MASCOT was a Specific Targeted Research Project (STREP) supported within the Sixth Framework Program of the European Commission (Project No. IST-26905). The project started on January 01, 2006 and was finalised on February 28, 2009.

The MASCOT project designed and implemented novel techniques in the area of multi-user Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless systems.

Future wireless systems will require significantly higher data rates than those available today, provided at almost wireline quality, and with moderate infrastructure cost. The use of MIMO antenna technology has been recognized to hold the promise of achieving these ambitious goals.

However, research in the MIMO area focused almost exclusively on single-user point-to-point links. Little was known for MIMO terminals and base stations in a cellular multi-user context. The MASCOT proposal addressed such multi-user MIMO wireless systems. Our research ranges from the design to the prototypical implementation of multi-user space-time codecs in a library of VHDL reference designs. In particular, the real-time multi-user MIMO testbed at ETH Zurich was used as a platform for implementing, testing, and benchmarking the algorithms developed in the course of the project under real-world conditions.

The project results are available as deliverables and publications.