Bit and power loading for spatial multiplexing using partial channel state information

Using information about the channel at the transmitter can improve the performance of multiinput multioutput (MIMO) communication systems. When perfect channel state information (CSI) is available at the transmitter, data can be multiplexed and optimized over independent spatial channels. However, when the available channel information is imperfect or partial, crosstalk between the spatial channels is inevitable, complicating the design of the transmitted data. This paper presents a novel practical bit and power loading algorithm, spatial loading based on incomplete channel estimates (SLICE), that enables the use of partial CSI for spatial multiplexing. An approximation for the bit error rate (BER) of the spatial channels is derived that facilitates the loading. Numerical experiments demonstrate performance improvements compared with methods that do not consider the partial information available