Performance analysis for MIMO systems with lattice-reduction aided linear equalization

Multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems equipped with multiple antennas have well documented merits in combating fading and enhancing data rates. MIMO V-BLAST transmission is a widely adopted method to achieve high spectral efficiency and low-complexity implementation. When the maximum likelihood (ML) or near-ML detector is employed, receive diversity is collected for MIMO V-BLAST systems to enhance the performance. However, because of its exponential complexity, ML detector may be infeasible for practical systems when the number of antennas and/or the constellation size is large. On the other hand, linear equalizers have much lower complexity but come with inferior performance. In this paper, we analytically quantify the diversity order of linear detectors for MIMO V-BLAST systems. Then, we adopt low-complexity complex lattice-reduction (LR) aided linear equalizers for V-BLAST systems to improve the performance and prove that LR-aided linear equalizers collect the same diversity order as that exploited by the ML detector but with much lower complexity. Relative to the existing real LR-aided equalizers, we illustrate that the complex LR further reduces the complexity while keeping the same performance. Simulation results corroborate our theoretical claims.