On the performance of the Golden code in BICM-MIMO and in IEEE 802.11n cases

In 2times2 MIMO systems, the Golden code (GC) [1] was proposed when no binary outer code is applied at the transmitter. This code is optimal since it achieves full rate, full diversity and the Diversity Multiplexing Tradeoff [2], and it preserves the mutual information. We propose in this paper to study the performance of this code compared to Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM) [3] in a BICM-MIMO system. We derive the Pairwise Error Probability (PER) in this context and we assess our results over a Rayleigh channel and in the 802.11n case. We show that the GC is also optimal for 2 times 2 BICM-MIMO systems. However, the impact of the additional gain provided by the Golden code is reduced when using binary outer code with high free distance case, as for instance in IEEE 802.11n standard.