On the MIMO channel capacity of multidimensional signal sets

In this contribution, the capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems using multidimensional phase-shift keying/quadratic-amplitude modulation signal sets is evaluated. It was shown that transmit diversity is capable of narrowing the gap between the capacity of the Rayleigh-fading channel and that of the additive white Gaussian noise channel. However, because this gap becomes narrower when the receiver diversity order is increased, for higher order receiver diversity, the performance advantage of transmit diversity diminishes. A MIMO system having full multiplexing gain has a higher achievable throughput than the corresponding MIMO system designed for full diversity gain, although this is attained at the cost of a higher complexity and a higher signal-to-noise ratio. The tradeoffs between diversity gain, multiplexing gain, complexity, and bandwidth are studied.