Small Anechoic Chamber Channels

Many recent and emerging standards serve to increase the adoption of MIMO technology, including IEEE 802.11n, 802.11ac and 802.11ax (Wi-Fi), Long Term Evolution (LTE) and LTE Advanced (standards developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP)). These standards utilize multiple antennas in both the base station and the mobile device. Inherently, MIMO systems are dependent on the spatial orientation of the antennas at both ends of the links and the geometry of the antenna arrays themselves. The development and deployment of next generation devices greatly depends on the ability to test and analyze the devices under realistic conditions; it is for this purpose that MIMO-OTA testing platforms are being developed.Recent research has demonstrated that, for a reduced set of standard MIMO-OTA channels, a small anechoic chamber with a reduced array of probe antennas can be utilized.

To gain this understanding, a measurement campaign was performed using log-periodic probe antennas and a single receive (DUT) dipole antenna over the entire 5GHz WiFi The broadband channel was measured using a vector network analyzer between a pair of probe and DUT antennas.This model could be extended to larger test zones or over the entire chamber in future work.