scheme based on cooperative measurements
between the transmitter and the receiver which adjusts the length of CP at run time based
on the characteristics of the surrounding and on the strength of ICI being produced.
128
Chapter Seven: MIMO and its impact on the System performance.
Having discussed system parameters that were independent to the number of antennas in
the previous chapters, this chapter studies how multiple antennas affect system
performance. Capacity will be used will be used to quantify multiple antennas system
performance. In Section 7.1 analysis will be done on MIMO capacity values obtained
from different scenarios. The effect of RMS delay spread on MIMO capacity will then be
observed in Section 7.2, where the behavior of MIMO capacity for different delay
spreads will be analyzed using the concept of correlation coefficients
This chapter will focus on the effect of the antennas used for the 802.11n system. For the
802.11n draft, the layout of the antennas in the system is still under debate, so it is
worthwhile to examine the different layouts of the antennas and to use measurements to
evaluate how these layouts affect performance. It is well known that the number of
antennas used in the MIMO system greatly affects its performance. To study this effect,
measurements were taken using different number of antennas and corresponding values
of capacity were calculated. This is presented in Section 7.3. Another layout
characteristic of the antennas that could affect the system performance is antenna array
orientation. This is dealt with in Section 7.4. For this case measurements were taken
while rotating the antenna array at the receiver side with respect to a stationary
transmitter and the corresponding impact on the capacity is observed.
In Section 7.5, the effect of distance between the transmitter and the receiver will be
observed on the capacity for both LOS and NLOS scenarios. In Section 7.6, the effect of
frequency bin spacing on MIMO system performance will be practically observed.

129
7.1 MIMO Capacity
In Chapter 5 and Chapter 6, system performance was characterized using SISO capacity.
In this section, the CIR matrix obtained from the 4x4 MIMO measurement system will be
used to generate the MIMO system capacity. The capacity calculation will be done in the
same way as described in Section 3.2.4. The channel matrix H will be 4x4 matrix
containing 16 channel vectors hij formed between the jth transmitter and the ith receiver,
where length of each channel vector is 256 taps as mentioned in Section 5.6. The
frequency domain representation of the channel matrix given by (3.33) is then fed into
the MIMO OFDM capacity equation given by (3.36).
As mentioned in Chapter 4, a set of 50 measured channel matrices are obtained for each
position. Thus 50 capacity values are calculated for each position. For the three
measurement campaigns described in Section 4.4, these capacities are represented in the
form of a CCDF curve for each scenario representing a localized area. The following
subsections present the results for each of the measurement campaigns
7.1.1 MIMO Capacity for House Location
The measurement positions for the house location are given in Figure 4-13 and Figure
4-14. The measurements within a room are grouped under the title of the room. A CCDF
curve corresponding to each curve is shown in Figure 7-1. It is seen here that for LOS the
over all capacity values are much higher then the ones calculated for the SISO cases in
Sections 5.6 and 6.3.

130
Figure 7-1 CCDF Plots for MIMO Capacity for all positions at House Location
The 5% outage capacity for each group of positions is listed in Table 7-1. Also given is
the 95th percentile value of RMS delay spread which was calculated in Chapter 5.
As can be seen from the plots as well as from the table, the capacity is lowest for LOS
scenario. This is the same behavior that was witnessed in the narrowband MIMO
simulation done in Section 3.3.3 for different values of Ricean K-factor. The plot shown
in Figure 3-8 indicates that as the K factor decreases the MIMO capacity increases. Same
is the case here that for LOS the K factor is high and so the capacity is on the lower side.
Looking at the values of outage capacity corresponding to RMS delay spread values in
Table 7-1, it seems that capacity is higher for the scenarios that have larger delay spread.
But before establishing any trend, it is worthwhile to see other measurement campaigns
and see if the same trend exists there as well.

131
5%Outage 95th Percentile value

Scenario Positions Capacity in of RMS Delay
Bits/sec/Hz Spread
HT1R1P1
1. LOS 14.9 6.8ns
HT1R1P2
2. NLOS Receiver in HT1R2P1
15 9.43ns
Small Room HT1R2P2
HT1R3P1
3. NLOS - Receiver in
HT1R3P3 16.15 12.5ns
Medium Sized Room
HT1R3P5
4. NLOS - Receiver in HT1R8P1
Medium Sized Room HT1R8P2 16.04 10.65ns
in basement HT1R8P4
5. NLOS - Receiver in
HT1R9P1
Large Room in 17.8 13.3ns
basement HT1R9P2
spread for all positions at the House Location
7.1.2 MIMO Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in Room 2
The transmitter was placed in Room 2 at position OT2 shown in Figure 4-15. The MIMO
capacity is calculated for each scenario described in Section A.2. The CCDF curves for
these scenarios are plotted in Figure 7-2. It can be seen that for LOS the capacity is
lowest compared to other scenarios. This satisfies the K-factor trend.
The direct relationship between the RMS delay spread and outage capacity that was
observed for the measurements at the house location, has not been strictly followed in
this campaign. This can be seen from Table 7-2 where for Scenario 3 having a larger
RMS delay spread compared to Scenario 4, the corresponding outage capacity is slightly
lower. Even though there is a very small difference of 0.04 Bits/sec/Hz between capacity
values of the two scenarios, it is still good enough to show the discrepancy in the trend.
132
Location when transmitter is in Room 2
5%Outage 95th Percentile

Scenario Position Capacity in value of RMS
Bits/sec/Hz Delay Spread
OT2R2P1
1. LOS 17.05 17.39ns
OT2R2P2
2. NLOS - Receiver in OT2R3P2
Medium Sized 17.27 26.2ns
Room OT2R3P4

18.01 38.04ns
Large Room OT2R4P5
18.05 31.4ns
Hallway OT2R1P7
spread for all positions at the Office Location when transmitter in Room 2.
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7.1.3 MIMO Capacity for Office Location with Transmitter in Hallway
The transmitter was placed in the hallway at position OT1 as shown in Figure 4-15. All
the scenarios within this campaign are described in Section A.3. For each scenario the
MIMO capacity was calculated and is shown in the CCDF plot in Figure 7-3. The
capacity for LOS is again the lowest.
Location when transmitter is in the Hallway
The corresponding 5% outage capacity and RMS delay spread values for this campaign
are given in Table 7-3. Here it can be seen that scenario 4 has the largest delay spread but
the corresponding capacity is significantly low. Thus it can be said that there is no
definite trend that can be established between the RMS delay spread and the capacity.
134
But there is a definite trend observed between capacity and the strength of LOS
component. This will be analyzed in the next subsection.
5%Outage 95th Percentile

1. LOS OT1R1P7 16.68 22.6ns
Medium Sized 17.50 41.3ns
Room OT1R2P3

18.65 41.6ns
Large Room OT1R4P5
16.88 63ns
Hallway OT1R1P3
spread for all positions at the Office Location when transmitter is in the Hallway
7.2 Strength of LOS Component and its Effect on MIMO capacity
It was observed through simulation as well as through measured result that MIMO
capacity is significantly impacted by Ricean K-factor or rather the strength of the LOS
component. The stronger the LOS component, the lower the capacity. The deterministic
LOS component reduces the degrees of freedom of the channel matrix as the correlation
between the channels increase. Correlation coefficient can be used to measure the
correlation between the channels. This term is introduced in the next subsection.
7.2.1 Correlation Coefficient
The amount of correlation between two vectors x and y can be measured through the
correlation coefficient given by

135
E {xy} − E {x} E {y}

ρ xy = (7.1)
var(x) var(y )
where E{.} and var(.) are the expectation and the variance operators respectively. The
value of ρ xy ranges between 0 and 1, where 0 means totally uncorrelated and 1 means
fully correlated.
Now there is a requirement to calculate the correlation between all the 16 channels to see
how statistically independent they are from one another. The vector for each channel
contains the maximum tap value of the CIR across all 50 measurements. This 50 element
maximum tap vector for each channel is then correlated with the other 15 vectors. The
240 (16x15) cross correlation coefficient values thus obtained are then averaged to give
an over all measure of correlation between all the channels. This average correlation is
given by
1 mn mn
ρ avg = ∑ ∑ ρ pq (7.2)
( mn )
2
p =1 q =1; p ≠ q
where m is the total number of transmit antennas, and n is the total number of receive
antennas. ρ pq is the correlation coefficient for the pth and the qth maximum tap vector.
7.2.2 The Effect of Channel Correlation on MIMO Capacity
To analyze the effect of channel correlation on MIMO capacity, three special cases from
the measurements have been chosen which have different delay spread and capacities.
136
5% Outage Capacity =14.9 Bits/sec/Hz

Average Correlation Coefficient Value = 0.19
th
95 % value of RMS Delay Spread = 5.37ns
tap vectors formed between 4 Tx antennas and 4 Rx antennas of the MIMO system;
at house location for LOS position HT1R1P2.
Figure 7-4 shows the averaged CIRs for the 16 channels plotted together. These CIRs are
for the LOS position HT1R1P2 (see Figure 4-13) where the RMS delay spread is very
low 5.37ns. Also shown are the maximum tap vectors for the 16 CIRs which yield an
average correlation coefficient value of 0.19. The 5% outage capacity is 14.9 bits/sec/Hz
which is on the lower side.
Now observing Figure 7-5 which is for an NLOS position HT1R9P2 (see Figure 4-14)
having a slightly larger delay spread of 13.29ns, it can be observed that the maximum tap
vectors for the 16 channels show less correlation as evident from a significantly lower
correlation coefficient value of 0.12. As a result, there is a considerable increase in
capacity which is 17.8 bits/sec/Hz.

137
5% Outage Capacity = 17.8 Bits/sec/Hz

th
at house location for NLOS position HT1R9P2.
5% Outage Capacity = 17.27 Bits/sec/Hz

th
at office location for NLOS position OT2R2P4.
The last case chosen is when the RMS delay spread is 26.2ns which is higher than the
other two cases. This is an NLOS office position OT2R3P4 (see Figure 4-15). The CIRs
and maximum tap vectors are shown in Figure 7-6. Even though the delay spread is
138
higher but the maximum tap vectors show greater correlation of 0.14, as compared to the
NLOS position HT1R9P2. And this is what impacts the capacity which in turn is lower
(17.27 bits/sec/Hz).
Average
5% Outage 95th Percentile
Correlation
Coefficient
Value
House: LOS HT1R1P2 14.9 0.19 5.37ns
House: NLOS -
Receiver in Large HT1R9P2 17.8 0.12 13.29ns
Room
Office: NLOS -
Receiver in
OT2R3P4 17.27 0.14 26.2ns
Medium Sized
Room
Table 7-4 Comparing the Capacity trend with the corresponding correlation
coefficient value and delay spread for the 3 selected positions.
The summary of this study is shown in Table 7-4. For each of the selected positions the
5% outage capacity, 95th percentile RMS delay spread and the correlation coefficient
value is listed.
7.3 Varying the Number of Antennas in the System
There is a debate going on between the three proposal groups of the IEEE 802.11n draft
on the number of antennas in the system, as mentioned in Section 2.2. It is not finalized
whether to use a 2x2 system or a system that has more antennas.
Here a practical observation will be made on the effect of number of antennas. As
mentioned in Chapter 4, the measurement system can accommodate a maximum of 4

139
antennas on each of the transmitter and the receiver side. Thus at maximum a 4x4 MIMO
system can be tested.
Figure 7-7 Outage Capacity plots for different number of antennas at various
scenarios
First the number of Tx and Rx antennas are adjusted simultaneously, and the effect is
observed on the outage capacity. Figure 7-7 shows this effect for different scenarios and
locations (see Figure 4-13 and Figure 4-15). For comparison, the capacity for a simulated
iid Rayleigh MIMO channel is also shown. One obvious trend that can be seen is that the
capacity increases monotonically with the increase in the number of antennas roughly
following the relation given by (3.38). For NLOS scenario at both the residential and the
140
office environment it can be seen that the positive slope of the curves is much higher than
for the LOS scenarios.
This observation can be attributed to the fact that for NLOS the multipath is rich and thus
increasing the number antennas in the system introduces diversity in a much more
significant way. And the more we have diversity, the greater is the value of the capacity.
For comparison the curve for the capacity of a simulated uncorrelated Rayleigh channels
is also shown. Most of the theories that have been presented for systems employing
multiple antennas are based on this type of simulated Rayleigh channel. It can be seen
that for such ideally uncorrelated channels the capacity increases with the increasing
number of antennas with the largest slope. The values of the capacity derived from the
practical measurement provide a smaller slope because the channels between each pair of
antennas have some level of correlation between them and this lowers the capacity. This
difference shows that it is important to consider measured data when designing MIMO
systems.
7.3.1 Different Combinations of Transmit and Receive Antennas and their effect on the
Capacity
Putting multiple antennas on the access point and the terminal has its limitations.
Increasing the number of antennas generally increases the size and weight of the device.
Generally, it is acceptable to put higher number of antennas at the access point as one can
afford to increase its size, as it is generally not meant to be hand held or carried in a
pocket. But for the terminals, effort is made to make it as small in size as possible as it is
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generally meant to be carried in the pocket or by hand. For this size limitation it is not
easy to fit multiple antennas on the device.
In this subsection the different combinations of antennas will be considered at the
receiver and transmitter side and the corresponding affect on the capacity will be
observed.
In Figure 7-8 the outage capacity plots are shown for different antenna combinations.
First a single receive antenna is taken and the number of transmit antennas is increased
from 1 to 4. A gradual increase in the capacity is seen. But when the number of receive
antennas is increased to 2 and the number of transmit antennas is increased from 2 to 4, a
much more pronounced increase in the capacity is observed. Same is the case when
switching to 3 and later to 4 receive antennas.
No. of Transmit No. of Received Outage Capacity

Antennas Antennas In bits/sec/Hz
4 1 4.83
2 2 7.36
Table 7-5 Outage capacity for different combinations of antennas: Two interesting
cases.
An interesting observation can be made for two cases. The first case is when there are 4
transmit antennas and 1 receive antenna. Thus there are 5 antennas in the system and a
total of 4 channels. For the second case there are 4 channels as well when there are 2
transmit antennas and 2 receiver antennas (4 antennas in the system). But when the
capacities are observed for both these cases, it can be seen that for the case when there
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are higher number of receive antennas, the capacity is more. This is shown in Table 7-5
for NLOS residential measurements in Room 3.
Figure 7-8 Outage Capacity plots for different combinations of Antennas
From (3.29) it can be seen that the value of capacity depends on the determinant of the
matrix A = HHH. If H is a single column or a row vector then A will be a rank 1 matrix
resulting in a low value of determinant. But if there are more than one rows and columns
then A will have a higher rank and its determinant will be higher resulting in a higher
capacity. Thus it can be said that for a 4x1 column vector, a smaller value of capacity is
achieved while for a 2x2 square matrix the value of capacity is higher.
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From Figure 7-8, it can be deduced that when the number of receive antennas is
increased, the effect of increasing the transmit antennas on the capacity becomes more
significant. Therefore it is recommended to have more than one antennas at the receiver,
for better system performance, keeping in mind that there are restrictions of size and
power consumption that dictate the limit of number receive antennas. But still effort
should be made to accommodate at least 2 antennas on the receiver as it significantly
improves the performance as evident from Figure 7-8.
7.4 Antenna Array Orientation and its effect on the Capacity
Measurements were taken at residential as well as at office environment for both LOS
and NLOS case using four antennas at the receiver as well as at the transmitter. The
receiver antenna array was rotated through 0o, 30o, 60o and 90o with respect to the
transmitter, where for 0o the transmitter and receiver arrays are parallel to each other as
shown in Figure 7-9.
Figure 7-9 Receiver Antenna Array rotations with respect to the Transmit Antenna
array orientation
Following this mechanism we calculated the outage capacity for each position with the
corresponding angle of rotation. The results are plotted in Figure 7-10

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Figure 7-10 Outage Capacity for different Antenna Array Rotations at various
scenarios
It can be observed that by rotating the antenna array at the receiver side, there is a random
effect on the value of outage capacity for almost all scenarios. No definite trend can be
extracted through these graphs.
Thus rotation of antenna array does not significantly affect the performance of the system
and this can be justified by the fact that in a rich multipath environment at each angle
there are random reflections arriving at the receiver, As a result, the CIRs are random and
produce a random effect on the value of capacity. This is the same behaviour that was
observed in [2].
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7.5 Distance between Transmitter and Receiver and its effect on the Capacity
For observing the effect of distance on the RMS delay spread and capacity of the system,
a fourth measurement campaign was carried out on the 3rd floor of ICT. As shown in
Figure 7-11, measurements were taken at different distances at the office location for
both LOS and NLOS scenarios. At each position a set of 100 measurements were
recorded. The corresponding effect on the RMS delay spread is shown in the CCDF plots
in Figure 7-12. For LOS it can be seen that as the distance increases the RMS delay
spread also increases, while for NLOS there is no fixed trend. In Figure 7-13 the effect of
distance on the capacity is shown. Here it is observed that for LOS the capacity decreases
with the increase in distance. It should be mentioned here that the effect of pathloss has
already been removed as the CIR have normalized power.
Figure 7-11 Campaign followed for calculating capacity against increasing distance
between the transmitter and the receiver.

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In Section 7.2 it was mentioned that increasing delay spread results in an increase in the
MIMO capacity. But here this is not what is being observed
Figure 7-12 Delay Spread CCDF for varying distance between the transmitter and
the receiver for LOS as well as NLOS scenarios
Figure 7-13 Capacity CCDF for different distances between the transmitter and the
receiver for LOS as well as NLOS scenarios
In Table 7-6 a summary is provided for the values of 5% outage capacity and the 95th
percentile RMS delay spread for the corresponding distances for both LOS and NLOS.
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It can be seen that for LOS scenario the capacity decreases monotonically as the receiver
is moved away from the transmitter. One reason for this behaviour could be that as the
distance between the receiver and the transmitter increases, the LOS component remains
strong and dominant while the multipath reflections become weak and thus the richness
of multipath reduces. This can be observed in the CIR plots shown for LOS for the four
distances in Figure 7-14, where for the receiver position closest to the transmitter
(LOS-1, 5.38m) the CIR has a much stronger multipath than for the farthest position
(LOS-4, 32.31m). Although it can be seen that for LOS-4 the CIR has multipaths arriving
at a much later delay, which gives a higher RMS delay spread, but they are quite weak to
have an effect on the capacity.
between transmitter and the receiver for the LOS scenario.

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LOS NLOS
95th 95th
Distance 5% Outage Percentile 5% Outage Percentile
Position Capacity in value of Position Capacity in value of
Bits/sec/Hz RMS Delay Bits/sec/Hz RMS Delay
Spread Spread
5.38m LOS-1 15.4 13.61ns NLOS-1 13.12 7.55ns
12.34m LOS-2 12.99 16.49ns NLOS-2 14.88 19.34ns
23.34m LOS-3 12.26 26.28ns NLOS-3 14.80 23.29ns
32.31m LOS-4 11.06 30.66ns NLOS-4 13.74 14.96ns
Table 7-6 Comparing the capacity and RMS delay spread for both LOS and NLOS
scenarios for increasing distance between the transmitter and receiver.
between transmitter and the receiver for the NLOS scenario.
For the NLOS case, increasing distance does not result in a decreasing capacity trend,
because the LOS component is relatively weak and the multipath reflections remain
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significant at all distances. This can be seen in Figure 7-15. As a result, distance has a
random effect on the multipath thus there is no definite trend for this case.
7.6 Effect of Varying Frequency Bin Spacing on the Outage Capacity
In Section 3.2.4, the technique of calculating capacity for OFDM is described. This
technique gives the option to vary the frequency bin spacing while calculating the
capacity. It is important to investigate this since it’s one of the parameters still being
debated by the 802.11n working groups.
Figure 7-16 Outage Capacity plotted for increasing width of frequency bins.
A set of 50 measurements at the residential position HT1R3P3 (see Figure 4-13) were
used to calculate the capacity using different frequency bin spacing. From the 50
measurements for every bin spacing, the 5% outage capacity was calculated.
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As mentioned in Section 4.1 the total bandwidth of the transmitted data is 200MHz. This
frequency band was first divided into 4 sub bands of 50MHz each. The outage capacity
for this case turned out to be 15.92 bits/sec/Hz. As the number of sub bands was
increased up to 128 with a spacing of 1.56MHz, a gradual increase in the outage capacity
was observed that reached 16.54 bits/sec/Hz. When the total frequency subbands was
increased to 256, the limit of the frequency resolution provided by the measurement
system was reached. From here on, more frequency subbands were introduced through
interpolation. What was observed was that as the frequency bin spacing was reduced
from 780KHz to 78KHz, there was a no significant impact on the value of the outage
capacity. Thus increasing the subbands beyond the resolution of the measurement system,
does not have a worthwhile impact on the outage capacity. This trend is shown in
Figure 7-16. It can be seen that for a bin size of 780KHz (resolution limit) and below,
increasing the bin size causes very slight change in outage capacity, where as for bin
sizes greater than 780KHz the capacity substantially decreases.
In this study the bin size was taken without accounting for frequency selectivity,
therefore varying frequency bin size had a considerable impact on the capacity. If
frequency selectivity in each bin is taken into account then it is expected that the overall
capacity would be independent of the bin size.

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Chapter Eight: Summary and Future Work
This thesis provided an investigation into some of the key parameters involved in the
design of an 802.11n wireless system. This thesis along with the important results is
summarized in Section 8.1, followed by future work in Section 8.2.
8.1 Summary
This thesis started with a brief background on indoor WLAN which was followed by an
introduction of 802.11n in Chapter 2. There it was mentioned that the key features of
802.11n included the use of MIMO and OFDM. The thesis then focused on the
parameters associated with the MIMO and OFDM that directly impacted the performance
of the wireless network.
While talking of performance, it was necessary to choose a metric that gave a good
measure of performance. For this thesis the metric that was chosen was capacity and was
defined using the information theory in Chapter 3.
Before discussing the results obtained from practical measurements, simulations were
performed to get an idea of the impact of varying some of the chosen parameters on the
capacity. These parameters included number of antennas in the system, SNR and strength
of LOS component, whose impact was studied on both SISO and MIMO systems.
After discussing the simulations, the next step was to obtain practical results. For this
purpose a MIMO measurement system was used, which was described in Chapter 4. The
measurements were conducted at different indoor environments at two locations i.e. a

152
house location and an office location. The measurement campaigns that were carried at
the two locations were also explained in Chapter 4.
Using the measurement setup, multiple CIRs were obtained for various positions within
each location. These positions were categorized under different distinct scenarios. The
first analysis of these CIRs was done in Chapter 5, where the time dispersive
characteristic of the CIRs was quantified through the calculation of RMS delay spread.
The variation in RMS delay spread for different scenarios and environments was
examined. It was observed that RMS delay spread was quite low for residential measured
CIRs compared to the ones obtained at the office location. Also for LOS scenarios the
RMS delay spread was significantly lower than for any of the NLOS scenarios. The
impact of RMS delay spread on the capacity was also analyzed. It was observed that
RMS delay spread was not much of a driving factor for capacity; rather the strength of
LOS component (also expressed in terms of Ricean K factor) was of significance. For
SISO measurements it was observed that stronger LOS component gave better capacity.
This was similar to the observations made while simulating Rayleigh and Ricean
channels in Chapter 3.
The effect of length of cyclic prefix, a key OFDM parameter, was then analyzed in
Chapter 6. A formula was derived to calculate the variance of ICI for a given length of
CP for a particular CIR. This formula was then used on the measured CIRs to observe
how the CP length impacted ICI in practical environment. A relationship between the
RMS delay spread and required CP length was then examined. The impact of CP length
on the performance of the system was observed by the calculation of effective capacity
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which incorporated the impact of ICI on SNR and the impact of CP length on throughput.
The length of CP where the effective capacity was maximized was termed as the
optimum length of CP and it was observed that it had a significant relationship with the
RMS delay spread. As a rule of thumb the optimum CP length was approximately 4 times
greater than the corresponding RMS delay spread.
The MIMO parameters were analyzed in Chapter 7, starting with the impact of strength
of LOS component on MIMO capacity. It was observed, that a strong LOS component
corresponded to higher correlation between the multiple channels within the channel
matrix H which resulted in a lower capacity. As the LOS component was weakened in
the NLOS environment, the capacity significantly increased due to lower correlation.
There was no relationship that could be established between the MIMO capacity and the
RMS delay spread as no definite trend was observed.
Next, the effect of number of antennas was observed on capacity. Increasing the number
of antennas in the system had a significantly positive impact on the system for the case
when both transmitter and receive antennas were increased simultaneously. It was
observed that increasing the transmit antennas while keeping a single receive antenna
resulted in a smaller capacity improvement and same was true if a single transmit antenna
was used alongside multiple receive antennas.
The effect of antenna array orientation was observed by rotating the antenna array. By
looking at the capacity results obtained from multiple scenarios, the effect of antenna
array rotation on capacity did not have a deterministic trend.

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The impact of distance between the transmitter and the receiver on the capacity was
observed, excluding the pathloss effect. It was observed that for a LOS environment the
capacity decreased with increasing distance while the distance had a random effect in an
NLOS environment.
Impact of frequency bin spacing was also monitored. As expected, larger frequency bins
i.e. lower number of OFDM subchannels, yielded lower capacity.
8.2 Future Work
The results obtained from the measurements lead to the following possible extensions to
the research
• While this thesis dealt more with the MIMO and OFDM aspects of the 802.11n,
an analysis more specific to over all 802.11n can be done by conducting
simulations based on the propagation measurements contained in this thesis.
• The measurement equipment for both the transmitter and the receiver is very huge
and has a significant impact on the measurements. Large and heavy devices have
been used for simple functions, such as ADCs, LOs or PN sequence generators.
All this can be replaced by a compact integrated design on printed circuit board
using FPGAs and PLLs. This will result in significant reduction in size and
weight of the measurement equipment. This will improve the portability of the
system and reduce its influence on the measurements.

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• The antenna arrays that were used with the measurement system were composed
of omni-directional monopole antennas. Seeing the effect of other type of
antennas such as directional, dipole etc. would be useful
• In this thesis the measurements were primarily taken in stationary environments
where there was no significant change in the surroundings while the
measurements were recorded. This can be enhanced by analyzing a dynamic
environment which could be generated, for instance, due to movements of a
person between the transmitter and the receiver.
• The MIMO system can be modified in a way that the multiple antennas are
distributed around the building, and placed separately at different positions,
instead of being co-located in an array. The impact of this distributed antenna
layout can then be monitored on the performance of the system.

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Appendix A – Measured RMS Delay Spread Histograms
A.1 Measurements at House Location
The first type of measurement campaign was held at the house location. All the different
positions where the measurements were taken are shown in Figure 4-14 and Figure 4-15.
In the following subsections the set of 800 values of RMS delay spread per position are
plotted in the form of a histogram while for each position a CIR is also shown which is
averaged from all the 800 CIRs. The average value of the RMS delay spread along with
its 95th percentile is also displayed besides the CIR plot. Within the house the positions
are categorized into five different scenarios based on the surroundings. The results for
each scenario are mentioned in the following sub sections.
A.1.1 Transmitter and Receiver in the same Room (LOS)
For this scenario there were two LOS positions where the measurements were taken. This
is the case when the transmitter is in Room 1 and the receiver is also in the same room
and there is no obstacle between the transmitter and receiver. The plots of the RMS delay
spread for both the positions are shown in Figure A-1. It can be seen that the histograms
for both positions are very narrow. This means that there is very little variation between
the RMS delay spread values for LOS.
The mean value of the RMS delay spread is about 4ns for both positions. The 95th
percentile of the RMS delay spread for position HT1R1P1 is 6.8ns while that of
HT1R1P2 is 5.37ns. From Figure 4-13 it can be seen that the receiver position HT1R1P1
is farther away from the transmitter than HT1R1P2 and so the RMS delay spread is
slightly larger for the former.

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when the transmitter and the receiver are in the same room (Room 1).
The CIRs for both positions are very similar and show a strong LOS component where as
all the other components are quite weak and thus the taps decay quickly and resulting in a
narrow CIR.
A.1.2 Receiver in a small Room (Room 2) with the Transmitter in Room 1 on the same
Floor (NLOS)
The plots shown in Figure A-2 are for the case when the transmitter is in Room 1 while
the receiver is in a small room (Room 2) on the same floor. There is a wooden wall
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between the transmitter and the receiver thus the line of sight is obstructed. Thus these
measurements come under the category of NLOS.
when the receiver is in a small room.
There are two positions in Room 2 which is a very small room as shown in Figure 4-13.
Just by inspection it can be seen that the histograms are much wider as compared to the
case of LOS measurements shown in Figure A-1. This means that the RMS delay spread
values have much more variance due to the fact that it is an NLOS scenario. The LOS
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component is not as strong as for the previous positions while the strength of the reflected
components is comparatively less weak and more random. As a result we see much more
variation in the RMS delay spread value.
At position HT1R2P1 the mean value is 5.8 ns for RMS delay spread where as the 95th
percentile is 8.5ns. For position HT1R2P2 the mean value is 6.2ns and 95th percentile is
9.4ns. The difference between the 95th percentile values for the two positions is well
within a 1ns range and can be considered almost the same.
This can also be seen from the CIRs for both positions which look quite similar. The
NLOS components are relatively stronger and the decay is slightly less rapid as compared
to the CIRs for LOS scenario. This also explains why we get a larger 95th percentile value
of the RMS delay spread compared to the LOS scenario.
A.1.3 Receiver in a Medium Sized Room (Room 3) with the Transmitter in Room 2 on
the same Floor (NLOS)
The plots shown in Figure A-3 are for the case when the transmitter is in Room 1 while
the receiver is in a medium sized room (Room 3) on the same floor. This is also a NLOS
case as there is a wooden wall between the transmitter and the receiver thus. For this
scenario there are three positions as shown in Figure 4-13.
Here we can also observe that the histograms are a much wider as compared to the case
of LOS measurements. This is due to the random power levels of the NLOS components
which are much stronger due to the fact that the LOS component is much weak.
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The 95th percentile value for HT1R3P1 is slightly less than the other two positions due to
the fact that this position is much closer to the transmitter. The range is between 10.3ns to
12.5ns, which is quite a small range thus the measurements for all the position within
Room 3 can be termed similar.
The 95th percentile values for this scenario are much larger than the case when the
receiver was in a small room. This can also be seen from the CIRs which have a much
richer NLOS component mass. As a result the taps decay at a much slow rate giving a
much wider CIR.

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Figure A-3 RMS delay spread histogram plots for the scenario when the
transmitter and the receiver are in different rooms on the same floor.
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A.1.4 Receiver in a Medium Sized Room in the Basement (Room 8) with the
Transmitter on the First Floor in Room 1 (NLOS)
The scenario where the transmitter is on the ground (first) floor in Room 1 while the
receiver is in medium sized room (Room 8) in the basement, is taken into account for the
histogram plots shown in Figure A-4. For this case there exists a wooden floor between
the transmitter and the receiver and is therefore an NLOS scenario.
By visual inspection the spread of the histograms seem to be similar to that of NLOS
measurements conducted in the medium sized room on the first floor (Room 3). The
receiver positions for Room 8 are shown in Figure 4-14. The mean and the 95th percentile
RMS delay spread values for these positions are shown alongside the CIRs for the
respective positions in Figure A-4. While Room 8 is similar in dimension to Room 3, it
can be observed that the delay spread values for the positions in both the rooms is pretty
much the same. Thus it can be said that for a wooden floor in between the receiver and
the transmitter, the effect is same as a wooden wall.
Here we can see that for position HT1R8P1, the delay spread is slightly less, compared to
the other two positions. This is again due to the fact that this position is much closer to
the transmitter which is almost exactly above the receiver.

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when the receiver is in a medium sized room in the basement.

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A.1.5 Receiver in a Large Room in the basement (Room 9) with the Transmitter on the
First Floor in Room 1 (NLOS)
This is an NLOS scenario where the transmitter is on the ground (first) floor in Room 1,
while the receiver is in large room (Room 9) in the basement. There are two positions
within that room which can be seen in Figure 4-14.
when the receiver is in a large room in the basement.
The histogram plots are shown in Figure A-5. These histogram plots are as wide as they
were for other NLOS scenarios, but 95th percentile of the RMS delay spread for this
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scenario is much larger (13.3ns) as compared to other scenarios. This also evident from
the CIRs which have stronger NLOS multipath taps which arrive at the transmitter much
later due to the fact that the room is fairly large.
A.2 Measurements at Office Location with Transmitter in the Room 2
The measurements for the office environment were done on the 3rd floor of the ICT
building at the University of Calgary campus. The floor plan along with the positions of
the transmitter and receiver are shown in Figure 4-15. The transmitter is placed at
position OT2 which is inside a medium sized room (Room 2)
The procedure of taking the measurements was similar to the one described for the
measurements for the house location. A set of 50 measurements for each position were
taken. Each measurement consisted of 16 CIRs, thus in total for each position there were
800 CIRs which provided a total of 800 RMS delay spread values per position. In the
following subsections, the plots are shown for the RMS delay spread for each position
categorized by the scenario. The mean and the 95th percentile of the RMS delay spread is
calculated per position and is displayed alongside the average CIR generated for that
particular position.
A.2.1 Transmitter and Receiver in the same Room (LOS)
For the LOS case when the transmitter and the receiver are in the same office room
(Room 2), the histograms for the RMS delay spread for this scenario are shown in
Figure A-6. One thing that can be observed is that when a comparison is made with the
LOS measurements of the house location, the spread is considerable large and the 95th
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Percentile value of 17ns is also much greater than that residential environment which is
around 7ns.
Looking at the two LOS positions in Figure 4-15 it can be seen that the receiver position
OT2R2P1 is farther from the transmitter than OT2R2P2 position, thus we can see that the
RMS delay spread is larger for the former position. This is the same pattern which was
seen in the LOS scenario for house location.
Figure A-6 RMS delay spread histogram plots and average CIRs for the LOS
scenario when the transmitter and the receiver are in the same room (Room 2).
The CIRs for these locations show a strong LOS component and the NLOS components
are relatively weaker, thus the NLOS multipath taps decay very quickly.
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A.2.2 Receiver in Room 3 (Medium Sized Room) with the Transmitter in Room 2
(NLOS)
Having discussed the LOS scenarios, now we focus on the NLOS scenarios which are
more common in an office environment. In Figure A-7, the histogram plots for two
receiver positions in Room 3 is shown where the transmitter is in Room 2. These
transmitter and receiver positions can be seen in Figure 4-15. There is a partition between
the two rooms composed of a dry wall panels embedded with steel sheets. The presence
of steel in the wall effectively attenuates the LOS component.
when the transmitter in Room 2 and the receiver is in Room 3.

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When the receiver was positioned in Room 3 (medium sized room) at positions
OT2R3P2 and OT2R3P4 it can be observed that the CIRs for these positions are not very
similar. This can be attributed to the fact that Room 3 is a lab with a lot of metallic
instruments which provide a rich scattering environment. Thus a slight change in position
significantly affects the multipath arrival pattern, especially when we have a weak LOS
component. For OT2R3P2 the CIR shows a slightly stronger LOS component as
compared to CIR for OT2R3P4. This is due to the fact that former position is closer to the
transmitter. Still the histograms for both the positions are quite similar even though the
95th percentile value ranges between 22ns for OT2R3P2 to 26ns for OT2R3P4. But this
difference is quite small considering that there is such a rich scattering environment.
A.2.3 Receiver in Room 4 (Large Room) with the Transmitter in Room 2 (NLOS)
For a relatively larger room (Room 4) which is also farther from the transmitter, the
positions OT2R4P3 and OT2R4P5 show a much larger 95th percentile value of RMS
delay spread compared to the measurements in Room 3. As displayed in Figure A-8, the
CIRs show a much richer multipath with the NLOS components fairly strong. The
multipath taps decay very slowly and remain above the -20dB noise floor way beyond
175ns thus we get a higher RMS delay spread.
For both the positions the histograms are similar and 95th percentile ranges between
35.6ns to 38ns which is quite small.

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when the receiver is in a large room (Room 4) and the transmitter is in Room 2.
A.2.4 Receiver in the Hallway with the Transmitter in a Room (NLOS)
For this scenario the receiver is placed at two different positions in the hallway as can be
seen in Figure 4-15.
And for the case when the receiver is in the hallway looking at Figure A-9, we can see a
much wider histogram for the position OT2R1P7 which is very far from the transmitter
but the histogram is narrow for OT2R1P1 as it is much closer and the multipaths are less
random. The CIRs for both the positions are similar showing a rich multipath, but not as
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rich as was for the measurements taken in Room 4. This can be attributed to the fact that
for the hallway the scattering environment is not so rich since it does not contain any
metallic instruments which the Room 4 had.
Figure A-9 RMS delay spread histogram plots for the NLOS scenario when the
transmitter is in a small room and the receiver is in some other room.
A.3 Measurements at Office Location with Transmitter in Hallway
The second leg of the measurements for the office environment was done on the same 3rd
floor of the ICT building at the University of Calgary campus. For this measurement
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campaign the transmitter was placed in the hallway at position OT1. The floor plan along
with the positions of the transmitter and receiver are shown in Figure 4-15.
The procedure of taking the measurements was similar to the one described for the other
measurement campaigns. A set of 50 measurements for each position were taken. Each
measurement consisted of 16 CIRs, thus in total for each position there were 800 CIRs
which provided a total number of 800 RMS delay spread values per position. In the
following subsections the plots are provided for the RMS delay spread for each position
categorized by the scenario. The mean and the 95th percentile of the RMS delay spread is
calculated per position and is displayed alongside the average CIR generated for that
particular position.
A.3.1 Transmitter and Receiver are in the Hallway (LOS)
Here an LOS case is considered in which the receiver and the transmitters are in a large
hallway of the office building. This measurement was taken just to see the effect of the
room dimensions on the delay spread. From the shape of the histogram in Figure A-10, it
can be seen that it is quite similar to the one for the case of a small room shown in Figure
A-6, but the 95th percentile value of the RMS delay spread is higher, being 22.5ns
compared to 17ns for the LOS scenario for transmitter in a room. This increase in the
RMS delay spread value can be attributed to the fact that the hallway has got much larger
dimensions thus resulting in a larger delay spread.

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Figure A-10 RMS delay spread histogram plot and Average CIR for the LOS
scenario when the transmitter and the receiver are in the hallway.
A.3.2 Receiver in Room 2 ( Medium Sized Room) with Transmitter in the Hallway
(NLOS)
In an office environment the common setup of a wireless network is when the transmitter
is placed on shelf in a large hallway where as the receivers are inside office cubicles.
Such a scenario is presented here as we placed the transmitter in the hallway where as the
receiver is placed at two different positions in a medium sized room (Room 2), as shown
in Figure 4-15. The 95th percentile value of 41.3ns and 40.3ns for the RMS delay spread
for positions OT1R2P1 and OT1R2P2 are quite similar and so is the shape of the
histograms and the average CIRs as seen in Figure A-11

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when the transmitter is in a hallway and receiver is in a medium sized room.
A.3.3 Receiver in Room 4 (Large Room) with Transmitter in the Hallway (NLOS)
Another scenario which is considered is when we have the receiver positioned in a large
room (Room 4) for the case when the transmitter is placed in the hallway at OT1. The
receiver is placed at two different positions within Room 4 as shown in Figure 4-15. The
histogram plots for such scenarios are shown in Figure A-12.

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when the transmitter is in a hallway and receiver is in a large room.
It can be seen that the 95th percentile value of 41.6ns and 41.2ns for the RMS delay
spread for positions OT1R4P3 and OT1R4P5 are very similar and so is the shape of the
histograms and the average CIRs. We can say that when the transmitter is far in the
hallway the changes in the position of the receiver within a room has very low impact on
the delay spread.

175
A.3.4 Receiver and Transmitter are in the Hallway (NLOS)
For the case when the receiver is also in the hallway but there is no line of sight that
exists between itself and the transmitter (positions OT1R1P1 and OT1R1P3), we can see
in Figure A-13 that the histograms are quite wide and the 95th percentile values of the
RMS delay spread, being 58.5ns and 63ns, are fairly high. This is due to the fact that the
dimensions of the hallway are very large. For the cases mentioned previously when the
receiver was in a room we can see from Figure A-11 and Figure A-12 that the 95th
percentile of the RMS delay spread is much lower and the histograms are a bit narrower.
Figure A-13 RMS delay spread histogram plots and Average CIR for the NLOS
scenario when the transmitter is in the hallway

176
Looking at the CIRs for the two positions we can see that the NLOS components are
fairly strong and arrive even beyond the delay of 250ns. This is due to the fact that the
multipath reflections travel much longer distances before reaching the receiver because of
the larger dimension of the hallway.

177
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UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY

MIMO OFDM System Performance in Measured Indoor Environment

Syed Adnan Raza Naqvi

SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE

DEGREE OF MASTERS OF SCIENCE

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL AND COMPUTER ENGINEERING

© Syed Adnan Raza Naqvi 2007

My supervisors, Dr John Neilsen and Dr Geoffrey Messier deserve special

acknowledgement, as their support has been instrumental throughout the duration of my

that this had minimal impact on my research.

measurements which formed an essential component of my research.

measurements taken at the university.

I am also grateful to my committee members i.e. Dr Robert J. Davies, Dr. Slim

brother Salman Naqvi for making Canada feel like home.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION..................................................................................1

CHAPTER TWO: THE IEEE 802.11N MIMO-OFDM STANDARD:

CHAPTER THREE: INFORMATION THEORY AND CAPACITY AS A

CHAPTER FOUR: MEASUREMENT SETUP................................................................54

CHAPTER FIVE: TIME DISPERSION PARAMETERS, ANALYZING DELAY

CHAPTER SIX: CYCLIC PREFIX AND ITS EFFECT ON THE PERFORMANCE

CHAPTER SEVEN: MIMO AND ITS IMPACT ON THE SYSTEM

CHAPTER EIGHT: SUMMARY AND FUTURE WORK ............................................151

APPENDIX A – MEASURED RMS DELAY SPREAD HISTOGRAMS ....................156

Figure 1-2 Multiple Instances of the Channel provide different characteristics................. 5

Figure 3-1 Venn diagram describing the mutual information. ......................................... 33

Figure 3-3 The 3 Dimensional Channel Matrix H ............................................................ 41

Figure 3-6 Effect of SNR on the CCDF of Capacity ........................................................ 48

Figure 3-8 Effect of Ricean K factor on CCDF of MIMO Capacity ................................ 51

Figure 3-9 Effect of Ricean K factor on CCDF of SISO Capacity................................... 52

Figure 4-1 Photograph of the four channel MIMO Transmitter ....................................... 56

Figure 4-4 Photograph of the four channel MIMO Receiver ........................................... 59

Figure 4-7 Simplified Measurement System Block Diagram........................................... 62

Figure 4-8 Auto Correlation Function for a G length PN Sequence................................. 63

Figure 4-10 Normalized ideal Cross-correlation Output at each Receiver....................... 66

Figure 5-3 The relevant portion of the CIR is extracted................................................... 84

Figure 6-3 Length of CP and its effect on noise variance............................................... 101

Figure 6-4 Block Diagram of Equation (6.6).................................................................. 104

ADC Analog to Digital Converter

AWG Arbitrary Waveform Generator

BPSK Binary Phase Shift Keying

CDMA Code Division Multiple Access

CIR Channel Impulse Response

dBc Decibel relative to Carrier

DAC Digital to Analog Converter

FDMA Frequency Division Multiple Access.

FFT Fast Fourier Transform

FPGA Field Programmable Gate Array

ICI Inter-carrier Interference

IFFT Inverse Fast Fourier Transform

ISI Inter-symbol Interference

LOS Line of Sight

MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output

MISO Multiple Input Single Output

NLOS Non-Line of Sight

OFDM Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

PLL Phase Lock Loop

PCB Printed Circuit Board

RMS Root Mean Squared