Experimental evaluation of TDD downlink CoMP system with OTA antenna calibration
20 February 2012
Coordinated Multi Point (CoMP) technology has been considered as a promising means to mitigate inter-cell interference and has great potential to significantly improve the system capacity as well as the spectral efficiency for celledge users. To evaluate its practical performance in the cellular network, we have implemented the real-time TDD based downlink CoMP experimental system operating over bandwidth of 20MHz. Extensive field measurements were conducted in the indoor environment with the system configuration of two operating base stations and two terminals. Performance results demonstrate significant spectral efficiency gain of joint transmission based downlink CoMP over the traditional single-cell transmission. This experimental system also validated the effectiveness of Over-the-air (OTA) antenna calibration method, which ensures the channel reciprocity can be well leveraged by TDD CoMP transmission for improved system design efficiency.
