Selection of transmit antennas, constellations and powers for correlated MIMO multiple access channels

A novel algorithm is presented to select the transmit antennas, constellations and distribution of total power of the users in a correlated multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiple access channel. Given a target probability of symbol error, the spectral efficiency for each user and estimates of the channel correlation matrices, the transmit antennas, constellations and user power distribution are determined such that the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is minimized for linear and vertical bell laboratories layered space-time (V-BLAST) receivers. This selection algorithm results in significant performance gains not only for correlated channels but also for independently fading channels.