Performance of Outer-Loop Control for AMC Based on Mutual Information in MIMO-OFDM Downlink

This paper presents the performance of outer-loop control for adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) using mutual information (MI) based mapping between the block error rate (BLER) and received signal-to-interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) in the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) downlink employing maximum likelihood detection (MLD). In AMC, we generate a mapping table between the BLER and MI per bit in advance, which is computed from the received SINR, assuming typical channel conditions including the path model and fading maximum Doppler frequency. Then, in the proposed outer-loop control, the measured MI per bit value for selecting the best modulation and coding scheme (MCS) is adjusted so that the measured BLER after turbo decoding satisfies the prescribed target value. Computer simulation results show that the outer-loop control achieves almost the same throughput as that with a mapping table assuming channel conditions identical to those for the actual measurement, while achieving nearly the identical target BLER. Moreover, we show that the best step size, which provides nearly the maximum throughput, differs according to the change in the maximum Doppler frequency in contrast to the relative feedback delay of the AMC loop. Nevertheless, it is insensitive to the target BLER value and frequency-selectivity of a channel model.