Eurasip Journal On Wireless Communications And Networking, 11. http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/WCN/2006/27694The emergence of MIMO communications systems as practical high-data-rate wireless communications systems has created several
technical challenges to be met. On the one hand, there is potential for enhancing system performance in terms of capacity and
diversity. On the other hand, the presence of multiple transceivers at both ends has created additional cost in terms of hardware
and energy consumption. For coherent detection as well as to do optimization such as water filling and beamforming, it is essential
that the MIMO channel is known. However, due to the presence of multiple transceivers at both the transmitter and receiver, the
channel estimation problem is more complicated and costly compared to a SISO system. Several solutions have been proposed
to minimize the computational cost, and hence the energy spent in channel estimation of MIMO systems. We present a novel
method of minimizing the overall energy consumption. Unlike existing methods, we consider the energy spent during the channel
estimation phase which includes transmission of training symbols, storage of those symbols at the receiver, and also channel
estimation at the receiver. We develop a model that is independent of the hardware or software used for channel estimation, and
use a divide-and-conquer strategy to minimize the overall energy consumption