TABLE OF CONTENTS The promise of MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) to overcome the bottleneck in high speed wireless data transmission has fuelled enormous research efforts in space-time channels and systems. The last few years saw conferences that had more than half of their contributions dealing with space-time codes, transceiver algorithms, antenna configurations and channel models for MIMO. Whereas nobody doubts that MIMO will be the enabling technology for high speed wireless data, one should not think that it is the only problem to be solved for systems Beyond 3G (B3G). Many questions remain.
The numerous advances gained in COST 273 on MIMO in general can be found in three chapters of this book. Space-time codes and algorithms for MIMO transmission and reception schemes are contained in Chapters 2, 3 and 7 along with corresponding advances in coding and transceiver design in areas other than MIMO. Chapter 4 covers the multidimensional characterisation of MIMO channels together with channels involving fewer variables.
This chapter focuses on measuring and modelling MIMO channels, antenna configurations and the likely deployment scenarios. The paramount characteristic of MIMO, its promise of high capacity, is illuminated from an information theoretic point of view in Chapter 7. Capacity has been the popular yardstick by which models, algorithms, and codes have been measured. As will be seen in the course of this chapter, capacity is not...
