Achieving 1.59Gbit/s over a 20MHz radio channel
The Universities of Bristol and Lund, have carried out new research alongside National Instruments (NI) and have demonstrated how a massive antenna system can offer a 12-fold increase in spectrum efficiency compared with current 4G cellular technology, the demo conducted in the atrium of Bristol’s Merchant Venturers Building achieved an unprecedented bandwidth efficiency of 79.4bit/s/Hz with a throughput of 1.59Gbit/s in a 20MHz channel.
Multiple antenna technology, referred to as MIMO, is already used in many Wi-Fi routers and 4G cellular phone systems. Normally this involves up to four antennas at a base station. Using a flexible prototyping platform from NI based on LabVIEW system design software and PXI hardware, the Bristol configuration implements Massive MIMO, where 128 antennas are deployed at the base station.
Both Bristol and Lund Universitys provided the hardware enabling researchers at both sites to work in parallel with their development. Bristol’s MIMO system operates at a carrier frequency of 3.5GHz and supports simultaneous wireless connectivity to up to 12 single antenna clients. Each client shares a common 20MHz radio channel. Complex digital signal processing algorithms unravel the individual data streams in the space domain seen by the antenna array.