Design and deployment considerations for high performance MIMO testbeds

MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) enabled systems are characterized by higher reliability and transmission rates, as compared to conventional SISO (Single Input Single Output) systems. However, unless administered properly, the MIMO technology may not facilitate very high throughputs on point-to-point wireless links. Therefore, it becomes imperative for the network architect to design such networks in ways that fully exploit the inherent properties of MIMO. In this paper, we first conduct an extensive experimental study, using a powerful hardware platform, in order to understand the behavior of MIMO links in different topological scenarios. Our experiments involve scenarios with MIMO links in isolation, as well as in competition with other MIMO and SISO links. Second, we perform measurements with different commercial platforms towards assessing the ability of each platform to efficiently support the MIMO technology. Based on our experimental observations we deduce that the CPU processing speed of the underlying hardware platform is an important factor that can hide the performance benefits of a MIMO enabled tranceiver. We comment on the applicability of the different hardware choices that we test; furthermore, we suggest the most appropriate choice for building a MIMO testbed, taking into account the cost, the extendability and the re-usability of the selected platform. Finally, having adopted this choice in our testbed design, we provide a description of our testbed architecture.