The antenna-design part of the course will provide a brief overview of design principles for small antennas for mobile communications systems. This includes the theoretical background, design principles, implementation aspects, and measurement methods for wideband multi-element (especially MIMO) terminal antennas. In the laboratory work, participants will gain hands-on experience using the HUT measurement-based antenna testbed MEBAT. The MEBAT testbed allows characterizing the performance of a multi-element terminal antenna in real propagation environments that were previously measured at HUT. The students will design antennas with modern SW tools and assess their efficiency, MEG, and realistic MIMO performance with computational methods.

The signal processing laboratory will be done on the real-time multi-user MIMO test-bed (MUMS) of KTH. The test-bed is unique that it has two transmitting nodes (base-stations) equipped with two antennas each and two receiving nodes (mobiles) equipped with two antennas each as well as feedback from both receiving nodes to both transmitting nodes (such that the transmitting nodes may have knowledge of the channel of both the desired and co-channel receiving node). The participants will be given insight into the operation of the test-bed. They will also do laboratories on the test-bed where they will change lines of code in a beamforming application and interpret the result.

The talks on signal-processing and resource allocation in MIMO systems will be on various aspects of link and system-level issues of MIMO systems such as space-time coding, spatial multiplexing, resource allocation and channel models. This part of the course will also include computer-based exercises and will feature several speakers.

The participants should have a basic knowledge of antenna design and characteristics. They should also have an understanding of modulation and smart antennas. The attendants should preferably bring a lap-top PC with Windows operating system.