Receive Antenna Selection for Spatial Multiplexing Systems Based on Union Bound Minimization

Despite their high spectral efficiencies, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems suffer from high cost and complexity due to multiple radio frequency chains at both link ends. A possible solution is to select a subset of the available antennas at transmitter and/or receiver based on maximal capacity or minimal error rates. This paper proposed a receive antenna selection algorithm to minimize the union bound on the vector error rate. By relaxing the antenna selection variables from discrete to continuous, the authors formulate the problem as a convex optimization problem. An efficient iterative method can be used to obtain the solution.