Effects of wall material on the channel capacity of an indoor multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system are investigated using a hybrid technique of the method of moments (MoM) and the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method with consideration of the Ricean K factor and the effective degrees of freedom (EDOF) of multiple paths.

The effects of wall reflection on indoor MIMO channel capacity are statistically investigated with consideration of the average received power, the effective degrees of freedom (EDOF) of multipaths and the eigenvalues of transfer channel covariance matrix. It is found that the stronger wall reflection can lead to higher MIMO channel capacity.

The effect of wall and indoor scatterers on the indoor multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication system is investigated by using the hybrid technique of finite difference time domain (FDTD) method and method of moments (MoM). MIMO channel capacity with the wall reflection is investigated with consideration of the eigenvalue of channel covariance matrix, the received power and the effective multipaths of MIMO system. It is found that the stronger side wall reflection can lead to the higher MIMO channel capacity. MIMO system with indoor scatterers is also analyzed and compared with the line of sight (LOS) indoor MIMO system. It is found that the scatterer material has different effect on the received power and the effective multipaths of MIMO system.

A numerical hybrid method for analyzing the wireless channel of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication system is proposed by combining of the method of moments (MoM) and the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method. The proposed method is capable of investigating a more practical MIMO wireless channel than the conventional methods, and CPU time is much less than that of the FDTD method in analysis of spatial statistical characteristics of received signals. Based on the channel transfer matrix obtained by the proposed method, the wall effect on indoor MIMO channel capacity are investigated with consideration of received power, Ricean K-factor and effective degrees of freedom (EDOF) of multipaths by changing the wall locations and material.