On the performance of V-BLAST with zero-forcing successive interference cancellation receiver

The performance analysis of the zero-forcing successive interference cancellation (ZF-SIC) detector in vertical Bell Labs layered space-time (V-BLAST) is generally considered difficult, mainly because of the nonlinear error propagation effect. In this paper, we first present the nearly exact bit error rate (BER) analysis of ZF-SIC V-BLAST with binary phase-shift keying (BPSK) modulation in the richly scattered Rayleigh-fading multiple-antenna channel. We derive the closed-form expressions of the error probability of each substream under a given number of transmit antennas. We further give a general recursive procedure to calculate the BER of each substream with arbitrary number of transmit and receive antennas. The procedure we give is easy to follow and is feasible in evaluating the BER performance of the V-BLAST with ZF-SIC receiver. It can be further utilized to develop an optimal transmission strategy for the open-loop V-BLAST. Our analytical results show excellent matches with the Monte Carlo simulation results.