Wideband MIMO Channel Sounder for Radio Measurements in the 60 GHz Band

Applications of the unlicensed 60 GHz band include indoor wireless local area networks, outdoor short range communications and on body networks. To characterize the radio channel for such applications, a novel digital chirp sounder with programmable bandwidths up to 6 GHz with switched two transmit channels and two parallel receive channels for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) measurements was realized. For waveform durations of 819.2 μs, Doppler measurements can be performed up to 610 Hz for the single transmit and two receive configuration or 305 Hz for MIMO measurements. In this paper, we present the architecture of the sounder and demonstrate its performance from back to back tests and from measurements of rms delay spread, path loss and MIMO capacity in an indoor and an outdoor environment. For 20 dB threshold, the rms delay spread for 90% of the measured locations is estimated at 1.4 ns and 1 ns for the indoor and outdoor environments, respectively. MIMO capacity close to the iid channel capacity for 2 by 2 configuration is achieved in both environments.