Transmit antenna selection for decision feedback detection in MIMO fading channels

In this paper, we investigate a transmit antenna selection (TAS) approach for the decision-feedback detector (DFD) over Rayleigh fading channels. In particular, for a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel with M transmit and N (N ges M) receive antennas, we derive a lower bound on the outage probability for the TAS approach. The selected transmit antennas are those that maximize the post-processing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver end. It is shown that the proposed TAS approach achieves a performance close to optimal selection based on exhaustive search, introduced in the literature, but at a lower complexity. Simulation results are presented to validate and demonstrate the performance gain of the proposed TAS approach.