UWB spatial multiplexing by multiple antennas and RAKE decorrelation

An Ultra Wide Band (UWB) spatial multiplexing technique by Multiple Elements Antennas (MEA) at both ends of the link or only at the emitter side using biconical antennas is presented and analyzed in this paper from measured radio channels. This work evaluates the performance of the demultiplexing process at the receiver side, as ensured by multiple parallel RAKE receivers in order to achieve channel decorrelation efficiently. The quality of signals restitution, the subchannels isolation caused by the selective RAKE combiners and the quality of the communication links are evaluated by a normalized similarity coefficient, an inter-channel interferences level ratio and a Bit Error Rate (BER) curve respectively. It appears that closely spaced antennas can give good performances in complex multipath environments.