Software Defined Radio based MIMO channel sounding

Abstract: With todays increased use of smartphones and other wireless devices, the demands on the wireless networks have increased dramatically. This has prompted the re- search and development of new types of wireless systems using multiple antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver, known as MIMO. Since wireless systems are very susceptible to interference and to changes in the environment, it is im- portant to know how the wireless channel behaves in the environment that the wireless system is intended to operate in. This is done by sounding the channel, e.g. where a signal is transmitted from the transmitter and processed on the re- ceiver in order to obtain the impulse response of the channel. When performing channel sounding on a MIMO system it is important that the signals transmitted from the antennas interfere with each other as little as possible so as to get a good estimation for how the channel behaves. In this thesis we implement a 2 by 2 MIMO channel sounder using m-sequences and Zadoff Chu-sequences, both with good autocorrelation properties. The major part of the implementation is done on an FPGA in order to be able to perform the sounding in real time.