This web-page documents and describes the final year project of Ian Griffiths, a computer engineering undergraduate student at the University of Newcastle, Australia.

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Wireless communications have grown tremendously over the last decade, wireless LAN and mobile telephones have been the main reasons for the growth. There is a demand for ever faster wireless communications as this will allow for new applications such as widespread wireless broadband Internet access.

Multi-Antenna transmission schemes, using multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or receiver, have been proposed as a way to fulfil the demand for increased capacity. They are particularly attractive because they do not require any additional transmission bandwidth, and unlike traditional systems use multi-path interference to their benefit.

The aim of this project is to implement a particular multi-antenna scheme, a 2x2 Alamouti code, on a PCI testbed card developed at the University. The testbed is very flexible, most of the computing power is provided by a 600,000 gate Xilinx FPGA. There are also 12 sockets on the card that can be used for radio transceiver modules, or custom ASICs.

Here is all the things that I have to include for the people marking my project. If this isn't you, don't worry too much about this bit ;-)

Project Title:	Implementation of MIMO Wireless Communications
Student Name:	Ian Griffiths ( 2104305 )
Supervisor:	Brett Ninness
Course Code:	ELEC4850A and ELEC4850B
Project Motivation:	Wireless communications systems have experienced explosive growth in recent years. The boom in mobile telephony and wireless LANs have been the two main drivers. The wireless (radio) spectrum is a valuable, and limited, resource. There has been much research into how to use this resource more efficiently. Currently MIMO (Multiple Input - Multiple Output) systems, where multiple antennas are used at the transmitter and receiver) are one of the most promising research areas, however there are few practical implementations. This project aims to create a working implementation of a MIMO algorithm using a "testbed" card developed by the university.
Project Background:	There has been an ongoing research project at the University to build a PCI card that can be used as a testbed for MIMO wireless communications. Last year a student (Chris Shaw) worked on a computer program to interact with the card, however the testbed hardware had not been finalised so he had to use a simulator. The testbed card has now been built and is undergoing final testing. This project will server a dual purpose, acting as a proving ground for the card, and providing insights into practical MIMO systems.
Expected Outcomes:	A hardware design (VHDL code) for an MIMO system using the Alamouti code, that can be implemented on the testbed.