Antenna Saturation Effects on MIMO Capacity

Abstract

A theoretically derived antenna saturation point is shown to exist for MIMO systems, at which the system suffers a capacity growth decrease from linear to logarithmic with increasing antenna numbers. We show this saturation point increases linearly with the radius of the region containing the receiver antennas and is independent of the number of antennas. Using an alternative formulation of capacity for MIMO systems we derive a closed form capacity expression which uses the physics of signal propagation combined with statistics of the scattering environment. This expression gives the capacity of a MIMO system in terms of antenna placement and scattering environment and shows that the saturation effect is due to spatial correlation between receiver antennas. Show more