The need for high data rate and better quality of service in wireless communications has become imperative in the past few years judging by user demand. Obtaining these requirements has become very challenging for wireless communication systems due to the problems of channel multi-path fading, higher power and bandwidth limitations. One of the most promising solutions to this problem is the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system. This paper proposed a combined spatial multiplexing MIMO scheme with beamforming for high data rate wireless communication. The proposed transmission scheme combines the benefits of both techniques resulting in the system ability to transmit parallel data streams as well as provide beamforming gain. Actually, these diverse techniques, share the same requirement of multiple antenna elements, but differ in the antenna element spacing necessary for the different schemes to work. Thus, smart antenna arrays were proposed as a possible solution and were adopted at both the transmitter and the receiver. The proposed hybrid technique provides better Bit Error Rate (BER) performance than the conventional MIMO, spatial multiplexing or beamforming technique alone under the same simulation environment.

Meeting the demands that are expected from future wireless generation networks poses intriguing challenges for today's wireless system designers. The demand for higher data rate and better quality of service (QoS) in wireless communications continue to grow rapidly in current world global community. Obtaining these requirements becomes challenging for wireless communication systems due to the problems of channel fading, higher power and bandwidth limitations. One of the most promising solutions to this problem is the Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system. This paper compared the performance of spatial multiplexing MIMO scheme with beamforming at a data rate of 100Mb/s. The proposed wireless system was developed with smart antenna arrays at both the transmitter and receiver. The results obtained show that spatial multiplexing technique produced better spectral efficiency than beamforming. The BER performance of beamforming technique outperforms that of spatial multiplexing technique even when enhanced by V-BLAST algorithm under the same simulation environment. The proposed system outperforms the conventional MIMO.