Position-Based Optimization of the Electromagnetic Channel Effective Rank for MIMO Systems

The electromagnetic channel effective rank of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system describes its effective channel number, which directly characterizes the channel performance and is widely used in the communication systems. In this work, the positions of MIMO transmitting array elements are optimized to achieve the maximum of the effective rank. Specifically, a linear array with fixed aperture size is considered as the transmitting antennas of a MIMO system, and isotropic point receivers are used to model the receivers. The electromagnetic channel matrix with the mutual coupling effect can be derived from the method of moments (MoM). Finally, the best position distributions are obtained by genetic algorithm (GA). The results of comparisons and channel analysis are presented to validate the positive changes of the effective channel capacity.