Experimental study of the effects of RF front-end imperfection on MIMO transmitter performance

In this paper, the effects of power amplifier (PA) nonlinearity, and radio frequency (RF) crosstalk on the performance of the MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) transmitter are investigated comprehensively. The performance of the MIMO transmitter is studied based on the measured error vector magnitude (EVM) at the transmitting antennas. The simulation and measurement results show that PA nonlinearity and RF crosstalk need to be considered in the design process. In particular, it was found that the crosstalk represents a critical design factor that, if ignored, accentuates the effects of the other sources of impairments on the transmitter side, such as PA nonlinear behavior.