MIMO Transmission Under Discrete Input Signal Constraints

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) transmission strategy that is closer to the Shannon limit than the existing strategies. Different from most existing strategies which only consider uniformly distributed discrete input signals, we present a unified framework to optimize the MIMO precoder and the discrete input signal distribution jointly. First, a general model of MIMO transmission under discrete input signals and its equivalent formulation are established. Next, in order to maximize the mutual information between the input and output signals, we provide an algorithm that jointly optimizes the precoder and the input distribution. Finally, we compare our strategy with other existing strategies in the simulation. Numerical results indicate that our strategy narrows the gap between the mutual information and Shannon limit, and shows a lower frame error rate in simulation.