Impact of Different Antenna Arrangements and Transmitter Tilt to D-Band LoS MIMO Channel

With new technological advancements in wireless communication, reflected in 3GPP (Third Generation Partnership Project) cellular or wireless local area network (WLAN) standards, increasing data rate is a prominent aspect. Consequently, some backhaul networks require a data rate in the order of 100 gigabits per second. The D-Band, which can provide ample bandwidth, potentially can support this data rate. This paper analyzes the line-of-sight D-Band multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channel for different antenna arrangements, which are best suited for achieving the nearly orthogonal channels for exploiting MIMO full-rank spatial multiplexing. This allows for flexibility in antenna arrangement design in hardware, which is not limited to uniform linear or rectangular arrays. We have also addressed the impact of the transmitter array orientation and provided an algorithm to compensate for the misalignment by estimating the orientation and mechanically re-aligning the receiver array in that direction. Furthermore, a general simplified communication link is numerically simulated, showing that tilt significantly impacts equalizer performance and overall spectral efficiency, and the compensation algorithm is able to restore system performance effectively. Additionally, by comparing different antenna arrangements, it is found that a triangular antenna arrangement has exceptional performance over a range of antenna spacing. Unlike other antenna arrangements, that require optimum antenna spacing, it does not require optimum but tolerates a range of deviations with little practical impact on system performance.