Simple Channel Capacity Evaluation of MIMO Antenna Using Small Reverberation Chamber

For multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna evaluation, over-the-air (OTA) performance testing is commonly conducted using fading emulator and reverberation chamber. However, such conventional approaches require huge and expensive measurement setups, and therefore, the simplification of the evaluating system configuration is a key challenge. In this paper, we propose a novel channel capacity evaluation method using a small reverberation chamber and only one-side MIMO antenna. In the proposed method, first, S-parameters of an evaluated MIMO antenna are measured in both free-space and a reverberation chamber. Then, scattering wave components are equivalently extracted by subtracting the former S-parameter from the latter. Finally, channel capacity is evaluated regarding the extracted scattering components as pseudo multipath-rich propagation channels. From experimental results, it is confirmed that the channel capacity characteristics obtained by the proposed method has a good agreement with that of 3D-uniform ring model.