Performance Comparison Of Beamforming And Multiplexing Techniques Using Smart Antenna Array

Meeting the demands that are expected from future wireless generation networks poses intriguing challenges for today's wireless system designers. The demand for higher data rate and better quality of service (QoS) in wireless communications continue to grow rapidly in current world global community. Obtaining these requirements becomes challenging for wireless communication systems due to the problems of channel fading, higher power and bandwidth limitations. One of the most promising solutions to this problem is the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system. This paper compared the performance of spatial multiplexing MIMO scheme with beamforming at a data rate of 100Mb/s. The proposed wireless system was developed with smart antenna arrays at both the transmitter and receiver. The results obtained show that spatial multiplexing technique produced better spectral efficiency than beamforming. The BER performance of beamforming technique outperforms that of spatial multiplexing technique even when enhanced by V-BLAST algorithm under the same simulation environment. The proposed system outperforms the conventional MIMO.