Evaluating Indoor Versus Outdoor Infrastructure for the Delivery of Broadband MIMO-OFDM Service

This paper compares how using either indoor or outdoor base stations affects the Multiple Input/Multiple Output (MIMO) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) physical layer performance experienced by an indoor user. This study starts by collecting outdoor-to-indoor and indoor-to-indoor MIMO propagation measurements in a campus environment. To ensure a fair comparison, the measurement receiver is positioned at the same set of indoor locations for both sets of measurements. The propagation measurement data is then used directly in a MIMO-OFDM system simulation in order to determine whether using either indoor or outdoor infrastructure will offer a physical layer performance advantage.