WHAT: A simulation tool based on an electromagnetics exact formulation
of a wireless link and allowing its user to:
a) Assess the performance of MIMO antenna systems at the capacity and throughput level
b) Assess the dynamic range of communication algorithms with realistic antenna systems
c) Study Spectrum Sharing, Dynamic Spectrum Access and System Coexistence
WHY: Smart Algorithms typically oversimplify by considering a MIMO antenna system to consist of
a number, say N, of individual antennas. MIMObit considers it what it really is: An antenna system
which happens to have N ports. The ramifications are not trivial.
WHO: MIMObit is based on a cross layered formulation of wireless communications.
As such, the following users/disciplines find it useful:
a) Base Station, User Equipment or Access point Antenna engineers who have to make product design decisions.
They can create smaller/cheaper products for the same throughput, or higher throughput for the same size/cost product.
b) Communication engineers studying realistic antenna ramifications to smart algorithms
such as 'Antenna Selection', Direction of Arrival Estimation, Channel Estimation, etc.
c) Engineers investigating Spectrum Sharing, Dynamic Spectrum Access and System Coexistence
FACTOID: MIMObit can be applied to any MIMO antenna technology, e.g. from sub 6.0GHz of WiFi and 5G to the mmWave frequencies of 5G and beyond.
PLATFORM: MIMObit currently runs on Windows only.
Network (i.e. Floating) as well as Node Locked Licenses are available.
To buy, contact sales directly.
what people say:
"...I have been waiting for something like this for 20 years!" RS
"...your software will find a very promising market, educational and industry, it answers many questions in current research in MIMO." HAR
"...he demonstrated his company’s newly released MIMObit antenna/RF analysis software package (see attachment) which targets cognitive wireless and DSA. The demonstration was quite impressive..." DBC
"Just what is needed for enhancing 4G; congratulations!" PK
And there have been several other verbal positive comments that cannot be listed here.
So, don't wait. Give MIMObit a try!
| Tool |
Status |
Description |
| MIMObit 1.0 |
Released!!!
11FEB2016
Note:
simultaneity with a certain scientific announcement that same day was unintentional and purely coincidental!
-the management
:-)
|
MIMObit analyzes networks consisting of Tx and Rx radios enabled with multi-antenna systems in a variety of propagation environments. It provides graphical output of Spectrum Utilization, SINR, Capacity and Bit Rates. It also provides Spectrum Utilization Information such waterfall charts, Occupancy and signal or interference Power Spectral Density in the environment. MIMObit is based on an electromagnetics exact formulation of the network formed by arbitrary distributions of Tx and Rx radios. The radios in the propagation environment are grouped into three groups, signal transmitters, interference transmitters and receivers. All radios could be outfitted with single or multiple antenna systems. The user can customize the excitation vectors of each radio so as to apply various algorithms of choice. MIMObit then calculates signal and interference Power Spectral Density in the environment, Spectrum Occupancy, waterfall graphs, Capacity and Bit Rates for LTE, 802.11n 802.11ac and WiMAX radios. MIMObit also includes a Method of Moments tool to describe various dipole arrays and reflectors. MIMObit also allows the user to import antenna files from simulations via the HFSS and CST's Microwave Studio, FEKO and the XFDTD EM simulation tools. It supports simple and complicated propagation models such as LOS, flat-Earth, iid, SCME, Winner II, Winner+ and IEEE TGn. It also accepts user defined propagation models/files. MIMOscript is the scripted version that could be invoked from within in-house codes for additional research studies and investigations. |
| MIMObit 2.0 |
May 30, 2017
|
Includes the following main features:
- Import from Ray Tracing tools (for environs where standard prop models do/may not apply)
- importing of user-defined propagation models
- tools to customize imported and/or MIMObit generated propagation environments
- 3GPP TR38.901 5G propagation models (0.5GHz - 100GHz)
- Simplified antenna systems for Massive MIMO applications (can handle coupling for some of the antenna elements and simple Array Factor for others)
|
MIMObit 3.0
|
Jan 25, 2019
|
Includes the following features:
|
|
Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antenna systems
are being employed in WiFi to increase robustness and throughput and are
fundamental to the successful deployment of Cognitive Radio, 4G and 5G wireless
systems. But, unlike past practices,
MIMO antenna systems cannot be adequately described with traditional attributes
of gain and radiation efficiency alone. Furthermore,
the same techniques that optimize MIMO systems have the greatest potential in
optimizing Spectrum Utilization and Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA)
approaches. Thus, integrated approaches,
where antenna design decisions are made at the Capacity/Throughput level, while
DSA decisions are made at the Spectrum Utilization Efficiency (SUE) level are
required in order to arrive at optimal cost-performance solutions.
|
A typical wireless communications scenario
|
| MIMObit provides just that! For the antenna designer, in addition to the
conventional MEG, ECC, etc., performance evaluation of antenna systems in terms
of achieved Capacity and Throughput. In fact, MIMObit 3.0 can model the “CTIA Test Plan for 2x2 DL MIMO and Tx
Diversity OTA Performance”. Based
on an electromagnetics exact formulation, MIMObit treats MIMO antenna systems
very accurately, including antenna terminations, element coupling, matching
circuits, full active E-field gains and various standards based RF propagation
models. For the DSA designer and
spectrum manager, Signal and Interference Tx radio user-defined power masks and
temporal behaviors allow for the evaluation of RF Radio Maps, Harmful
Interference, Spectrograms and Spectrum Utilization.
|
The MIMObit main GUI
|
*
EM exact formulation of MIMO antenna systems
* IEEE TGn, 3GPP Winner II/+, SCME, NR, iid, ...prop models
* CTIA 2x2 MIMO & Tx Diversity Test Plan
modeling * import and visualize custom, Ray Tracing prop. models
* RFpower/SINR/Capacity/Throughput maps & statistics
* Throughput statistics (LTE, WiFi, WiMAX Link sims) * Spectrograms, Spectrum Utilization, RF RadMaps
* Versatile Dipole Array Antenna MoM Analysis tool
*
Propagation env., device orientation & other statistics * Import antenna sims from HFSS, CST, XFDTD and FEKO
* MIMO Antenna systems and Power Mask Libraries
* RF Map visualization in Google Earth * Scriptable for integration with in-house codes
|
APPLICATIONS
*
MIMO Antenna Design Evaluation at the Capacity and Throughput level for
LTE, WiFi, WiMAX & 5G sytems.
*
Coverage, Spectrum management, Coexistence, Cognitive Radio, Dynamic
Spectrum Access (DSA)
|
Open Loop Capacity CDF (bps/Hz) Open Loop Capacity CDF (bps/Hz) for 6 different layout options of handset 4-port MEA antenna design (user effects included) The best layout design outperforms the worst in capacity by 50%!!!
|
RadMap Plot (shows the RF power map in the area)
Spectrogram (emulates a spectrum analyzer's display in the field)
Spectrum Occupancy (MANCAT-type occupancy plot of frequency channels)
|
One of the output results of the CTIA 2x2 Downlink MIMO & Tx Diversity Over-The-Air (OTA) Performance Test Plan
modeling
|
MIMObit Report of the CTIA 2x2 DL MIMO & Tx Diversity OTA Performance Test Plan simulation
|
|
Capacity CDFs of five simple dipole MEAs on a WiFi UE. This study uses a 4-port, +-45 deg dipole array on an Access Point (not shown)
(study of real estate cost and diversity effects on capacity)
|
Open Loop 2x2 Capacity vs. SINR |
Product level EM description of antenna systems. 4x4 MIMO with a
4-port antenna system on the handset (the handset CAD includes some 90
parts in order to capture enough details for design decisions at the
product level).
|
Capacity CDF of the link on the left. Capacity vs. average SNR and choice of 4x4 or 4x2 Antenna Selection mode. |
|
MIMObit includes a versatile 5-stage multi-branch and multi-band matching network design utility. For each band of interest, you can specify the matching network for each antenna port, examine the resultant S-parameters and, after you deem the quality of the match acceptable, save the lumped element values used and the Touchstone 1.0 file description of the network. It can then be combined with the antenna and MIMObit will transform the S-parameters to those of the combined circuit and also transform the active E-field gains of the matched antenna for subsequent system simulations.
|
The 5-stage multi-branch multi-band matching network design GUI
|
|
PlotLab is a utility that allows the examination and a variety of experimentation and studies of MIMO antenna systems. The user can import a multi-port antenna system and examine its S-par behavior and its active E-field gains (vectorial) under any arbitrary excitation condition.
Additionally, the user can combine the antenna system with any matching or other network for a brand new antenna system. For example, an original 6-port antenna system could be turned into a 2-port antenna where each port would be drive, via a corporate feed, three of the original antenna elements. The "matching" circuit in this case could consist of two independent 4-port power 1-to-3 dividers/combiners.
The active E-fields of a MIMO antenna system depend on the source impedances and PlotLab allows the user to change the latter and examine the effect on MEG, ECC, Radiation Efficiency, etc. Additionally, S-par reference impedance renormalization and port extensions are offered.
Finally, the active input impedances of the antenna system are dependent on the excitation vector and are dynamically listed. That is, they change upon a user change of the excitation.
|
The PlotLab Utility GUI
|
MIMObit can now import directly from EMAG's Terrano, a fast and full functionality Ray Tracer, propagation scenarios. The user defines a geometry and the location of Tx and Rx radios in Terrano and exports directly into MIMObit the results of the plane wave decomposition simulation (i.e. all the rays connecting the Tx-Rx radio pairs with their polarimetric characteristics such as Angles of Departure (AoD), Angles of Arrival (AoA), loss, delay, phase for both polarizations). The user continues in MIMObit with the ability to study any MIMO antenna system, on any of the radios, under any orientation, of any temporal behavior, etc. All the usual MIMObit Capacity and Throughput results are then available as well as all the experimentation features (including scripting for calling MIMObit from inside the user's own codes and more customized studies).
The plot to the right shows the Total Power around a Tx radio installed on a 10m high pole somewhere in Manhattan. The user can run RadMap, PropStats or OrientStats in MIMObit to study peculiar mmWave environments and antenna systems that may not be well represented by the existing 3GPP propagation models.
|
MIMObit results on an imported Ray Tracing propagation environment (somewhere in NY City).
|
| subject |
link |
description |
antenna design
|
2 V-pol dipole design |
This video tutorial shows how the Method of Moment (MoM) code integrated in MIMObit can be used to design simple dipole-like antenna structures.
|
RadMap
|
download the test1.txt file
|
This is a completed RadMap project. It contains all the input files and the results files for a system of 4 Tx radios (1 signal and 3 interference transmitting radios) as well as the output results. These files are stored in a zipped directory which, in order to bypass firewall issues, has its extension changed to .txt.
1) Change the extension so the file is test1.zip and unzip it to the directory test1. In this directory there is a test1.prj file
2) Open MIMObit and load the test1 project by using "Load project" and selecting the test1.prj file
3) You can visualize the RadMap results and experiment with various changes to the excitation vector/power, etc. You can also edit the Tx, or Rx files and modify the characteristics of the radios involved.
|
WiFi antenna performance
|
download the WiFi Antenna Performance pdf file from here
|
This example demonstrates each of the three MIMObit Apps, RadMap, PropStats and OrientStats, on some WiFi antennas. A 4 cross dipole antenn system is used at the Tx. Two Rx antenna designs are considered, a 2V-pol and a 3 V-pol dipole antenna systems.
|
RadMap tutorial
|
download the RadMap tutorial from here.
|
A tutorial with most of the capabilities of RadMap applied to a 4x2 MIMO scenario. It includes a 4-port signal Tx radio, an Interference Tx radio and a grid of 16x16 Rx radios equipped with 2-port antenna systems.
|
PropStats & OrientStats tutorial
|
download the PropStats & OrienStats tutorial here.
|
A tutorial with most of the capabilities of PropStats and OrientStats applied to a 4x2 MIMO
scenario. It includes a 4-port signal Tx radio, an Interference Tx
radio and a single Rx radio equipped with a 2-port antenna
system.
|
A. Al-Wahhamy, N. E. Buris, H. M. Al-Rizzo, and S. Yahya, "An Efficient Paradigm for Evaluating the Channel Capacity
of Closed-Loop Massive MIMO Systems," Progress In Electromagnetics Research C, Vol. 98, 1-16, 2020.
Al-Wahhamy, H. Al-Rizzo and N.E. Buris, “Efficient
Evaluation of MIMO Channel Capacity”,
IEEE Systems Journal, vol.14, Issue 1,
pp.614-620, March 2020.
Chu Chengyi and N.E. Buris, “Layout Effects of MIMO
Antennas in Handsets”,
International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation
(ISAP), Xian, China, Oct. 2019
N. Agnihotri, A. Kantemur, J. Tak, and H. Xin, "A Reconfigurable UWB MIMO Antenna for Indoor and Outdoor Communication Applications",
Proceedings of the 2019 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI Radio Science Meeting, July 7-12, Atlanta, GA, USA.
M. R. Nikkhah, M. A. Panahi, H. Luyen, H. Bahrami, N. Behdad, "Capacity-enhancement in MIMO systems
using biomimetic electrically small antenna arrays", IET Microw. Antennas Propag., 2018, Vol. 12 Iss. 13, pp. 2001-2006.
Al-Wahhamy, H. Al-Rizzo and N.E. Buris, “On
the Modeling of Antenna Arrays for Massive MIMO Systems”,
Proceedings of the
IEEE Antennas and Propagation Symposium, Boston, MA, July 2018.
N.E. Buris, “MIMO Antenna System Throughput Simulation”,
Proceedings of the International Symposium on Antennas
and Propagation (ISAP),
Publisher: IEEE, Busan, South Korea, October 23-26 2018.
|
3.0 
