Emulating dynamic radio channels for radiated testing of massive MIMO devices

Abstract

This paper discusses a multi-probe anechoic chamber setup, capable of reconstructing non-stationary radio propagation environments for testing of millimetre wave and massive Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output devices. The test setup is aimed for evaluation of end to end performance of devices, including hybrid beamforming operations of antenna arrays and base band processing, in highly time variant channel conditions. In this work we present simulated comparison of an ideal reference radio channel model and corresponding model implemented with limited resources of multi-probe anechoic chamber components. We give a qualitative analysis of the results with non-line of sight channel models, without quantitative evaluation. The example device under test is a 8 × 8 planar array with half wavelength inter-element spacing.