Asymptotical analysis of the outage capacity of rate-tailored BLAST

The paper considers the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with quasi-static Rayleigh fading. Lower bounds are derived for the outage capacity of a recently introduced approach to horizontally encoded BLAST (Bell Labs layered space time) in which the rates of the layers are optimally designed. The outage capacity of this scheme, rate-tailored BLAST (RT-BLAST), is shown to behave in the same manner as the true outage capacity of the MIMO channel (e.g., using a maximum-likelihood, ML, receiver) in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. That is, the asymptotical growth rates of the ML and RT-BLAST outage capacities as a function of SNR are equal to each other.