LCX-MIMO System over Linear Corridor Environment

Zhu Zeyu (1651207)


Leaky coaxial (LCX) cable has been applied in wireless communication as base station antennas for narrow and long cell environments such as shopping mall, underground mining and tunnel. An LCX cable is basically a coaxial cable which has open slots in its outer conductor to enable radio signal to be received into or radiated out of the cable along its entire length. In these linear indoor scenarios, LCX cable performs better than omni-directional antennas because of the stability against long distance and obstacles. In conventional systems, one LCX cable is utilized as one single antenna. However, a recent research shows that one LCX cable can be deployed as two antennas by inputting signal into two ends of the cable. Therefore, $2\times 2$ multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications can be implemented by using one LCX cable, providing the possibility for throughput enhancement.

In the previous research, measurements of the wireless property of LCX cable has been done in an anechoic chamber where reflecting waves are eliminated. Performance of LCX cable has been also measured in real office environment where the LCX is bended 90 degrees to fit the room corner. In this paper we measured the throughput of 2-by-2 LCX-MIMO system in a long corridor environment at different heights under IEEE802.11 standard in 5GHz band. From the results, the proposed system using single LCX cable achieved the expected MIMO function. The results also illustrated that system with LCX cable shows better performance than system using omni-directional antennas at some measurement postions. Furthermore, we discuss the channel properties when LCX cable are set on different vertical heights.