Wireless Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) Channel Simulation Package

Last Update: June 8, 2009

Future wireless communication systems demand higher quality of service for both voice and data transmission. One of the most restrictive issues in achieving this goal is multipath fading. During the past decade, various multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems have been proposed to mitigate the effect of multipath fading. Most of these solutions rely on simplified MIMO channel models in both designing process and performance analysis of the proposed system. On one hand, these simplified models are necessary in order to provide a mathematically tractable framework in the design process. On the other hand, possible mismatches between these simplified models and actual communication channels can result in poor performance of the proposed transceiver in practice. This necessitates the use of more holistic channel models in the performance analysis of new transceivers.

The project aimed to provide a MATLAB software package for simulating wireless MIMO communication channels under practical assumptions. The final software provides an accurate simulation test bed which incorporates the effect of various pulse-shapes, fading models, noise structures, channel estimators, synchronization strategies, etc. The resulting package will be used in development of advanced wireless transceivers which can meet the increasing demand for higher quality of service in practice.

Package Overview

The package consists of seven modules each of which incorporates an important part of any simple communication system. The output of each module is cumulative and is used as an input to the next module in the system. The diagram below briefly shows how these modules are arranged:

Fig 1: The process in which the modules are used

The 'main' file is used to call each module accordingly. If all seven modules (the six above plus 'Mapping.m') are to be used in the program then they all must be used according to the process above, otherwise if the user wishes to exclude any of the modules and replace it with one of their own, it must be added to the main file accordingly.

Fig 2: How the 'Main' file is used to call the different modules

Conceptually, this package implements the following simple communication system that allows the user to implement and simulate MIMO channels as well (The Transmitter and Receiver blocks are explained in more detail further in the manual):

Fig 3: Simple communication system

Download Package

The download file below has the complete simulation package including the user manual:
» Version 1.2
Last Modified: May 24, 2009

References

[1] A. Mirbagheri, K. N. Plataniotis, S. Pasupathy, "An enhanced widely linear CDMA receiver with OQPSK modulation," IEEE Trans. on Communications, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 261-272, Feb. 2006.

[2] S. W. L. Poon, K. N. Plataniotis, S. Pasupathy, "Superimposed asymmetric modulation in narrow-band fading channels with orthogonal codes," IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 1260-1265, May 2006.

[3] A. C. C. C. Lam, A. Elkhazin, S. Pasupathy, K. N. Plataniotis, "Pulse shaping for differential offset-QPSK," IEEE Trans. on Communications, vol. 54, no. 10, pp. 1731-1734, Oct. 2006.

[4] S. Lam, K. N. Plataniotis, S. Pasupathy, "Self-matching space-time block codes for matrix Kalman estimator based ML detector in MIMO fading channels," IEEE Trans. on Vehicular Technology, vol.56, no 4 II, pp. 2130-2142, Jul. 2007.

[5] A. Elkhazin, K. N. Plataniotis, S. Pasupathy, "Reduced dimension MAP turbo-BLAST detection," IEEE Trans. on Communications, vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 108-118, Jan. 2006.