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).

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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.

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Shannon Capacity CDMA vs OFDMA

We have previously discussed Shannon Capacity of CDMA and OFMDA, here we will discuss it again in a bit more detail. Let us assume that we have 20 MHz bandwidth for both the systems which is divided amongst 20 users. For OFDMA we assume that each user gets 1 MHz bandwidth and there are no guard bands or pilot carriers. For CDMA we assume that each user utilizes full 20 MHz bandwidth. We can say that for OFDMA each user has a dedicated channel whereas for CDMA the channel is shared between 20 simultaneous users. We know that Shannon Capacity […]

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Does Shannon Capacity Increase by Dividing a Frequency Band into Narrow Bins

Somebody recently asked me this question “Does Shannon Capacity Increase by Dividing a Frequency Band into Narrow Bins”. To be honest I was momentarily confused and thought that this may be the case since many of the modern Digital Communication Systems do use narrow frequency bins e.g. LTE. But on closer inspection I found that the Shannon Capacity does not change, in fact it remains exactly the same. Following is the reasoning for that. Shannon Capacity is calculated as: C=B*log2(1+SNR) or C=B*log2(1+P/(B*No)) Now if the bandwidth ‘B’ is divided into 10 equal blocks then the transmit power ‘P’ for each […]

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Soft Frequency Reuse in LTE

Frequency Reuse is a well known concept that has been applied to wireless systems over the past two decades e.g. in GSM systems. As the name suggests Frequency Reuse implies using the same frequencies over different geographical areas. If we have a 25MHz band then we can have 125 GSM channels and 125*8=1000 time multiplexed users in a given geographical area. Now if we want to increase the number of users we would have to reuse the same frequency band in a geographically separated area. The technique usually adopted is to use a fraction of the total frequency band in […]

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MIMO Capacity in a Fading Environment

The Shannon Capacity of a channel is the data rate that can be achieved over a given bandwidth (BW) and at a particular signal to noise ratio (SNR) with diminishing bit error rate (BER). This has been discussed in an earlier post for the case of SISO channel and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). For a MIMO fading channel the capacity with channel not known to the transmitter is given as (both sides have been normalized by the bandwidth [1]): Shannon Capacity of a MIMO Channel where NT is the number of transmit antennas, NR is the number of receive […]

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Shannon Capacity of LTE (Effective)

In the previous post we calculated the Shannon Capacity of LTE as a function of bandwidth. We now calculate the capacity as a function of SNR (bandwidth fixed at 20MHz and signal power varied). We also use the concept of effective bandwidth to get a more realistic estimate of the capacity. The modified Shannon Capacity formula is given as: C=B_eff*log2(1+SNR) where B_eff=Bandwidth*eff1*eff2*eff3*eff4 eff1=0.9=due to adjacent channel leakage ratio and practical filter issues eff2=0.93=due to cyclic prefix eff3=0.94=due to pilot assisted channel estimation eff4=0.715=due to signalling overhead B_eff=0.57*B Therefore C=0.57*B*log2(1+SNR) Note: This is the capacity in a SISO channel with no […]

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Shannon Capacity of LTE (Ideal)

Shannon Capacity of LTE in AWGN can be calculated by using the Shannon Capacity formula: C=B*log2(1+SNR) or C=B*log2(1+P/(B*No)) The signal power P is set at -90dBm, the Noise Power Spectral Density No is set at 4.04e-21 W/Hz (-174dBm/Hz) and the bandwidth is varied from 1.25MHz to 20MHz. It is seen that the capacity increases from about 10Mbps to above 70Mbps as the bandwidth is varied from 1.25MHz to 20MHz (keeping the signal power constant). It must be noted that this is the capacity with a single transmit and single receive antenna (MIMO capacity would obviously be higher).  

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Shannon Capacity of a GSM Channel in Fading Environment

In the previous post we calculated the Shannon Capacity of a 200kHz GSM channel in AWGN (Additive White Gaussian Noise). However, in a practical scenario the capacity is limited by time varying fading and interference. Let us consider a fading channel with four possible states corresponding to SNRs of 15dB, 10dB, 5dB and 0dB. The probability of these states is 0.50, 0.25, 0.15 and 0.10 respectively. The Shannon Capacity of such a channel is given as (assuming that the channel state information is known at the receiver): C=Σ B*log2(1+SNRi)* p(SNRi) C=B*(Σ log2(1+SNRi)* p(SNRi)) C=(200e3)*(log2(1+31.62)*0.50+log2(1+10.00)*0.25+log2(1+3.16)*0.15+log2(1+1)*0.10) C=757.43kbps Assuming that only one out […]

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