National ICT R&D Fund

Technical R&D Projects

Funded Projects

Real Time MIMO and Cooperative MIMO Systems Test-bed for Wireless Broadband Systems

Principal Investigator:
Iqra University, Islamabad www.iqraisb.edu.pk
Project Director:
Dr. Syed Ismail Shah	ismail@iqraisb.edu.pk
Project Details:
Start Date: May, 2008	Duration: 30 months
Project Cost: PKR 14.96 million	Project Funding: PKR 14.96 million
Project Status: In progress.
Technical Progress Reports Submitted: Q1 - Q6 reports. Pending Reports: None. Deliverables Submitted: 1: Initial Literature Review 2: Implementing the existing algorithms and their performance analysis 3: Implementation of the proposed MIMO and C-MIMO algorithms 4: Optimized Matlab or Python implementation of the final selected algorithm with Bit Error Rate (BER) performance results Pending Deliverables: 1: Design Review Document and verilog code.
Financial Audit Report: External Audit Report for the duration 1st May 2008 to 30th June, 2009 and Internal Audit report as at 31st Dec, 2009.
Project URL: http://sic.iuic.net.pk/mimo/
Detailed proposal is available here.

Executive Summary

The increased demands in terms of efficiency and performance by an ever-increasing user community present an exciting challenge to communication technology. These demands translate into designing systems that have: improved spectral efficiency, efficient bandwidth utilization, computationally economical signal processing algorithms and high speed processing hardware. One of the most significant technological developments of the last decade that promises to play a key role in realizing these challenges is wireless communication using Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) antenna architectures.

The information–theoretic analysis reveals that significant performance gains are achievable in wireless communication systems using MIMO architecture employing multiple antennas. Efficient exploitation of spatial diversity available in MIMO channel enables higher system capacity and this architecture is also regarded suitable for higher data rate multimedia communications. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) employed in conjunction with MIMO architecture also constitutes an attractive solution for modern wireless communications systems. The algorithms are intended to improve the real time performance of MIMO based wireless communication systems such as WiFi and WiMax.

In this project low complexity near optimal/sub-optimal solution to MIMO detection will be proposed. The algorithms are intended to improve the real time performance of MIMO based wireless communication systems such as WiFi and WiMax. Complete MIMO architecture with RF Front End will be established to enable real time implementation of existing MIMO symbol Detection algorithms like ZF, MMSE, VBLAST and Sphere Decoder along with the proposed algorithms. Work on Energy efficient Cooperative MIMO networks will also be performed.

The key benefits of this project are given below:

The project will deliver efficient MIMO detection algorithms to enhance performance at the physical layer of WLAN and WiMax standards. This real time test-bed will provide a research platform for indigenous development of wireless systems based on 802.11 (WiFi) and 802.16 (WiMax).
The set up will bridge the gap between academia and industry by providing a platform for product-based solutions to the challenges faced by future wireless communications.
It will give know-how of implementing MIMO detectors in Hardware, and help in the establishment of a test-bed for real world implementation of efficient high performance algorithms.