A simple power allocation scheme for wireless MIMO systems with layered space-time equalization

We propose a simple power allocation (PA) scheme for wireless MIMO systems with layered space-time equalization (LSTE), which aims at minimizing the overall BERs for all data streams. This so-called MIN-BER PA scheme significantly outperforms the uniform power (UP) case in a wide range of RMS delay spreads and at high SNR, with little loss in computational complexity and bandwidth efficiency. Compared to EQ-BER PA, MIN-BER PA yields close performance, but requires much less complexity especially at high SNR. Closed-form results are provided for MIN-BER PA, based on which intensive performance analysis is made, including BER performance and signal detection ordering for LSTE with PA.