Efficient BER Expressions for MIMO-BICM in Spatially-Correlated Rayleigh Channels

We derive tight expressions for the coded bit error rate of MIMO bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) with zero-forcing receivers in spatially-correlated Rayleigh channels. The analysis is simpler and more direct than the standard BICM error event expurgation technique, and yields efficient, accurate expressions for the error probability. Based on the analytical results, we obtain the diversity order and show that it is unaffected by the presence of spatial correlation. We then show that spatial correlation induces an SNR loss with respect to i.i.d. channels, which is quantified, and found to depend explicitly on the eigenvalues of the spatial correlation matrices and the antenna configuration, but not on the coding and modulation parameters