The knowledge of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is very important to enhance the spectral efficiency of MIMO links through adaptive communication strategies. In practice, only imperfect CSIT knowledge is usually available. Therefore, the main theme of this thesis is in the design of adaptive communication strategies with imperfect CSIT....[ Read more ]

The knowledge of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is very important to enhance the spectral efficiency of MIMO links through adaptive communication strategies. In practice, only imperfect CSIT knowledge is usually available. Therefore, the main theme of this thesis is in the design of adaptive communication strategies with imperfect CSIT.

In the first part of the thesis, we shall propose an integrated framework for the rate and precoder adaptation under limited feedback for slow and spatially correlated MIMO fading channels. To capture the effects of potential packet errors, we consider average system goodput, which measures the b/s/Hz successfully delivered to the receiver. The average system goodput is maximized subject to a total transmit power constraint and a target frame error rate (FER).

In the second part of the thesis, we shall propose a partial decode and forward (PDF) protocol and MIMO precoder designs at the source and relay nodes. The precoder designs are adapted based on statistical channel state information for correlated MIMO channels, and matched to practical minimum mean-square-error successive interference cancelation (MMSE-SIC) receivers at the relay and destination nodes.

In the third part of the thesis, we shall present an end-to-end MIMO simulation platform developed in Matlab. Leveraging on the simulation platform, it is able to rapidly evaluate the performances of different MIMO transmission techniques and thereby select the most cost-effective solutions, when developing a wireless communication system. Finally, the performances of different schemes are evaluated and compared.