10 Facts About MIMO

In radio, multiple-input and multiple-output, or MIMO, is a method for multiplying the capacity of a radio link using multiple transmission and receiving antennas to exploit multipath propagation.

At one time, in wireless the term "MIMO" referred to the use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver.

In modern usage, "MIMO" specifically refers to a practical technique for sending and receiving more than one data signal simultaneously over the same radio channel by exploiting multipath propagation.

MIMO is fundamentally different from smart antenna techniques developed to enhance the performance of a single data signal, such as beamforming and diversity.

MIMO is often traced back to 1970s research papers concerning multi-channel digital transmission systems and interference between wire pairs in a cable bundle: AR Kaye and DA George, Branderburg and Wyner, and W van Etten .

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MIMO technology has been standardized for wireless LANs, 3G mobile phone networks, and 4G mobile phone networks and is in widespread commercial use.

MIMO can be sub-divided into three main categories: precoding, spatial multiplexing, and diversity coding.

LTE primarily focuses on single-link MIMO relying on SpatialMultiplexing and space-time coding while LTE-Advanced further extends the design to multi-user MIMO.

MIMO is planned to be used in mobile radio telephone standards such as recent 3GPP and 3GPP2.

Papers by Gerard J Foschini and Michael J Gans, Foschini and Emre Telatar have shown that the channel capacity for a MIMO system is increased as the number of antennas is increased, proportional to the smaller of the number of transmit antennas and the number of receive antennas.