Antenna selection for BER performance improvement in multi-antenna systems with MMSE-SIC detection

Antenna selection is a promising technique for construction of multiple-antenna wireless communication devices with lower hardware complexity, while maintaining most of the gains predicted by the information theory. This paper discusses methods for antenna selection in the context of spatial multiplexing systems with non-linear receivers which combine minimum mean-square error equalization with successive interference cancellation. The benefits of eventual transmitter power control are shown, as well. The selection criterion for bit error rate minimization is derived, a suboptimal method with lower computational complexity is proposed and comparisons with the existing strategies are presented. The proposed selection criteria enable remarkable improvements in system performances with the addition of proportionally smaller number of extra antennas, comparing to the linear detection case. Significant additional gains are obtained by the introduction of the proposed algorithm for transmitter power control.