On the MIMO Channel Capacity of Multi-Dimensional Signal Sets

In this contribution we evaluate the capacity of Multi-Input Multi-Output (MIMO) systems using multi-dimensional PSK/QAM signal sets. It was shown that transmit diversity is capable of narrowing the gap between the capacity of the Rayleigh-fading channel and the AWGN channel. However, since this gap becomes narrower when the receiver diversity order is increased, for higher-order receiver diversity the performance advantage of transmit diversity diminishes. A MIMO system having full multiplexing gain has a higher achievable throughput than the corresponding MIMO system designed for full diversity gain, although this is attained at the cost of a higher complexity and a higher SNR. The tradeoffs between diversity gain, multiplexing gain, complexity and bandwidth are studied

A universal space-time architecture for multiple-antenna aided systems

In this tutorial, we first review the family of conventional multiple-antenna techniques, and then we provide a general overview of the recent concept of the powerful Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) family based on a universal Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK) philosophy. When appropriately configured, the proposed STSK scheme has the potential of outperforming conventional MIMO arrangements

Full Diversity Space-Time Block Codes with Low-Complexity Partial Interference Cancellation Group Decoding

Partial interference cancellation (PIC) group decoding proposed by Guo and Xia is an attractive low-complexity alternative to the optimal processing for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communications. It can well deal with the tradeoff among rate, diversity and complexity of space-time block codes (STBC). In this paper, a systematic design of full-diversity STBC with low-complexity PIC group decoding is proposed. The proposed code design is featured as a group-orthogonal STBC by replacing every element of an Alamouti code matrix with an elementary matrix composed of multiple diagonal layers of coded symbols. With the PIC group decoding and a particular grouping scheme, the proposed STBC can achieve full diversity, a rate of $(2M)/(M+2)$ and a low-complexity decoding for $M$ transmit antennas. Simulation results show that the proposed codes can achieve the full diversity with PIC group decoding while requiring half decoding complexity of the existing codes.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures

Generalized Silver Codes

For an $n_t$ transmit, $n_r$ receive antenna system ($n_t \times n_r$ system), a {\it{full-rate}} space time block code (STBC) transmits $n_{min} = min(n_t,n_r)$ complex symbols per channel use. The well known Golden code is an example of a full-rate, full-diversity STBC for 2 transmit antennas. Its ML-decoding complexity is of the order of $M^{2.5}$ for square $M$-QAM. The Silver code for 2 transmit antennas has all the desirable properties of the Golden code except its coding gain, but offers lower ML-decoding complexity of the order of $M^2$. Importantly, the slight loss in coding gain is negligible compared to the advantage it offers in terms of lowering the ML-decoding complexity. For higher number of transmit antennas, the best known codes are the Perfect codes, which are full-rate, full-diversity, information lossless codes (for $n_r \geq n_t$) but have a high ML-decoding complexity of the order of $M^{n_tn_{min}}$ (for $n_r < n_t$, the punctured Perfect codes are considered). In this paper, a scheme to obtain full-rate STBCs for $2^a$ transmit antennas and any $n_r$ with reduced ML-decoding complexity of the order of $M^{n_t(n_{min}-(3/4))-0.5}$, is presented. The codes constructed are also information lossless for $n_r \geq n_t$, like the Perfect codes and allow higher mutual information than the comparable punctured Perfect codes for $n_r < n_t$. These codes are referred to as the {\it generalized Silver codes}, since they enjoy the same desirable properties as the comparable Perfect codes (except possibly the coding gain) with lower ML-decoding complexity, analogous to the Silver-Golden codes for 2 transmit antennas. Simulation results of the symbol error rates for 4 and 8 transmit antennas show that the generalized Silver codes match the punctured Perfect codes in error performance while offering lower ML-decoding complexity.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. This revised version has 30 pages, 7 figures and Section III has been completely revise