The exponential increase of the data traffic in the next years and the limitations of the wireless spectrum shared by multiusers have challenged the design of the coming 5G radio access technology. In the last decade, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have become one of the key technologies offering a higher spectral efficiency. Nevertheless, the advantages provided by MIMO systems come to the detriment of an increase in the cost to deploy multiple antennas and also in the receiver complexity. Thus, a pre-equalization stage called precoding is applied at the transmitter in order to improve the coverage and range of the network in fading environments. This thesis investigates performance aspects of such MIMO channel matrix precoding techniques. On the one hand, a digital communication system testbed based on USRP radio hardware is implemented by means of the software defined radio (SDR) LabVIEW. On the other hand, the effective potential of precoding techniques in boosting the network throughput is addressed in a real world scenario testbed. Our results reveal that the spatial diversity provided by multiple antennas is exploited by precoding and thus achieving higher channel capacity.