Performance analysis of MIMO–OFDM in various outdoor fading environments

Multiple-input Multiple-output (MIMO) technology is being combined with Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) for use in next generation broadband wireless communication systems, and there has been an increase in the study of MIMO–OFDM systems. IEEE 802.11n specification uses MIMO–OFDM system to improve network throughput and coverage over the two previous standards, 802.11a and 802.11g, in indoor and outdoor environments, respectively. With an extended range of about two hundred meters in the outdoor environment, the use of 802.11n has increased. This paper analyzes the effect of shadowing, moving user and foliage in outdoor environment. There is a special need to analyze performance measures such as Spectral Efficiency and Bit Error Rate (BER), and this is the subject matter of interest in this paper.