Editing 4G (section)

=== Advanced antenna systems ===
{{Main|MIMO|Multi-user MIMO}}

The performance of radio communications depends on an antenna system, termed [[smart antenna|smart]] or [[intelligent antenna]]. Recently, [[Multiple antenna research|multiple antenna technologies]] are emerging to achieve the goal of 4G systems such as high rate, high reliability, and long range communications. In the early 1990s, to cater for the growing data rate needs of data communication, many transmission schemes were proposed. One technology, [[spatial multiplexing]], gained importance for its bandwidth conservation and power efficiency. Spatial multiplexing involves deploying multiple antennas at the transmitter and at the receiver. Independent streams can then be transmitted simultaneously from all the antennas. This technology, called [[MIMO]] (as a branch of [[intelligent antenna]]), multiplies the base data rate by (the smaller of) the number of transmit antennas or the number of receive antennas. Apart from this, the reliability in transmitting high speed data in the fading channel can be improved by using more antennas at the transmitter or at the receiver. This is called ''transmit'' or ''receive diversity''. Both transmit/receive diversity and transmit spatial multiplexing are categorized into the space-time coding techniques, which does not necessarily require the channel knowledge at the transmitter. The other category is closed-loop multiple antenna technologies, which require channel knowledge at the transmitter.