ENHANCED CHANNEL SIMULATOR FOR EFFICIENT ANTENNA EVALUATION

• US 20090299717A1
• Filed: 05/30/2008
• Published: 12/03/2009
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science And Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.
• Original Assignee: Hong Kong Applied Science And Technology Research Institute Co., Ltd.
• Inventors: I, Chih-Lin, Zhao, Xueyuan, Lee, Chun Kit, Lau, Kin Nang, Pan, Zhengang, Cheng, Roger Shu Kwan
• Granted Patent: US 7,941,302 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 703/14
• CPC Class Codes: H04B 17/0087 using auxiliary channels or channel simulators

Abstract

Method and apparatus for channel simulation is disclosed. The claimed invention provides method and apparatus 1200 to simulate a propagation channel, particularly a multiple-input-multiple-input (MIMO) channel. The claimed invention further provides a method and apparatus for efficient optimization of antenna by the enhanced channel simulation. The claimed invention takes both antenna characteristics and channel characteristics as inputs, and output time-varying channel realizations to generate the system metrics as the optimization target for antenna under optimization. The claimed invention advantageous provides enhanced channel simulation to meet the accuracy requirement of antenna evaluation.

Claims

1. A method of simulating a propagation channel, comprising:

obtaining channel power angular distribution;

generating time-varying channel realization sequence using the actual antenna radiation pattern;

adding antenna element isolation effect to said time-varying channel realization sequence; and

applying baseband abstraction to generate system metrics.

2. The method of simulating a propagation channel according to claim 1, wherein said obtaining channel power angular distribution additionally comprises:

selecting a channel scenario;

loading corresponding azimuth parameters to generate azimuth power angular distribution;

providing corresponding elevation parameters to generate elevation power angular distribution; and

computing said channel power angular distribution.

3. The method of simulating a propagation channel according to claim 1, wherein said obtaining channel power angular distribution additionally comprises:

conducting channel probing; and

performing estimation algorithm to obtain said channel power angular distribution.

4. The method of simulating a propagation channel according to claim 1, wherein said generating time-varying channel realization sequence additionally comprises:

forming one or more rays for one or more clusters according to channel power angular distribution;

selecting a transmitting-receiving cluster pair according to a cluster mapping matrix; and

computing channel realizations of multiple channel taps and multiple antenna pairs for a series of time instances.

5. The method of simulating a propagation channel according to claim 1, wherein said system metrics are selected from a group of system metrics consisting of capacity Bit Error Rate and Frame Error Rate indicator.

6. A method of evaluating and optimizing antenna design, comprising:

defining antenna structure and material parameters as a population of genetic algorithm;

generating antenna characteristics by one or more electromagnetic computational methods;

computing system metrics of the antenna characteristics by a channel simulator;

choosing a fitness function as system metrics to generate a new population; and

obtaining one more optimized antenna structure and material parameters.

7. The method of evaluating and optimizing antenna design as claimed in claim 6, wherein said antenna characteristics are selected from a group of antenna characteristics consisting of antenna radiation pattern, transmission characteristics, and reflection characteristics.

8. The method of evaluating and optimizing antenna design as claimed in claim 6, wherein said system metrics are selected from a group of system metrics consisting of ergodic capacity, outage capacity, post-detection SINR, raw symbol error rate, raw bit error rate, coded bit error rate, and frame error rate.

9. The method of evaluating and optimizing antenna design as claimed in claim 7, wherein said transmission characteristics are selected from a group of transmission characteristics consisting of antenna gain, insertion loss, and MIMO antenna element isolation.

10. The method of evaluating and optimizing antenna design as claimed in claim 7, wherein said reflection characteristics are selected from a group of reflection characteristics consisting of reflection coefficient, return loss, and Voltage Standing Wave Ratio.