Uniform channel decomposition for MIMO communications

Assuming the availability of the channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) and receiver (CSIR), we consider the joint optimal transceiver design for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) communication systems. Using the geometric mean decomposition (GMD), we propose a transceiver design that can decompose, in a strictly capacity lossless manner, a MIMO channel into multiple subchannels with identical capacities. This uniform channel decomposition (UCD) scheme has two implementation forms. One is the combination of a linear precoder and a minimum mean-squared-error VBLAST (MMSE-VBLAST) detector, which is referred to as UCD-VBLAST, and the other includes a dirty paper (DP) precoder and a linear equalizer followed by a DP decoder, which we refer to as UCD-DP. The UCD scheme can provide much convenience for the modulation/demodulation and coding/decoding procedures due to obviating the need for bit allocation. We also show that UCD can achieve the maximal diversity gain. The simulation results show that the UCD scheme exhibits excellent performance, even without the use of any error correcting codes.