On Channel Coverage of MIMO Systems

Coverage is an important issue addressed in cell planning for mobile communication systems. In conventional single-input single-output (SISO) systems, cell coverage is mainly determined by path loss or the strength of the received signal at cell edge. However, with the introduction of multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) technique, it is not appropriate to use only the path loss to estimate coverage any more. Apparently, more factors, such as the number of antennas and channel capacity, should also be considered. In this paper, on the basis of Shannon capacity, we propose a new concept of so-called channel coverage for MIMO systems. When the channel state information (CSI) is not available at transmitter, we derive its lower and upper bounds which are the random variables related to channel matrix. By using random matrix theory, the exact close-form expressions for their mean and variance are then derived, which are observed to coincide well with the simulation results.