Rank adaptive transmission to improve the detection performance of the BLAST in spatially correlated MIMO channel

Previous results of information theory have shown that the capacity potential of MIMO wireless communication systems is very large, assuming that the channel matrix, the transfer function between the Tx and Rx antenna pairs, is statistically independent. Though the BLAST has been proposed to use this potential, BER performance and capacity of the BLAST become degraded as spatial correlation increases. The proposed RAT (rank-adaptive transmission) can improve the performance of the BLAST under the Ricean channel model. Its key idea is to control the transmit data rate adaptively according to the estimated channel condition. The computer simulations showed the RAT works well even though the spatial correlation increases.