3-D MIMO: How Much Does It Meet Our Expectations Observed From Channel Measurements?

By taking advantage of the elevation domain, three-dimensional (3-D) multiple input and multiple output (MIMO) with massive antenna elements is considered as a promising and practical technique for the fifth Generation mobile communication system. So far, 3-D MIMO is mostly studied by simulation and a few field trials have been launched recently. It still remains unknown how much does the 3-D MIMO meet our expectations in versatile scenarios. In this paper, we answer this based on measurements with 56 x 32 antenna elements at 3.5 GHz with 100-MHz bandwidth in three typical deployment scenarios, including outdoor to indoor (O2I), urban microcell (UMi), and urban macrocell (UMa). Each scenario contains two different site locations and 2-5 test routes under the same configuration. Based on the measured data, both elevation and azimuth angles are extracted and their stochastic behaviors are investigated. Then, we reconstruct two-dimensional and 3-D MIMO channels based on the measured data, and compare the capacity and eigenvalues distribution. It is observed that 3-D MIMO channel which fully utilizes the elevation domain does improve capacity and also enhance the contributing eigenvalue number. However, this gain varies from scenario to scenario in reality, O2I is the most beneficial scenario, then followed by UMi and UMa scenarios. More results of multiuser capacity varying with the scenario, antenna number and user number can provide the experimental insights for the efficient utilization of 3-D MIMO in future.