Measurement-based analysis of transmit antenna selection for in-cabin distributed MIMO system

Aircraft seems to be the last isolated island where the wireless access is still not available. In this paper, we consider the distributed multiple-input multiple-output (D-MIMO) system application based on measurements in aircraft cabin. The channel response matrices of in-cabin D-MIMO system are collected by using a wideband channel sounder. Channel capacities with optimum transmit antenna selections (TASs) are calculated from the measured data at different receiver positions. Then the optimum capacity results are compared to those without selection in different transmit SNR. It is shown that the TAS can lead obvious capacity gain, especially in the front and back of cabin. The capacity gain represents a decreasing trend with the transmit SNR increasing. The optimal transmit antenna subset is closely related to the transmit SNR. With the SNR increasing, more transmit antennas will be chosen for higher performance. The subset of those transmit antennas near the receiver is a reasonable choice in practical application of D-MIMO system.