Wolfgang Zirwas, Nokia-Siemens-Networks Munich Germany, spoke at the chapter's June event about cooperative antenna systems. New applications in image transmission and video previews will require data transmission rates much higher than legacy mobile communication systems can provide. According to the plans of the 3G LTE standardization body, more than 100 Mbit/sec shall be provided by next generation of mobile networks. Those data rates are only achievable by multiple antenna systems with which several parallel data streams are received, Zirwas said. In fourth-generation systems, being presently investigated in the project IMT Advanced, even 1 Gbit/s are targeted.
Thereby cooperative multiple-input, multiple-output antenna systems, also called MIMO, allow signals from several base stations to be processed in a common digital signal processing unit for best exploiting signal statistics. Processing gains of several 100% are achievable, the author stated. Zirwas' research team could first demonstrate 1 Gbit/s data rate in November 2004.

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