Capacity increase in converging mobile communication systems through the use of MIMO

This paper analyses the performance enhancement of a MIMO multi-technology communications system, relatively to its single antenna version. Three radio access technologies are considered, GSM/GPRS, UNITS, and HIPERLAN/2. The following performance indicators are used: mean bit rate, discarded packets ratio, blocked calls ratio, and percentage of sessions routed through their most prioritized access technology and target bit rate. The underlying assumption is the consideration of the channel capacity increase to be the capacity increase of each access technology as a whole. Monte-Carlo simulations were performed to average out the randomness associated with the channel capacity and traffic generation. It is concluded that the channel capacity increase cannot be fully exploited by the convergent system. As an example, a 2x2 antenna configuration increases the system's mean bit rate in about 30 % relatively, to its SISO version, while the channel capacity indicates an increase of 54%.