Throughput Optimization for H-BLAST and SIC Receiver over MIMO Channels

Among various Bell Labs layered space-time (BLAST) architectures over multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels, we focus on horizontal BLAST (H-BLAST) as the channel capacity can be achieved by a simple receiver, which is called the successive interference cancellation (SIC) receiver. For block-fading channels without feedback of channel state information (CSI), which would be a practical case, the rate optimization across layers is investigated to maximize the throughput. Since the error propagation in the SIC receiver can impair the performance, the rate optimization is essential to maximize throughput by properly minimizing the chance of error propagation.