Abstract-Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a popular method for high data rate wireless transmission. OFDM may be combined with antenna arrays at the transmitter and receiver to increase the diversity gain and/or to enhance the system capacity on time-variant and frequency-selective channels, resulting in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configuration. This paper explores various physical layer research challenges in MIMO-OFDM system design, including physical channel measurements and modelling, analog beam forming techniques using adaptive antenna arrays, space-time techniques for MIMO-OFDM, error control coding techniques, OFDM preamble and packet design, and signal processing algorithms used for performing time and frequency synchronization, channel estimation, and channel tracking in MIMO-OFDM systems. Finally, the paper considers a software radio implementation of MIMO-OFDM.

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Emerging application areas such as air pollution in megacities, wind energy, urban security, and operation of unmanned aerial vehicles have intensified scientific and societal interest in mountain meteorology. To address scientific needs and help improve the prediction of mountain weather, the U.S. Department of Defense has funded a research effort—the Mountain Terrain Atmospheric Modeling and Observations (MATERHORN) Program—that draws the expertise of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, and multinational group of researchers. The program has four principal thrusts, encompassing modeling, experimental, technology, and parameterization components, directed at diagnosing model deficiencies and critical knowledge gaps, conducting experimental studies, and developing tools for model improvements. The access to the Granite Mountain Atmospheric Sciences Testbed of the U.S. Army Dugway Proving Ground, as well as to a suite of conventional and novel high-end airborne and surface measurement platforms, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to investigate phenomena of time scales from a few seconds to a few days, covering spatial extents of tens of kilometers down to millimeters. This article provides an overview of the MATERHORN and a glimpse at its initial findings. Orographic forcing creates a multitude of time-dependent submesoscale phenomena that contribute to the variability of mountain weather at mesoscale. The nexus of predictions by mesoscale model ensembles and observations are described, identifying opportunities for further improvements in mountain weather forecasting.

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