Large-system spectral efficiency of interference-limited MIMO systems

The spectral efficiency of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating in multicell frequency-flat fading environments is studied, for situations in which cochannel interference is the dominant channel impairment instead of ambient noise. The following multiuser detection methods are analyzed: a single-cell detector, the joint optimum detector, a group linear minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) detector and its generalized version, with the focus on their large-system asymptotic (non-random) expressions. Analytical and numerical results based on these asymptotic multicell MIMO spectral efficiencies are explored to gain insights into the behavior of multicell MIMO systems.