Asymptotic spectral efficiency of MIMO multiple-access wireless systems exploring only channel spatial correlations

We use the replica method originally developed in statistical physics to investigate the asymptotic sum-rate of a Gaussian antenna-array-based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) multiple-access wireless channel having spatial correlations at both the transmitters and the receiver. The asymptotic solution is not only rigorously valid for systems with large array sizes, hut it also produces highly accurate ergodic results for systems with only a few antenna elements at each transmitter and receiver. This otters the asymptotic solution important practical values in analyzing and designing a MIMO multiple access system that makes best use of the wireless channel structure. Furthermore, with the asymptotic solution, we provide an efficient iterative water-filling algorithm to determine the optimum transmit signal covariance matrices when only the slow-varying channel spatial covariance information is available.