title: Communication through a diffusive medium: coherence and capacity
abstract: Coherent wave propagation in disordered media gives rise to many fascinating phenomena as diverse as universal conductance fluctuations in mesoscopic metals and speckle patterns in light scattering. Here, the theory of electromagnetic wave propagation in diffusive media is combined with information theory to show how interference affects the information transmission rate between antenna arrays. Nontrivial dependencies of the information capacity on the nature of the antenna arrays are found, such as the dimensionality of the arrays and their direction with respect to the local scattering medium. This approach provides a physical picture for understanding the importance of scattering in the transfer of information through wireless communications.
authors.affiliation: Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, 700 Mountain Avenue, Murray Hill, NJ 07974, USA. Department of Physics, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708-0305, USA. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
authors.initials: AL
authors.lastname: Moustakas
authors.initials: HU
authors.lastname: Baranger
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Balents
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Sengupta
authors.initials: SH
authors.lastname: Simon