On Computational Cut-off Rate for Space-Time Coding


Alfred O. Hero    Thomas L. Marzetta


Abstract: We consider the computational cut-off rate for the complex Rayleigh flat fading spatio-temporal channel under a peak power constraint, where the propagation matrix is unknown at both transmitter and receiver. Determination of the cut-off rate requires maximization of an average error exponent over all possible probability distributions on the signal matrices. This error exponent is monotone decreasing in a measure of dissimilarity between pairs of signal matrices. For low SNR the dissimilarity function reduces to a trace norm of the difference between the outerproduct of each signal matrix. Under the practical constraint of finite dimensional signal constellations, different characterizations of the optimal constellation are obtained. For arbitrary finite dimension, the optimal constellation must admit an equalizer distribution, i.e., a positive set of signal probabilities which equalizes the conditional decoding error probabilities. The cut-off rate optimization reduces to maximization of a quadratic form over the feasible set formed from such constellations. When the number of signal matrices in the constellation is less than the ratio of the number of time samples to the number of transmit antennas, the optimal cut-off rate attaining constellation is a set of equiprobable mutually-orthogonal unitary matrices. When the SNR is below a specified threshold the matrices in the constellation are rank one and the cut-off rate is achieved by applying all transmit power to a single antenna and using orthogonal signaling. Finally, we derive recursive necessary and sufficient conditions for a constellation to lie in the feasible set. This motivates a greedy procedure for constructing a sequence of feasible constellations with monotone increasing cut-off rate objective function.

Status: Technical Memorandum, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, April 2000. Submitted to IEEE Trans. Info. Th.

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Wim Sweldens <wim@lucent.com>