  In wireless communication systems, dual-polarized (DP) instead of
single-polarized (SP) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission is
used to improve the spectral efficiency under certain conditions on the channel
and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In order to identify these conditions, we
first propose a novel channel model for DP mobile Ricean MIMO channels for
which statistical channel parameters are readily obtained from a moment-based
channel decomposition. Second, we derive an approximation of the mutual
information (MI), which can be expressed as a function of those statistical
channel parameters. Based on this approximation, we characterize the required
SNR for a DP MIMO system to outperform an SP MIMO system in terms of the MI.
Finally, we apply our results to channel measurements at 2.53 GHz. We find
that, using the proposed channel decomposition and the approximation of the MI,
we are able to reproduce the (practically relevant) SNR values above which DP
MIMO systems outperform SP MIMO systems.
