Multiantenna communications have a long and winding history, starting with how Guglielmo Marconi used an array of phase-aligned antennas to communicate over the Atlantic and Karl Ferdinand Braun used a triangular array to transmit phase-shifted signal copies to beamform in a controlled direction. The use of antenna arrays for spatial diversity and multiplexing has since appeared. The cellular network pioneer Martin Cooper tried to launch multi-user MIMO in the 1990s but concluded in 1996 that “computers weren’t powerful enough to operate it”.
During the last 25 years, multiantenna communications have changed from being a technology only used for beamforming and diversity, to becoming a mainstream enabler of high-capacity communication in 5G. It is used for both single-user and multi-user MIMO when connecting any modern mobile phone to the Internet, in both the 3 GHz and mmWave bands.
The IEEE Signal Processing Society is celebrating its 75 years anniversary and, therefore, the Signal Processing Magazine publishes a special issue focusing on the last 25 years of research developments. I have written a paper for this issue called “25 Years of Signal Processing Advances for Multiantenna Communications“. It is now available on arXiv, and it is co-authored by Yonina Eldar, Erik G. Larsson, Angel Lozano, and H. Vincent Poor. I hope you will like it!
