MIMO/Smart Antenna Development Platform

Smart Antennas (SA) and Multiple Input (MIMO) systems are considered as one of the key technologies for the third generation mobile communication systems and are now being included in the UMTS standard [1]. With those technologies it is possible to improve the signal-to-noise ratio at the receiver and increase capacity in mobile radio systems. To test and evaluate new algorithms for those systems a MIMO/SA development platform has been developed. It comprises a MIMO real-time channel simulator and a receiver unit. The real-time channel simulator uses a geometry based stochastic channel (GSCM) proposed by COST 259 [2] to simulate MIMO channels accurately and in real-time. The MIMO/SA receiver allows rapid prototyping and real-time evaluation of MIMO/SA algorithms. The hardware of the development platform is made up of an expandable architecture of up tp ten parallel processing boards. The DSP-boards combine the versatility of a DSP with the raw power of FPGA and offer a performance of up to 12000 MIPS. Together with an analog I/O board for RF and IF signals, the DSP-board is ideally suited for software defined radios (SDR).