Performance analysis of MIMO maximum likelihood receivers with channel correlation, colored Gaussian noise, and linear prefiltering

We present an analytical performance evaluation of a Rayleigh fading MIMO link with matrix transmit prefiltering, channel correlation at transmitter and receiver, and spatially colored Gaussian noise for arbitrary two-dimensional signal constellations based on a tight union bound of the pairwise error probabilities. Asymptotic results for the high SNR region allow a simple characterization of the correlation effects and a quantification of the SNR penalty. It is shown that the diversity level of ML detection is unaffected by fading correlation and demonstrated that the effects of transmit and receive correlation may be assessed independently with the standard simplified channel model. Prefiltering algorithms based on long-term stable channel correlation characteristics are derived using the framework at hand. Simulations results illustrate the effectiveness of transmit prefilter designs based on the performance bound.