Estimating the Performance of MIMO SC-FDE Systems Using SISO Measurements

Francisco Cercas,Pedro Sebastião,Daniel Fernandes,Rui Dinis

doi:10.3390/app10217492

Abstract

The demand for ubiquitous telecommunications services forces operators to have a special concern about signal quality and the coverage area they offer to their customers. This was usually checked by using suitable propagation models for Single Input Single Output (SISO) systems, which are no longer the case for new and future mobile generations, such as 5G and beyond. To guarantee good signal quality coverage, operators started to replace these models with Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) ones. To achieve the best results, these models are usually calibrated with Drive Test (DT) measures; however, the DTs available for MIMO propagation models are sparse, in contrast to SISO ones. The main contribution presented in this paper is a methodology to extend the propagation models of SISO systems so they can be applied in MIMO sytems with Single-Carrier and Frequency-Domain Equalization (SC-FDE), while still using DTs acquired for SISO systems. This paper presents the impact on Bit Error Rate (BER) performance and its coverage area resulting from the application of our proposed method. We consider a MIMO SC-FDE system with an Iterative Block Decision Feedback Equalization (IB-DFE) receiver and we present the improvement expressions for the BER that we illustrate with some simulations.

Highlights

The evolution of telecommunications has enabled operators to offer services increasingly adapted to users’ needs, such as the possibility of voice and video communications, with a major concern regarding the Quality of Service (QoS) they provide to customers [1]
To obtain theoretical values of Bit Error Rate (BER) performance as a function of Eb /N0 achieved by Single Input Single Output (SISO) and Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems, simulation was used
The number of receiving antennas in that user varied from the SISO scenario to the MIMO scenario

Summary

Introduction

The evolution of telecommunications has enabled operators to offer services increasingly adapted to users’ needs, such as the possibility of voice and video communications, with a major concern regarding the Quality of Service (QoS) they provide to customers [1]. One of the major drawbacks of DTs is the expensive way in which DT campaigns are carried out, since they are time-consuming, costly, and, after all, they only depict the network status at the time they were performed Despite these disadvantages, the information collected by DTs is very valuable as it allows for detecting regions where the signal received power level is lower than expected, allowing us to optimise network planning [3]. The motivation for this study lies in the possibility of using these SISO DT campaigns, so as they can be used with propagation models for MIMO systems, which immediately brings a great cost advantage The use of this methodology enables a simple estimation of coverage for a MIMO system, allowing for the application of algorithms for network planning and optimisation.

System Characterisation

Theoretical BER Performance

Simulation Results

Performance Results

Conclusions