Layered MIMO transceivers with enhanced capacities: a new coding strategy

This paper describes a novel encoding strategy for the existing layered space-time architectures used in multiple element antenna (MEA) transmission systems. Layered architectures like V-BLAST regard a MEA channel as a set of independent mutually interfering scalar channels (layers) which are decoded subsequently so that a hefty fraction of the total MEA capacity may be achieved with a moderate complexity proportional to the number of the transmit antennas. Practically achievable rates are however limited by the minimum of the outage throughputs taken over all layers. Usually this limitation is leveraged due to a joint encoding/decoding of different layers, resulting in a substantial increase in decoding complexity. The encoding strategy described allows one to leverage this limitation in some scenarios, without altering the space-time processing scheme of the standard V-BLAST.