When we started thinking about writing this book, we had been working together for more
than five years on the borderline between propagation and signal processing.Therefore, it
is not surprising that this book deals with propagation models and design tools for MIMO
wirelesscommunications.Yet, thisbookshouldconstitutemorethanasimplecombination
of these two domains. It hopefully conveys our integrated understanding of MIMO, which
results from endless controversial discussions on various multi-antenna related issues, as
well as various interactions with numerous colleagues. Obviously, this area of technology
is so large that it was beyond our aim to cover all aspects in details. Rather, our goal has
been to provide researchers, R&D engineers and graduate students with a comprehensive
coverage of radio propagation models and space–time coding techniques.
In general there are three different techniques for performance evaluation of
systems and networks: mathematical analysis, measurements, and computer
simulation. All these techniques have their strength and weaknesses. In the
literature there are plenty of discussions about when to use which technique,
how to apply it, and which pitfalls are related to which evaluation technique.
At recent major international conferences on wireless communications,
there have been several sessions on beyond third generation (3G) or fourth
generation(4G)mobilecommunicationssystems,wheremodulation/demod-
ulation and multiplexing/multiple access schemes related to multicarrier
techniques have drawn a lot of attention. We often met at the conference
venuesandrealizedthatnobookcoveredthebasicsofmulticarriertechniques
to recent applications aiming at the 4G systems. Therefore, we decided to
write a book on multicarrier techniques for 4G mobile communications
systems.
Theartofcomputationofelectromagnetic(EM)problemshasgrownexponentially
for three decades due to the availability of powerful computer resources. In spite of
this, the EM community has suffered without a suitable text on the computational
techniques commonly used in solving EM-related problems. Although there have
been monographs on one particular technique or another, the monographs are written
for the experts rather than students. Only a few texts cover the major techniques and
dothatinamannersuitableforclassroomuse.Itseemsexpertsinthisareaarefamiliar
with one or a few techniques but not many seem to be familiar with all the common
techniques. This text attempts to fill that gap.
The purpose of this book is to introduce the concept of the Multiple Input Multiple Output
(MIMO) radio channel, which is an intelligent communication method based upon using
multiple antennas. The book opens by explaining MIMO in layman’s terms to help stu-
dents and people in industry working in related areas become easily familiarised with the
concept. Therefore the structure of the book will be carefully arranged to allow a user to
progress steadily through the chapters and understand the fundamental and mathematical
principles behind MIMO through the visual and explanatory way in which they will be
written. It is the intention that several references will also be provided, leading to further
reading in this highly researched technology.
This book is a result of the recent rapid advances in two related technologies: com-
munications and computers. Over the past few decades, communication systems
have increased in complexity to the point where system design and performance
analysis can no longer be conducted without a significant level of computer sup-
port. Many of the communication systems of fifty years ago were either power or
noise limited. A significant degrading effect in many of these systems was thermal
noise, which was modeled using the additive Gaussian noise channel.
In a cellular communication system, a service area or a geographical
region is divided into a number of cells, and each cell is served by an
infrastructure element called the base station through a radio interface.
Management of radio interface related resources is a critical design
component in cellular communications.
This book emphasis on multi-user MIMO communication.
It covers a collection of the major topics and issues
in multi-user MIMO systems.
Recent Trends in Multi-user MIMO Communications provides
a tutorial overview of the latest technologies and
research keys related to multi-user communication.
The idea for this book was born during one of my project-related trips to the beautiful city
of Hangzhou in China, where in the role of Chief Architect I had to guide a team of very
young, very smart and extremely dedicated software developers and verification engineers.
Soon it became clear that as eager as the team was to jump into the coding, it did not have
any experience in system architecture and design and if I did not want to spend all my time in
constant travel between San Francisco and Hangzhou, the only option was to groom a number
of local junior architects. Logically, one of the first questions being asked by these carefully
selected future architects was whether I could recommend a book or other learning material
that could speed up the learning cycle. I could not. Of course, there were many books on
various related topics, but many of them were too old and most of the updated information
was either somewhere on the Internet dispersed between many sites and online magazines, or
buried in my brain along with many years of experience of system architecture.
The use of mobile devices now surpasses that of traditional computers: wireless
users will hence soon be demanding the same rich multimedia services on their
mobile devices that they have on their desktop personal computers. In addition,
new services will be added, especially related with their mobile needs, such as
location-based information services.
