Wireless Communication

Department of Electronics and Communication, Atria IT, Banalore-24

Multiple Input Multiple Output Wireless Communications: Introduction to MIMO Communications,

MIMO system Model, MIMO Zero Forcing Receiver, MIMO MMSE Receiver, Singular Value
decomposition of MIMO Channel, SVD and MIMO capacity, Alamouti and Space-Time Codes, Nonlinear
MIMO receiver: V-Blast, MIMO Beamforming.
[Text1:6.1,6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 6.6, 6.8, 6.9, 6.10]

Suggested Learning Resources:

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Text Book
1. Aditya K Jagannatham, “Principles of Modern Wireless Communication systems, Theory and
Practice ”, Mc Graw Hill Education (India) Private Limited, 2017, ISBN 978-81- 265-4231-4.

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2. Arunabha Ghosh, Jun Zhang, Jeffrey G. Andrews, Rias Muhamed, “Fundamentals of LTE”,
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Pearson India Education Services Private Limited, 2018, ISBN: 978-93-530-6239-2.
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Reference Books
1. T L Singal, “Wireless Communications”, Mc Graw Hill Education (India) Private Limited, 2016,
ISBN:978-0-07-068178-1
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2. Theodore Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice, 2nd Edition, Prentice
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Hall Communications Engineering and Emerging Technologies Series, 2002, ISBN 0-13-042232-0.

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Wireless Communication

Multiple-Input Multiple-Output Wireless Communications

6.1 Introduction to MIMO Wireless Communications

➢ Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless communications employ multiple antennas at the
transmitter and the receiver.
➢ MIMO systems have multiple antennas, they can be employed to increase the reliability of the
signal through diversity combining. This leads to diversity gain and a net decrease in the bit-error
rate of the wireless communication system.

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➢ MIMO wireless systems is that they enable a several-fold increase in the data rate of the wireless
communication system by transmitting several information streams in parallel. This is termed

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spatial multiplexing.

6.2 MIMO System Model

➢ Consider a MIMO wireless system with t transmit antennas and r receive antennas. Such a MIMO
system is also termed an r × t system.
➢ Let x1, x2, . . . , xt denote the t symbols transmitted from the t transmit antennas in the MIMO
system, i.e., xi denotes the symbol transmitted from the ith transmit antenna 1 ≤ i ≤ t. These transmit
symbols can be stacked to form the t-dimensional vector, also termed the transmit vector,

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Wireless Communication

Corresponding to this transmission, let y1, y2, . . . , yt denote the r received symbols across the

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r receive antennas in the MIMO systems,

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➢ Let the complex coefficient hij represent the fading channel coefficient between the ith receive
antenna and the jth transmit antenna.
➢ Thus, there are a net of rt channel coefficients in this wireless scenario corresponding to all possible
combinations of the r receive antennas and t transmit antennas. These can be arranged in a

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Wireless Communication

matrix form as

where the r × t dimensional matrix H is termed the MIMO channel matrix.

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➢ Let the additive noise at the receive antenna i be denoted by ni, i.e., n1, n2, . . . , nr denote the
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➢ additive noise at the r receive antennas. Thus, the net MIMO input output system model can be
represented in vector form as
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➢ This is succinctly represented using matrix notation as

y = Hx + n
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the receive symbol y1 is given as

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➢ from which it can be seen that all the symbols x1, x2, . . . , xt interfere at y1 received at the

receive antenna 1. Similarly, the receive symbol y2 is given as

➢ This is, in general, true for all the receive antennas, i.e., at each receive antenna i, the receive
symbol yi is a linear of all the transmit symbols x1, x2, . . . , xt from the t transmit antennas,
observed in additive noise ni.
➢ Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO) For the special case of t = 1,
xsdcfvg

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Wireless Communication

xcfvgbh
xcvb

➢ Similarly, for the case of one receive antenna, i.e., r = 1 and multiple transmit antennas, it is termed
a Multiple-Input Single-Output (MISO) system model

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➢ Finally, for r = t = 1, i.e., a single receive and transmit antenna, it reduces to the single-input
single-output (SISO) system, modelled as
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y = hx + n
➢ The covariance matrix of the noise Rn of the noise vector n defined as
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Wireless Communication

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➢ The noise vector n with the covariance structure above is termed spatially uncorrelated additive

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noise, since the noise samples at the different antennas i, j are independent, i.e
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➢ To denote the transmission and reception across different time instants, one can add the time
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index k to the MIMO system model to frame the net model as

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➢ Thus, the vectors y (k), x (k), n (k) define the receive, transmit, and noise vectors of the
MIMO wireless communication system at the time instant k.
we have assumed the channel matrix H to be constant or, in other words, not dependent on the time
instant k. This is also termed a slow fading or quasi-static channel matrix, indicating that the channel
coefficients are constant over the block of MIMO vectors that are transmitted.
➢ assume that any two noise samples across two different time instants are uncorrelated,

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Wireless Communication

➢
where the delta function δ (k − l) = 1 if k = l and 0 otherwise.
➢ This noise process, which is uncorrelated across different antennas and time instants is termed
spatio-temporally uncorrelated noise.

6.3 MIMO Zero-Forcing (ZF) Receiver

➢ Now describe the process to recover the transmitted signal vector x from the received
vector y at the MIMO receiver. This can be considered as solving the system of linear

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equations,
y = Hx

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➢ Consider, where r = t, i.e., the number of receive antennas is equal to the number of transmit
antennas. xˆ of the transmit vector x is given as
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xˆ = H−1yˆ
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➢ However, frequently, one has more receive antennas than transmit antennas, i.e., r > t. In this
scenario, the system y = Hx is given as
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➢ The vector x which minimizes the estimation error f (xˆ),

f (x) = ||y – Hx||2
➢ The above error function is also termed the least-squares error function and the resulting estimator
is termed the least-squares estimator.

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Wireless Communication

➢ The above error function can be expanded as

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➢ we have used the relation

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This is due to the fact that yTHx is a scalar and, hence, is equal to its transpose.
➢ To find the minimum of the error function f (x) with respect to x, we have to set the derivative with
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respect to x equal to 0.
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Consider a multidimensional function g (x). The vector derivative of g (x) with respect
to x is defined as
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➢ which is basically a t-dimensional vector with the ith component equal to the derivative of f (x) with
respect to xi. Consider any vector c = [c1, c2, . . . , ct]T . Let the function g (x) be defined as

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Wireless Communication

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➢ the derivative for the error function f (x) can be simplified as

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➢ At the optimal estimate of the transmit vector xˆ where the above error is minimized, we must

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Wireless Communication

have the derivative equal to 0. Using this condition,

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➢ Finally, for the case of complex vectors/matrices x, y,H, the transpose in the above expression
can be replaced by the Hermitian operator to yield

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➢ The zero-forcing decoder can be expressed as
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6.3.1 Properties of the Zero-Forcing Receiver Matrix FZF

➢ where It denotes the identity matrix of dimension t. Thus, multiplying the matrix FZF with
the channel matrix indeed produces the identity matrix.
➢ For instance, if FZF to be the inverse of H, it must also satisfy the property that
HFZF = I. However, we have,

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➢ if r = t and the matrix H is invertible then the pseudo-inverse is actually equal to the inverse. This
can be seen as follows.
➢ Thus, for this particular case, the pseudo-inverse reduces to the matrix inverse and is unique.

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6.3.2 Principle of Orthogonality Interpretation of ZF Receiver
➢ we present an intuitive-reasoning-based approach to derive the zero-forcing decoder above.
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Consider once again the system of equations at the receiver for r > t.
➢ where yˆ is the approximation of y and we have to minimize ||y − yˆ|| 2. Observe that there are t
columns of the channel matrix H, which are h1, h2, . . . , ht.
➢ Hence, they represent a t-dimensional subspace. However, the vector y can lie anywhere in the
r-dimensional space, where approximation error e = y − yˆthe error is shown for different choices
of yˆ.
➢ Observe that the error vector e is orthogonal to hi if hHi e = 0. Therefore, since e is orthogonal to

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the subspace spanned by the columns of H, it follows that it is orthogonal to each of the columns

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of H
➢ Hence, we have

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from which it follows

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➢ We now employ the above principle of orthogonality to derive the expression for the zero-
forcing estimate xˆZF of the transmitted symbol vector x. This can be derived by substituting the
expression e = y − HxˆZF in the above result as

➢ which is exactly identical to the expression for the zero-forcing MIMO decoder derived earlier

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Wireless Communication

in Eq. (6.2). Thus, the principle of orthogonality can be conveniently employed to deduce
the expression for the optimal ZF MIMO decoder while also giving valuable insights into the

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decoding procedure.
Solution: It can be seen that the MIMO channel matrix above is of size 3 × 2, implying that

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the number of receive antennas is r = 3, while the number of transmit antennas is t = 2. Thus,
the MIMO system model can be described as
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Thus, as can be seen from the model above, the transmit vector x is of dimension 2 × 1, while
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the receive and noise vectors y, n respectively are of dimension 3 × 1. The above MIMO
system model can also be explicitly written to describe the signal received at each receive
antenna as
y1 = 2x1 + 3x2 + n1
y2 = x1 + 3x2 + n2
y3 = 4x1 + 2x2 + n3
which basically represents a system of r = 3 equations for t = 2 unknowns x1, x2. To compute
the zero-forcing decoder FZF , we first compute the matrix (HHH −1) HH. Observe that HHH can be
simplified as

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Wireless Communication

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Thus, the zero-forcing estimate of the transmit vector is given as

These expressions can now be explicitly written for the estimate of each of the transmit
symbols xˆ1, xˆ2 as
xˆ1 = −0.04y1 − 0.17y2 + 0.31y3
xˆ2 = +0.17y1 + 0.27y2 − 0.15y3
It can also be confirmed that the zero-forcing receiver matrix matrix FZF is of dimension
2 × 3, i.e., t × r. One of the chief disadvantages of the zero-forcing receivers is noise amplification.
This can be understood as follows. Consider the SISO wireless system for r = t = 1. We have the

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system model given as
y = hx + n

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Observe that if the fading coefficient h is close to zero then the factor n/h is very high. This is
termed noise amplification, which significantly distorts the performance of the receiver. The
MMSE receiver which is proposed next addresses this problem.

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