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December 22, 2022December 9, 2024Fundamentals

Demystifying the Fourier Transform

The Fourier Transform is often used in Communication and Signal Processing to find the spectral content of a time-domain signal. The most common example is that of a sinusoid in the time domain, resulting in a sharply peaked signal in the frequency domain, also known as a delta function. A rectangular pulse in the time domain has a more complicated frequency domain equivalent, a sinc function. A rectangular pulse may be thought of as a combination of many sinusoids, hence its frequency domain equivalent is not that straightforward.

October 7, 2022December 9, 2024Antennas, Capacity, Channel Capacity, Fundamentals

Why is MIMO Fading Capacity Higher than AWGN Capacity

From linear algebra we know that to find four unknowns we need four independent equations. There is no way we can find the values of A, B, C and D from the above equations. To simplify the above equations we have removed AWGN but even in presence of AWGN we will have the same predicament. This shows that in the absence of fading there is no multiplexing gain however high the Signal to Noise Ratio is (in the above example SNR is infinite).

September 28, 2022December 9, 20245G, Antennas, Capacity, Fundamentals

MIMO, SIMO and MISO Capacity in AWGN and Fading Environment

In a previous post we had discussed MIMO capacity in a fading environment and compared it to AWGN capacity. It sometimes feels unintuitive that fading capacity can be higher than AWGN capacity. If a signal is continuously fluctuating how is it possible that we are able to have reliable communication. But this is the remarkable feature of MIMO systems that they are able to achieve blazing speeds over an unreliable channel, at least theoretically.

May 30, 2022December 9, 20245G, Antennas

Fundamentals of Direction of Arrival Estimation

Direction of Arrival (DOA) estimation is a fundamental problem in communications and signal processing with application in cellular communications, radar, sonar etc. It has become increasingly important in recent times as 5G communications uses DOA to spatially separate the users resulting in higher capacity and throughput. Direction of Arrival estimation can be thought of as the converse of beamforming.

March 16, 2022December 9, 20245G, Capacity, Fundamentals

5G Data Rates and Shannon Capacity

Recently I came across a post from T-Mobile in which they claim to have achieved a download speed of 5.6 Gbps over a 100 MHz channel resulting in a Spectral Efficiency of more than 50 bps/Hz. This was achieved in an MU-MIMO configuration with eight connected devices having an aggregate of 16 parallel streams i.e. two parallel streams per device. The channel used for this experiment was the mid-band frequency of 2.5 GHz.

March 9, 2022December 9, 20245G, Capacity, Fundamentals

5G Rollout in the USA: Long Way to Go

There is a 3 way race for 5G leadership in the US between T-Mobile(+Sprint), Verizon and AT&T. There are competing claims for the number of 5G subscribers, coverage area and download speeds. But let us look where the 5G industry stands today compared to the expectations a few years back. More than 80% of US population lives in urban areas which comprise of 2% of the total land area of about 10 million squared kilometers. That is 80% of the population lives in an area of about 200,000 squared kilometers.

February 25, 2022December 9, 2024History of Science, Random Thoughts

My Top 12 Marconi Award Winners

While reading an article on social media I came to know that Siavash M. Alamouti has been awarded the Marconi Award for the year 2022. It came as no surprise as his work on MIMO technology has been ground breaking and has influenced the work of thousands of researchers. If there is a moot point it is that this award must have been given earlier. Just look up his 1998 paper on Google Scholar and you will find that the number of citations has reached a staggering figure of 18,756. On a personal front, I must admit that when I started my research on MIMO I was having difficulty grasping the concepts and it was Alamouti’s paper that set my direction of research.

January 31, 2022December 9, 2024Antennas, Fundamentals

Near Field of an Antenna

The Electromagnetic Radiation from an antenna, particularly dipole antenna, has been studied in great detail. The mathematical framework proposed by Maxwell has stood the test of time and theoretical concepts have been verified through physical measurements. But the behavior of Electromagnetic (EM) waves close to the radiating antenna is not that well understood. This region that extends to about a wavelength from the antenna is called Near Field, as opposed to Far Field, which extends further out.

December 22, 2021December 9, 20245G, 6G

5G Millimeter Waves: Are They Really Harmful

There has been a continuous debate about harmful effects of Electromagnetic Radiations ever since they came into existence. Most of the research results suggest that there are no harmful effects, if the rules and regulations are followed. But there is a small body of research that suggests that there might be some harmful effects and more research needs to be carried out. This is particularly important now as 5G Wireless Technology is being rolled out around the world and it uses millimeter waves for which we have limited data.