A union bound of the bit error ratio for data transmission over correlated wireless MIMO channels

In this contribution we derive a union bound of the bit error ratio (BER) in wireless multiple input multiple output (MIMO) data transmission systems using maximum likelihood (ML) receivers. A novel channel model is used to take into account channel correlation. Relying on the Euclidean distance between different transmit signals, we show that the error performance is governed by a few so-called error types (ET). Simulation results are shown for a 4x4 MIMO system with BPSK modulation and for a 2x2 MIMO system with 16QAM modulation for several channel correlations. Our union bound becomes tight for low BER for all MIMO systems under investigation.