Hardware Simulator Design for MIMO Propagation Channel on Shipboard at 2.2 GHz

A wireless communication system can be tested either in actual conditions or with a hardware simulator reproducing actual conditions. With a hardware simulator it is possible to freely simulate a desired radio channel, making it possible to test “on table” mobile radio equipments. This paper presents new architectures for the digital block of a hardware simulator of MIMO propagation channels. This simulator can be used for LTE and WLAN IEEE 802.11ac applications, in indoor and outdoor environments. However, in this paper, specific architectures of the digital block of the simulator for shipboard environment are presented. A hardware simulator must reproduce the behavior of the radio propagation channel. Thus, a measurements campaign has been conducted to obtain the impulse responses of the shipboard channel using a channel sounder designed and realized at IETR. After the presentation of the channel sounder, the channel impulse responses are described and implemented. Then, the new architectures of the digital block of the hardware simulator, implemented on a Xilinx Virtex-IV FPGA are presented. The accuracy, the occupation on the FPGA and the latency of the architectures are analyzed.