Estimation of MIMO transmit-antenna number using higher-order moments based hypothesis testing

This letter proposes a higher-order-moment based hypothesis testing algorithm to estimate the transmit-antenna number for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Exploiting the asymptotic normal distribution of the moments composed by noise eigenvalues, the proposed algorithm improves the estimation performance for low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Moreover, since the empirical distribution of the moments converges quickly to the normal distribution when the number of samples increases, our algorithm can make a reliable estimation in a sample starved condition. Computer simulations are provided to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional algorithms