Effects of thermal noise on accuracy of measured BLAST capacities

Abstract

There are ever increasing demands, in wireless communications, for additional capacity to handle voice, data and wideband Internet applications. These demands are constrained by the bandwidth that was allocated to wireless communications and practical limits on maximum power and minimum cell size. The spectral efficiencies in present day wireless systems hover around 1 bit/s/Hz. BLAST (Bell-labs LAyered Space-Time) is a communication technique for achieving very high spectral efficiencies in highly scattering environments using multiple transmit and receive antennas. A measurement campaign was undertaken to assess the BLAST gains in spectral efficiency in various environments. The measurements were to be performed over a narrow band at 2.44 GHz with five transmitting and seven receiving antennas, respectively. The effects of thermal noise on the accuracy of measured BLAST capacities are investigated.