Wireless Information Transmission System Lab.

Introduction to Multiple Input Multiple

Output (MIMO)[1]

Mar. 9, 2006
Institute of Communications Engineering

National Sun Yat-sen University

MIMO Overview[2]
Future trend for wireless communications
Future wireless applications create insatiability
demand for high data rate and high link quality wireless
access
Spectrum has become a scarce and expensive resource
bandwidth is very limited
Regulation, device and system capacity concerns transmit
power is limited
Time and frequency domain processing are at limits, but space
is not! MIMO

MIMO concept

Basic idea of MIMO: Improve quality (BER) and/or data rate

(bits/sec) by using multiple TX/RX antennas
Core scheme of MIMO: space-time coding (STC)
Two main functions of STC: diversity & multiplexing
Maximum performance needs tradeoffs between diversity and
multiplexing
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Four basic models*[3]

* Slow i.i.d. flat fading channel assumption

MIMO Channel Capacity[3]

Multipath v.s. capacity
Multipath propagation has long been regarded as an
impairment because it causes signal fading
To mitigate this problem, diversity techniques were developed
Antenna diversity is a widespread form of diversity

Recent research has shown that multipath propagation can in

fact contribute to capacity

Shannon bound for SISO

Information-theoretic capacity of a single antenna link is
limited by the links SNR according to Shannons formula

Each extra bps/Hz requires roughly a doubling of TX power

(To go from 1 bps/Hz to 11 bps/Hz, the TX power must be
increased by ~1000 times!)

Single TX array: MISO

A single array provides transmit diversity against fading
Slow logarithmic growth of capacity with no. of antennas

Single RX array: SIMO

A single array provides receive diversity against fading
Slow logarithmic growth of capacity with no. of antennas

Dual array: MIMO

Dual array provides diversity at both TX and RX ends
Slow logarithmic growth of capacity with no. of antennas

Dual array: MIMO[8]

Dual array provides parallel spatial channels
Linear growth of capacity with no. of antennas

Space-Time Coding Schemes

Types of space-time code
Spatial diversity perspective:
ST block code (STBC)[4]
Provides diversity gain but no coding gain

ST trellis code (STTC)[5]

Provides both diversity and coding gain

Spatial multiplexing perspective:

Layered ST code (LSTC)[6]
Provides some coding gain and diversity gain (depending on code
structure)
Provides bandwidth efficiency

Two popular techniques in wireless MIMO systems

Receive and transmit diversity mitigates fading and

significantly improves link quality
Spatial multiplexing yields substantial increase in spectral
efficiency
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BLAST Transceiver Architectures[6]

BLAST : Bell Labs Layered Space-Time
Two types of BLAST : V-BLAST and D-BLAST

Vertical BLAST (V-BLAST)

Advantages : simplicity and lower complexity

Disadvantages : lower capacity than Shannon bound
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V-BLAST encoding

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Diagonal BLAST (D-BLAST)

Advantage : closer to Shannon bound due to spatial switch

diversity gain
Disadvantages : lost triangles, high complexity and coding
constraints
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D-BLAST encoding

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Decoding procedure

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Beamforming Schemes[7]
Beamformer : spatial filter that combines array inputs
Goal : Form a beam in space to receive desired signal, while
suppressing interference and noise.

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Wireless Information Transmission System Lab.

Siavash M. Alamouti, A Simple Transmit

Diversity Technique for Wireless
Communications, IEEE Journal on Select
Areas in Communications, Vol. 16, No. 8,
Oct. 1998

Institute of Communications Engineering

17

National Sun Yat-sen University

Introduction
The next generation wireless systems are required to
have high quality or high data rate. At the same time,
the remote units are supposed to be small lightweight
pocket communicators.
The major problem with using the receive diversity
approach is the cost, size, and power of the remote units.
In fact, it appears that base station complexity may be
the only plausible trade space for achieving the
requirements of next generation wireless systems.

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Diversity techniques have almost exclusively been

applied to base stations to improve their reception
quality.
A base station often serves hundreds to thousands of
remote units. It is therefore more economical to add
equipment to base stations rather than the remote units.
For this reason, transmit diversity schemes are very
attractive.

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The New Transmit Diversity Scheme -- Two Branch

Transmit Diversity with One Receiver

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The scheme uses two transmit antennas and one receive

antenna and may be defined by the following three
functions:
the encoding and transmission sequence of information
symbols at the transmitter;
the combining scheme at the receiver;
the decision rule for maximum likelihood detection.

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s0 s1*
[s0 s1] *
s1 s0

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The Encoding and Transmission Sequence: At a given symbol period,

two signals are simultaneously transmitted from the two antennas.

s0
X=
s1

s1*
*
s0

space

time

ST block codeword property:

2
2

s0 + s1
H
X X=
0

= s0 + s1
2

)I

2
2
s0 + s1
0

A codeword X that satisfies the property is called an orthogonal design

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Assuming that fading is constant across two consecutive

symbols, we can write
h0 (t ) = h0 (t + T ) = h0 = 0 e j 0
h1 (t ) = h1 (t + T ) = h1 = 1 e j1

T is the symbol duration

The received signals can then be expressed as

r0 = r (t ) = h0 s0 + h1s1 + n0

*
*
(
)
r1 = r t + T = h0 s1 + h1s0 + n1

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 r0 h0
R = * = *
r1 h1
H satisfies:

h1 s0 n0
+ * = Hs + n
*
h0 s1 n1

H H = h0 + h1
H

where = h0 + h1
2

)I

= I2

) is the diversity gain

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The Combining Scheme: The combiner builds the

following two combined signals that are sent to the
maximum likelihood detector:
~

~s = s0

~
s
1
= HHR

= H H Hs + H H n
~
s
n

= s + H H n = 0 + ~1
s1 n2

s0 and s1 are detected independently

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The Maximum Likelihood Decision Rule: These combined

signals are then sent to the maximum likelihood detector
which, for each of the signals s0 and s1.
The resulting combined signals are equivalent to that
obtained from two-branch MRRC. The only difference is
phase rotations on the noise components which do not
degrade the effective SNR. Therefore, the resulting
diversity order from the new two-branch transmit
diversity scheme with one receiver is equal to that of twobranch MRRC.

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Wireless Information Transmission System Lab.

Hamid Jafarkhani, A Quasi-Orthogonal

SpaceTime Block Code, IEEE
Transactions on Communications, Vol. 49,
No. 1, Jan. 2001

Institute of Communications Engineering

28

National Sun Yat-sen University

Rate
The codeword matrix corresponding to input symbol vector
T
x = [x1 , x2 ,..., x P ] is written as

c11
2
c1

G=
M
N
c1

c12

c1L
2
L cL
O M
N
L c L
L

c22
M
c2N

space

time
n

At each time slot t, signal ct is transmitted from antenna n. L is

the frame length, P is number of symbols to be transmitted in each
frame. The rate is defined as R=P/L.
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A complex space-time block code is given by a N L

transmission matrix G. The elements of the matrix are linear
combinations of interminates x1 , x2 ,..., xP and their conjugates. It
is required that

G G = x1 + x2 + + xP
H

)I

The rate of G is defined to be R=P/L. This is due to the fact that

the code transmit P constellation symbols in L slots. The rate is
defined as the transmission rate relative to the maximum possible
rate of a full-diversity code. It has been shown in [5] that the rate
of a full-diversity code is less than or equal to one, R 1

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 x1
x*
2
x3*

0
x4
*
x5
x*
6
0

x2
x1*
0
x3*
x5
x4*
0
x6*

x3
0
x1*
x2*
x6
0
x4*
x5*

0
x3
x2
x1

x4
x5*
x6*
0
x1
x2*

0
x6
x5
x4

x3*
0

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x5
x4*

x6
0

0
x6*
x2

x4*
x5*
x3

x1*
0
x3*

0
x1*
x2*

0
x6
x5

x4
0

x3
x2

x1

Quasi-orthogonal code
x1
*
x2
A= *
x
3
x
4

x2

x3
x4*

x1*
x4*
x3

x1*
x2

x4

*
x3
x2*

x1

Its easy to see that the minimum rank of matrix A is 2.

Therefore, a diversity of 2 is achieved while the rate of
the code is one.

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We define i , i = 1, 2, 3, 4 , as the i-th column of A , its easy to

see that
1 , 2 = 1 , 3 = 2 , 4 = 3 , 4 = 0
*
(
)
(
)

where i j l =1 i l j l is the inner product of vectors i

and j
4

Therefore, the subspace created by 1 and

subspace created by 2 and 3

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4 is orthogonal to the

-rate
rate one
quasi-orthogonal code

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full-diversity
orthogonal code

Simulation results show that full transmission rate is

more important for very low SNRs and high BERs,
while full diversity is the right choice for high SNRs and
low BERs. This is due to the fact that the degree of
diversity dictates the slope of the BER-SNR curve.

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Reference
[1] Ta-Sung Lee, MIMO-OFDM for Future OFDM for Future Wireless Communications
Wireless Communications, Seminar in ICE of NSYSU.
[2] D. Gesbert, M. Shafi, D. Shiu, P. J. Smith and A. Naguib, From theory to practice: An
overview of MIMO space-time coded wireless systems, IEEE J. Select. Areas Commun., vol. 21,
no. 3, pp. 281-302, April 2003.
[3] G. J. Foschiniand M. J. Gans, On limits of wireless communications in a fading environment
using multiple antennas, Wireless Personal Commun., vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 311-355, 1998.
[4] S. M. Alamouti, A simple transmit diversity technique for wireless communications, IEEE
JSAC, vol. 16, no. 8, pp. 1451-1458, Oct. 1998.
[5] V. Tarokh, N. Seshadriand A. R. Calderbank, Space-time codes for high data rate wireless
communication: Performance analysis and code construction, IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol.
44, no. 2, pp. 744-765, Mar. 1998.
[6] G. J. Foschini, Layered space-time architecture for wireless communication in a fading
environment when using multiple antennas, Bell Labs Syst. Tech. J., vol. 1, pp. 41-59, Autumn
1996.
[7] A. Paulrajand C. B. Papadias, Space-time processing for wireless communications, IEEE
Signal Processing Mag., vol. 14, no. 11, pp. 49-83, Nov. 1997.
[8] Branka Vucetic, Jinhong Yuan, Space-Time Coding, Wiley 2003.

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