Analytical performance of MIMO zero-forcing receivers in correlated Rayleigh fading environments

Simulation results show that fading correlation between the antenna elements of a wireless system can seriously affect the symbol error rate of MIMO receivers, especially in case of linear processing. In order to gain a better understanding of the fading effects, we present an analytical framework to assess the performance of a system with zero-forcing receiver in a correlated Rayleigh fading scenario. Closed-form expressions are derived for the symbol error rate with arbitrary array sizes in case of transmit correlation only. In the presence of a fully correlated channel, we study the 2×2 case. High SNR asymptotics allow an insightful comparison of systems with transmit and receive correlation, respectively. Monte-Carlo simulations evidence the accuracy of the analysis.