Multi-Layer Broadcasting over a Block Fading MIMO Channel

This paper introduces extensions for the broadcast approach for a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) block fading channel, with receiver only channel state information (CSI). Previous works have not been able to fully characterize the fundamental MIMO broadcasting upper bound. As it seems that analytical solution for this problem is quite difficult to achieve, we consider here sub-optimal schemes, for which achievable rates may be computed. In particular, finite level coding over a MIMO channel instead of continuous layering is analyzed, the expressions derived for the decoding probability regions allow numerical computation of finite level coding upper bounds. Noticing that the gains of two level coding over a MIMO channel are rather small, we consider sub-optimal techniques, which are more straightforward to implement. Among these techniques is the multiple-access channel (MAC) approach with single level coded streams, which is similar in concept to V-BLAST. Closed form expressions for probabilities of decoding regions here are derived, allowing numerical evaluation. We further consider multi-access permutation codes (MAPC). A Hadamard transform is compared with a suggested diagonal permutation code, which are shown to have similar performance, while diagonal permutation has lower implementation complexity. For all approaches, we derive information theoretic upper bounds of achievable rates.