Future MIMO-WLAN

To provide wireless multimedia applications future generation wireless local area networks (WLAN) have to support much higher data rates (200 MBit/s up to 1 GBit/s) at high link reliability. Furthermore, the gap between ''wired'' and ''wireless'' LANs should be decreased.

Recent research results show that the use of multiple antennas at the wireless nodes (multiple-input multiple-output, MIMO) in combination with and space-time signal processing allows to incerase the data rate and/or to improve the link reliability without additional costs in bandwidth or power. Moreover, multiple antennas allow enhancements to the existing IEEE 802.11 technology which are standard compliant and improve coverage and link quality.

Today existing wireless local area networks (WLAN) support data rates from 11 MBit/s (IEEE 802.11b) to 54 MBit/s (IEEE 802.11a/g). The focus of this project is to enhance the IEEE 802.11.a technology especially by the use of multiple antenna arrays and to develop new concepts for future high-speed wireless LANs.

Togehter with our industry partner ASCOM AR&T we work on following topics:

• Development of 802.11a standard compliant enhancements with respect to improved coverage and link quality.
• Design of an efficient 802.11a based MIMO front-end that supports up to 380 Mbit/s in a proprietary mode for power users.
• Extend the existing technology to higher carrier frequencies, i.e. to the 24 GHz ISM Band
• Design of VHDL based realizations of the research results on FPGAs.