Variable rate MIMO communication with airborne platforms: An experimental study

Motivated by the need for robust and high throughput communication with airborne platforms, a variable rate MIMO scheme that combines the D-BLAST architecture with per antenna spreading was proposed. This paper is focused on the experimental study of this approach. We developed a software defined radio implementation of the variable rate MIMO system based on GNU Radio. Over the air transmission and reception is enabled by Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP). The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in realizing the throughput gain afforded by MIMO communication under potentially rank deficient channel conditions that are often present in an airborne environment.

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