Capacity analysis of an IEEE 802.11n system in a residential house based on estimated specular and dense multipath components

Abstract

This study analyses the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) capacity in a residential house. The capacity calculation is based on physical radio channels estimated from channel sounding measurements. Both specular and dense multipath components are estimated from the channel sounding data with the RiMAX maximum-likelihood algorithm. In particular, the capacity analysis is made for a 2x2 IEEE 802.11n MIMO system that conforms to the legacy mode of the standard and operates in the 2.4GHz ISM band. The contribution of dense multipath to the channel capacity is quantified by calculating the capacity of radio channels for which the dense multipath is ignored and only the specular multipath is retained. It is found that ignoring dense multipath underestimates the capacity on average by 1.1, 9.1, and 37.8% for line-of-sight, obstructed line-of-sight, and non-line-of-sight situations, respectively.