Evaluation of Ionospheric HF MIMO Channels: Two complementary circular polarizations reduce correlation

An original mul tiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) system for a transhorizon transmission through the ionospheric channel is presented. This project, involving decametric wavelengths, has to cope with the constraints of reasonable array dimensions at both ends of the radio link. Therefore, this work considers a diversity in transmitted polarizations as an alternative to the classical spatial diversity and, more specifically, the generation of complementary circular polarizations. The design of the corresponding system is described with a focus on antenna arrays, waveforms, and signal processing for channel sounding. This novel communication system has been tested on a 850-km long radio link to exhibit the degree of diversity provided by the ionospheric MIMO channel. The measurements indicate a significantly low level of correlation for the four-channel transfer functions linking the transmitting and receiving ends (in a frequency dispersive context). Moreover, the ergodic or outage capacities have been calculated over several hundreds of channel estimations: the gain in the capacity of a MIMO versus a single-input, single-output (SISO) architecture reaches the value of 1.82.