Rapid prototyping of a cost effective and flexible 4×4 mimo testbed

Abstract

In this paper, we present the design of a low cost 4 times 4 multiple in multiple out (MIMO) wireless communications system testbed. Over recent years, an increasing number of research laboratories have begun experimental studies aimed at evaluating the achievable performance gains of MIMO technology as proposed in theory. The complexity of the experimental test platforms employed by these institutions have also increased over the years, supporting greater numbers of antennas while providing even more real-time computational processing power. These tremendous increases in capability, however, come at a very steep price which the vast majority of the wireless research community cannot afford. As an alternative, we present the design of a low cost 4 times 4 MIMO testbed for researchers solely interested in analyzing the physical layer performance of various MIMO technologies. As a demonstration of our testbed capabilities, we also present the results of a direction of arrival (DOA) experiment using the MUSIC algorithm and also cite another body of work on the experimental performance analysis of space, time, polarization diversity schemes which was also completed with use of the MIMO testbed described herein.