MIMO

Multiple Input Multiple Output

Communications
On the Capacity of Radio Communication Systems with Diversity in a Rayleigh
Fading Environment
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication
VOL. SAC-5, NO. 5, JUNE 1987

Omar Ahmad
Prepared for Advanced Wireless Networks, Spring 2006

Part 1
An Intuition of SISO MISO and MIMO
A Look at the Channel Capacity

An Intuition
SISO Single Input Single Output
Disclaimer: This Intuition is incomplete with respect to
how communication signals are actually analyzed
Forget about noise for now and the frequency domain transformation. Assume we
have an antenna, which transmits a signal

x at a frequency f.

As the signal propagates through

an environment, the signal is faded, which is modeled as a multiplicative coefficient

h.

The

received signal y will be hx.

x1

y1 = h1x1
fading h1

transmit

receive

An Intuition
SIMO Single Input Multiple Output
Now assume we have two receiving antennas. There will be two received signals y1 and
y2 with different fading coefficients h1 and h2. The effect upon the signal x for a given
path (from a transmit antenna to a receive antenna) is called a channel.

The channel capacity has not increased

The multiple receive antennas can help us
get a stronger signal through diversity

x1

h2
g
n
i
fad

fading h1
transmit

y2 = h2x1

y1 = h1x1
receive

An Intuition
MISO Multiple Input Single Output
Assume 2 transmitting antennas and 1 receive antenna. There will
Time 1

Time 2

x2

-x1*

be one received signal y1 (sum of x1h1 and x2h2). In order to

separate x1 and x2 we will need to also transmit, at a different time,
-x1* and x2*.
The channel capacity has not really increased because we still
have to transmit -x1* and x2* at time 2. (Alamouti scheme)

fading h

Time 1

x1

y1 = h1x1+ h2x2

Time 2

x2*

g
fadin

transmit

h1

y2 = h1x2*+ h2-x1*

receive

An Intuition
MIMO Multiple Input Multiple Output
With 2 transmitting antennas and 2 receiving antennas, we actually add a degree
of freedom! Its quite simple and intuitive. However, in this simple model, we are
assuming that the h coefficients of fading are independent, and uncorrelated. If they are
correlated, we will have a hard time finding an approximation for the inverse of H. In
practical terms, this means that we cannot recover x1 and x2.

x1

y1

fading h1

fa

x2

ng
di

fa
d

ing

y1 = h1x1+ h2x2
h3

y2 = h3x1+ h4x2
y2

h2 x1 w1

h4 x2 w2

Finally Assume there is some white Gaussian

Noise, and we have a set of linear equations
y = Hx + w

fading h4

transmit

h1

y2 h3
y1

receive

All 2 degrees of freedom are being utilized in

the MIMO case, giving us Spatial Multiplexing.

A Look at the Channel Capacity

x1

y1

fading h1

fa

x2

ng
di

fa
d

i ng

Once again, the time invariant MIMO channel

is described by

h3

y = Hx + w
h

y2

fading h4

transmit

receive

H, the channel matrix, is assumed to be

constant, and known to both transmitter and
receiver. From basic linear algebra, every
linear transformation (i.e., H applied to x) can
be decomposed into a rotation, scale, and
another rotation (SVD)
H=

UV *

A Look a the Channel Capacity

H U V*
U and V are unitary (rotation) matrices.

Is a diagonal matrix whose elements:

1 2 3 . . . nm i n
are the ordered singular values of the matrix H. The SVD can be rewritten as
nm i n

H i ui vi*
i 1

x' V * x

We then
Define
'
*

y U y

w' U * w

And rewrite the channel y = Hx + w

as

y ' x ' w'

or equivalently

yi' i xi' wi'

A Look at the Channel Capacity

yi' i xi' wi'
This expression looks VERY similar to something we should know how to
calculate the channel capacity of very easily! That is, Parallel Additive Gaussian
Channels where the channels are separated by time:

yi xi wi w h e r e w i h a s v a r i a n c e i2
By information theory, we know the noise capacity to be for parallel Gaussian
Channels to be

E
1
C l o g 1 n2 w h e r e
n
n 1 2

E x
n

n=1

2
n

n=1

So for the case of MIMO, the spatial dimension plays the role of time. The
capacity is now

n2 En
1
C l o g 1
2
2

n 1 2
n

A Look at the Channel Capacity

So what else does this mean? Each eigenvalue

1 2 3 . . . nm i n
Corresponds to an eigenmode of the channel (also called
an eigen-channel) Each non-zero eigen-channel can
support a data stream;

thus, the capacity of MIMO depends upon

the rank of the channel matrix!

Part 2
Multipath Fading

Multipath Fading
Each entry in the Channel matrix is actually a sum of different multipaths which interfere with one another to form the fading coefficient.
We can easily show this in the time domain:
y (t ) ai (t ) x(t i (t ) )
i

y (t )

h( , t ) x(t )d

h( , t ) ai (t ) ( i (t ) )
i

The channel coefficients can be modeled as complex Rayleigh

fading coefficients. The analysis proceeds then with the following:
y[m] h[m]x[m] w[m]

Multipath Fading
There should be a significant number of
multipaths for each of the coefficients
The energy should be equally spread out
If there are very few or no paths in some
of the directions, then H will be correlated
The antennas should be properly spaced
otherwise H will be correlated

Conclusions
MIMO adds a full degree of freedom
Think of it as a dimensionality extension to
existing techniques of time and frequency
The more entropy in the fading
environment, the more richly scattered,
and less likely for zero eigenvalues
Rayleigh fading is a reasonable estimate