Field experiments of dual-polarized MIMO-OFDM transmission using non-uniform constellations

We have been researching a transmission system that uses ultra-multilevel carrier modulation with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and dual-polarized multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) for 8K Super Hi-Vision terrestrial broadcasting. For the carrier modulation scheme, we studied a non-uniform constellation (NUC) to improve the transmission characteristics by optimizing the distance between signal points. Simulations demonstrated that the NUCs are advantageous compared with conventional uniform constellations (UC). We implemented the NUCs on a prototype MIMO-OFDM modulator and demodulator and investigated the bit error rate (BER) with laboratory and field testing. Results showed that the 4096-NUCs improved the required C/N by about 1 dB compared to the 4096-UC.