MIMO Channel Capacity

Introduction:
Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a type of technology for wireless
communications that uses multiple antennas at the transmitter to send information
to the receiver which has multiple antennas as well. With this transmission scheme,
there is a linear increase in spectral efficiency compared to a logarithmic increase in
more traditional systems. MIMO technology had a huge impact on industry because
of the many application that could use it. MIMO is planned to be used in Mobile
radio telephone standards such as recent 3GPP and 3GPP2. In 3GPP, High-Speed
Packet Access plus (HSPA+) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) standards take MIMO into
account. It is also used for connecting Wi-Fi hotspots with each other and with the
Internet.
In this report, we will go through the basics of the MIMO channel capacity by first
considering the basic problem of communication systems (the multipath fading
problem) that was the most important problem that motivated the discovery of
diversity techniques and the MIMO systems. Then, we consider two papers that
compute the capacity of the MIMO channel with different techniques.
Fading:

Hassan part

MIMO Systems:
MIMO systems use space diversity at both the transmitter and the receiver to
enhance the performance and the capacity of the channel. Unlike conventional
techniques, the increase in channel capacity is achieved by increasing
computational complexity while maintaining the primary communication resources
(i.e., total transmit power and channel bandwidth) fixed.
As the graph indicate, a system of Nt transmitting antennas and Nr receiving
antennas is considered. The transmitted signal can then be represented by the
below vector:

For a flat-fading Rayleigh distributing channel, we may use to denote the sampled
complex gain of the channel coupling transmit antenna k to receive antenna i at
discrete time n, where i = 1, 2, ..., Nr and k= 1, 2, , Nt. We may thus express the
Nr-by-Nt complex channel matrix as

The received signal is then described as follows:

Now that we have developed a model by which we can describe the MIMO channel.
We are now ready to use that model to calculate the channel capacity using two
different papers with two different techniques:
The first paper:
ON THE CAPACITY OF THE MIMO CHANNEL

To transmit information through a communication system, it should first be

source-coded to give the most efficient stream of symbols to represent the
information. Then, these source symbols are mapped into a sequence of channel
symbols in the channel encoder to be transmitted through a random channel that
contains random noise. Channel capacity is a measure of how much information can
be transmitted and received with a nearly zero error probability. Assume that the
channel encoder receives a source symbol every Ts seconds. Also, assume that the
entropy rate of the sources is H(S), where S represents the set of all source symbols.
Then the channel encoder receives H(S)/Ts information bits per second. Now,
assume that the channel encoder produces a channel symbol every Tc seconds. So,
for all information to be sent the information bits per each channel symbol should
be:

( s )Tc
R=H
Ts

This equation makes sense because if the time needed for the channel encoder is
more than the time required to receive a source symbol, then the amount of
information bits per channel symbol (R) should be larger than the amount of
information bits per source symbol (H).
The number R is called the information rate of the channel encoder. And, for the
information to be sent at maximum rate with negligible probability of error. It should
be sent with a rate called the Channel Capacity. Channel capacity is defined as:

C=max I ( X ; Y )

Which is the maximum mutual information between the transmitted signal (X) and
the received signal (Y). The mutual information is maximized with respect to all
possible transmitter statistical distributions p(x).
We also know that:

I ( X ; Y )=H (Y )H (Y X)

Which shows that the mutual information depends on the channel through (H) and
the probability distribution of X. For a MIMO channel model, the dependence of the
channel will be described by the channel matrix H (The channel matrix we
described before) with:
SISO channel:
For SISO channels, Nt = Nr = 1 in the channel matrix. And the channel capacity can
be computed as :

Where Pt is the average transmit power constraint. If each channel symbol at the
transmitter is denoted by s, the average power constraint can be expressed as

Using the channel matrix, we can express the channel capacity as:

h 11 2
If|h11|is Rayleigh, follows a chi-squared distribution with two degrees of

freedom. The capacity equation can then be written as

C=E log 2(1+ . 2)

Where is the average signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio and 2 a chi-square

distributed random variable with two degrees of freedom. The results are shown in
the graph below.
 Omar Part

The second paper:

Channel Capacity of MIMO Architecture Using the Exponential Correlation Matrix

The newly emerging MIMO architecture is proving to be superior to traditional architectures in

terms of efficiency, where it exploits the spectral domain more conveniently. In this paper, the author aims
to prove that for independent Rayleigh channels, and using the exponential correlation model to examine
the sub-channel correlation, an increase in the correlation corresponds to decrease in the Signal to Noise
ratio and therefore a decrease in the channel capacity.

For a constant nn Channel matrix, accompanied with AWGN, with CSI (Channel State

Information) available at the receiver end, equal number of transmitting/receiving antennas ( n

antennas) and average signal-to-noise ratio of The channel capacity is given by

 +

I + HH
n



det
C=log 2

Where H is the channel matrix normalized according to the following condition

n
2
|hij| =n
i , j=1

n
2 +
Assuming the received power is the same, we can define i= |hij| =1 and therefore HH
j

can be replaced with R which represents the normalized channel correlation matrix where each element in
it is given by
n
r ij = hik hjk where r ij 1
k

Combining that with the fact that the channel is assumed deterministic for simplicity, noting that there is
no loss in generality in that, since in case of a random channel, the same procedure can be applied on the
upper bound for the mean channel capacity. And thus, the channel capacity for the case of a deterministic
channel is

C=log 2 det ( I + R)
n

With some mathematical manipulations, the determinant in the previous equation, which is given the
symbol Z for convenience, can be evaluated and written as
n

( )
det ( Z )= 1+
n
n

Where
 1

and =
n( )
1+
n

Then the channel capacity can be rewritten as

C=nlo g2 1+( n )+ log 2 n

Where the second term is the contribution of the correlation between subchannels to the channel capacity.

From the previous equation, it can be shown than for 1 , approaches unity and thus
n

making n completely dependent on the correlation between sub-channels. In either case, to

determine the channel capacity, n needs to be estimated. The Exponential Correlation Matrix model
is used to accomplish that, where

Although this model is not entirely accurate, it provides the right intuition where correlation decreases
with increasing distance between receive antennas. Also, it has been tested before and provided very
reasonable results.

Using the previous equation in n , the following is obtained

By assuming high SNR, the contribution of the main diagonal terms becomes the major factor in the
equation and thus the following approximation can be accepted
2 n1
n ( 1|r| )

By substituting in the channel capacity equation obtained earlier,

Assuming n 1 and r <1 , the final expression for the channel capacity becomes

C nlog 2 (1+ (1|r|2 ))
n

And as n ,

2
C ( 1|r| )
ln 2

And in the special case of no correlation ( r=0 ), the two previous equations are simplified to
be

The author, then, illustrates and verifies his claim by comparing the results obtained by the
model under investigation, for different values of n , with the uniform model, that represents
the worst-case scenario by assuming that the correlation between distant receive channels is the
same as that between neighboring ones. The following graph is obtained.
The graph shows that as the correlation increases, The capacity decreases as expected. And as n
decreases, the results of the derived formulas approach the worst-case scenario model which is the
uniform model indicating a decrease in the accuracy. It should be noted that the random (ergodic) channel
was also found to exhibit the same behavior but with a 20-40% less capacity than the deterministic
channel.
In conclusion, The MIMO channel capacity was found to be reliant on the correlation between individual
subchannels of the matrix channel, this was modelled using the exponential correlation model with some
justified approximations and was found to be reliable to a good extent.