Antenna mismatch and calibration problem in coordinated multi-point transmission system

Recently, Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission/Reception technology is introduced into the fourth-generation cellular mobile communication system. Time-division duplex (TDD) system is more suitable to apply CoMP when joint processing is needed because it can easily get the channel information through channel reciprocity. Actually, a crucial point to realise channel reciprocity is the antenna calibration, especially in the inter-base station (BS) case. Self-antenna calibration within the BS in the conventional system has been studied in previous works. In this paper, the authors investigate the impact of un-calibrated antennas of BSs and mobile stations (MSs) on the precoding matrix of two precoding techniques [block diagonal (BD) and zero forcing (ZF)] in the CoMP system. A theoretical model is set and analysed. The discussion of some properties gives a complete overview of the calibration problem in the CoMP system. In addition, the authors propose a practical scheme to solve inter-BS antenna calibration problem. System simulation results, which validate their analysis, are presented to show the necessity of antenna calibration.

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