Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technology is a wireless technology that uses multiple transmitters and receivers to transfer more data

at the same time. All wireless products with 802.11n support MIMO, which is part of the technology that allows 802.11n to reach much higher speeds than products without 802.11n. In order to implement MIMO, either the station (mobile device) or the access point (AP) needs to support MIMO. For optimal performance and range, both the station and the AP must support MIMO. MIMO technology takes advantage of a natural radio-wave phenomenon called multipath. With multipath, transmitted information bounces off walls, ceilings, and other objects, reaching the receiving antenna multiple times via different angles and at slightly different times. In the past, multipath caused interference and slowed down wireless signals. MIMO technology takes advantage of multipath behavior by using multiple, smart transmitters and receivers with an added spatial dimension, to dramatically increase performance and range. MIMO makes antennas work smarter by enabling them to combine data streams arriving from different paths and at different times to effectively increase receiver signal-capturing power. Smart antennas use spatial diversity technology, which puts surplus antennas to good use. When there are more antennas than spatial streams, the antennas can add receiver diversity and increase range. More antennas usually equate to higher speeds. A wireless adapter with three antennas can have a speed of 600 mbps while an adapter with two antennas has a speed of 300mbps. The router also needs to have multiple antennas, and fully support all of the features of 802.11n, to attain the highest speed possible. Legacy wireless devices use Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) technology. These devices cannot take advantage of multipath, and can only send or receive one spatial stream at a time.

Multiple-input multiple-output, or MIMO, is a radio communications technology or RF technology that is being mentioned and used in many new technologies these days. Wi-Fi, LTE; Long Term Evolution, and many other radio, wireless and RF technologies are using the new MIMO wireless technology to provide increased link capacity and spectral efficiency combined with improved link reliability using what were previously seen as interference paths. Even now many there are many MIMO wireless routers on the market, and as this RF technology is becoming more widespread, more MIMO routers and other items of wireless MIMO equipment will be seen. As the technology is complex many engineers are asking what is MIMO and how does it work.

MIMO development and history

MIMO technology has been developed over many years. Not only did the basic MIMO concepts need to be formulated, but in addition to this, new technologies needed to be developed to enable MIMO to be fully implemented. New levels of processing were needed to allow some of the features of spatial multiplexing as well as to utilise some of the gains of spatial diversity. Up until the 1990s, spatial diversity was often limited to systems that switched between two antennas or combined the signals to provide the best signal. Also various forms of beam switching were implemented, but in view of the levels of processing involved and the degrees of processing available, the systems were generally relatively limited. However with the additional levels of processing power that started to become available, it was possible to utilise both spatial diversity and full spatial multiplexing. The initial work on MIMO systems focussed on basic spatial diversity - here the MIMO system was used to limit the degradation caused by multipath propagation. However this was only the first step as system then started to utilise the multipath propagation to advantage, turning the additional signal paths into what might effectively be considered as additional channels to carry additional data. Two researchers: Arogyaswami Paulraj and Thomas Kailath were first to propose the use of spatial multiplexing using MIMO in 1993 and in the following year their US patent was granted. However it fell to Bell Labs to be the first to demonstrate a laboratory prototype of spatial multiplexing in 1998.

MIMO -Multiple Input Multiple Output basics

A channel may be affected by fading and this will impact the signal to noise ratio. In turn this will impact the error rate, assuming digital data is being transmitted. The principle of diversity is to provide the receiver with multiple versions of the same signal. If these can be made to be affected in different ways by the signal path, the probability that they will all be affected at the same time is considerably reduced. Accordingly, diversity helps to stabilise a link and improves performance, reducing error rate. Several different diversity modes are available and provide a number of advantages:

Time diversity: Using time diversity, a message may be transmitted at different times, e.g. using different timeslots and channel coding.

Frequency diversity: This form of diversity uses different frequencies. It may be in the form of using different channels, or technologies such as spread spectrum / OFDM. Space diversity : Space diversity used in the broadest sense of the definition is used as the basis for MIMO. It uses antennas located in different positions to take advantage of the different radio paths that exist in a typical terrestrial environment.

MIMO is effectively a radio antenna technology as it uses multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver to enable a variety of signal paths to carry the data, choosing separate paths for each antenna to enable multiple signal paths to be used.

General Outline of MIMO system One of the core ideas behind MIMO wireless systems space-time signal processing in which time (the natural dimension of digital communication data) is complemented with the spatial dimension inherent in the use of multiple spatially distributed antennas, i.e. the use of multiple antennas located at different points. Accordingly MIMO wireless systems can be viewed as a logical extension to the smart antennas that have been used for many years to improve wireless. It is found between a transmitter and a receiver; the signal can take many paths. Additionally by moving the antennas even a small distance the paths used will change. The variety of paths available occurs as a result of the number of objects that appear to the side or even in the direct path between the transmitter and receiver. Previously these multiple paths only served to introduce interference. By using MIMO, these additional paths can be used to advantage. They can be used to provide additional robustness to the radio link by improving the signal to noise ratio, or by increasing the link data capacity. The two main formats for MIMO are given below:

Spatial diversity: Spatial diversity used in this narrower sense often refers to transmit and receive diversity. These two methodologies are used to provide improvements in the signal to noise ratio and they are characterized by improving the reliability of the system with respect to the various forms of fading. Spatial multiplexing : This form of MIMO is used to provide additional data capacity by utilising the different paths to carry additional traffic, i.e. increasing the data throughput capability.

As a result of the use multiple antennas, MIMO wireless technology is able to considerably increase the capacity of a given channel while still obeying Shannon's law. By increasing the number of receive and transmit antennas it is possible to linearly increase the throughput of the channel with every pair of antennas added to the system. This makes MIMO wireless technology one of the most important wireless techniques to be employed in recent years. As spectral bandwidth is becoming an ever more valuable commodity for radio communications systems, techniques are needed to use the available bandwidth more effectively. MIMO wireless technology is one of these techniques.

New Channels HSUPA

Dedicated transport channel
E-DCH - Enhanced Dedicated Channel: The Enhanced Dedicated Channel (E-DCH) is an uplink transport channel.

Uplink Dedicated Physical channels

E-DPCCH and E-DPDCH:

The E-DPDCH is used to carry the E-DCH transport channel. There may be zero, one, or several E-DPDCH on each radio link. The E-DPCCH is a physical channel used to transmit control information associated with the E-DCH. There is at most one E-DPCCH on each radio link.

E-DPDCH and E-DPCCH are always transmitted simultaneously, except for the case that EDPDCH but not E-DPCCH is DTXed due to power scaling. E-DPCCH shall not be transmitted in a slot unless DPCCH is also transmitted in the same slot. Figure above shows the E-DPDCH and E-DPCCH (sub)frame structure. Each radio frame is divided in 5 subframes, each of length 2 ms; the first subframe starts at the start of each radio frame and the 5th subframe ends at the end of each radio frame. The E-DPDCH slot formats, corresponding rates and number of bits are specified in Table A. The E-DPCCH slot format is listed in Table B. Table A: E-DPDCH slot formats Slot Format #i Channel Bit Rate (kbps) SF Bits/ Frame Bits/ Subframe Bits/Slot (Ndata) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 15 30 60 120 240 480 960 1920 256 150 128 300 64 600 32 1200 16 2400 8 4 2 4800 9600 19200 30 60 120 240 480 960 1920 3840 10 20 40 80 160 320 640 1280

Table B: E-DPCCH slot formats Slot Format #i Channel Bit Rate (kbps) SF Bits/ Frame Bits/ Subframe Bits/Slot (Ndata) 0 15 256 150 30 10

Downlink Dedicated Physical channels

E-DCH Relative Grant Channel (E-RGCH):

The E-DCH Relative Grant Channel (E-RGCH) is a fixed rate (SF=128) dedicated downlink physical channel carrying the uplink E-DCH relative grants. Figure above illustrates the structure of the E-RGCH. A relative grant is transmitted using 3, 12 or 15 consecutive slots and in each slot a sequence of 40 ternary values is transmitted. The 3 and 12 slot duration shall be used on an E-RGCH transmitted to UEs for which the cell transmitting the E-RGCH is in the E-DCH serving radio link set and for which the E-DCH TTI is respectively 2 and 10 ms. The 15 slot duration shall be used on an E-RGCH transmitted to UEs for which the cell transmitting the ERGCH is not in the E-DCH serving radio link set. E-DCH Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (E-HICH): The E-DCH Hybrid ARQ Indicator Channel (E-HICH) is a fixed rate (SF=128) dedicated downlink physical channel carrying the uplink E-DCH hybrid ARQ acknowledgement indicator. Figure above (same as E-RGCH) illustrates the structure of the E-HICH. A hybrid ARQ acknowledgement indicator is transmitted using 3 or 12 consecutive slots and in each slot a sequence of 40 binary values is transmitted. The 3 and 12 slot duration shall be used for UEs which E-DCH TTI is set to respectively 2 ms and 10 ms. Fractional Dedicated Physical Channel (F-DPCH):

The F-DPCH carries control information generated at layer 1 (TPC commands). It is a special case of downlink DPCCH. Figure above shows the frame structure of the F-DPCH. Each frame of length 10ms is split into 15 slots, each of length Tslot = 2560 chips, corresponding to one power-control period. There are 2 bits/slot.

Common downlink physical channels

E-DCH Absolute Grant Channel (E-AGCH):

The E-DCH Absolute Grant Channel (E-AGCH) is a fixed rate (30 kbps, SF=256) downlink physical channel carrying the uplink E-DCH absolute grant. Figure above illustrates the frame and sub-frame structure of the E-AGCH. An E-DCH absolute grant shall be transmitted over one E-AGCH sub-frame or one E-AGCH frame. The transmission over one E-AGCH sub-frame and over one E-AGCH frame shall be used for UEs for which E-DCH TTI is set to respectively 2 ms and 10 ms.

HSDPA Channels
High Speed Downlink Shared Channel, HS-DSCH
Th HS DSCH channel is the data transport channel that all active HSDPA users connected to the NodeB will use. The use of a shared channel is a key characteristic of HSDPA and being a common resource, the HS-DSCH is dynamically shared between users. The HS-DSCH supports adaptive coding and modulation changing to adapt to the changing conditions within the system. The use of the 2ms TTI means that scheduling delays are reduced and it also enables fast tracking of the channel conditions allowing for the optimum use of the available resource. It is worth noting that the HS-DSCH is not power controlled but rate controlled. This allows the remaining power, after the other required channels have been serviced to be used for the HSDSCH, and this means that the overall power available is used efficiently.

High Speed Signalling Control Channel, HS-SCCH

This HSDPA channel is used to signal the scheduling to the users every 2 ms according to the TTI. The HS-SCCH channel carries three main elements of information:

It carries the UE identity to allow specific addressing of individual UEs on the shared control channel. The HS-SCCH carries the Hybrid ARQ to enable the combining process to proceed. This channel carries the Transport Format and Resource Indicator (TFRI). This identifies the scheduled resource and its transmission format.

High Speed Dedicated Physical Control Channel, HSDPCCH

The High Speed Dedicated Physical Control Channel, HS-DPCCH is an HSDPA channel used to provide feedback to the scheduler and it is located in the uplink. The HS-DPCCH channel carries the following information:

Channel Quality Information which is used to provide instantaneous channel information to the scheduler. HARQ ACK/NAK information which is used to provide information back about the successful receipt and decoding of information and hence to request the resending information that has not been successfully received.

These channels, HS-DSCH, HS-SCCH, & HS-DPCCH are added to the existing 3G UMTS channels and provide the additional data capability and adaptivity required to enable the much faster download speeds provided by 3G HSDPA.