Parallel Low-Complexity MIMO Detection Algorithm

using QR Decomposition and Alamouti

Space-Time Code

Maher Arar

December 16, 2009

Outline

Outline
• MIMO: definition, challenges and thesis main contribution
• MIMO capacity
• MIMO detection algorithms
• Proposed algorithm and simulation results
• Conclusion

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MIMO: Definition, Challenges and Thesis Main Contribution

Definition
• Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output, or MIMO, is the use of multiple antennas on
the TX and RX end of the wireless link to multiply data rates and/or to
improve reliability (using same power and same RF spectrum)
• Assumptions: Flat Rayleigh Independent Block Fading

Figure 1: 4x4 MIMO System Model

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MIMO: Definition, Challenges and Thesis Main Contribution

Challenges and Thesis Main Contribution

• RF:
– array size
– component count
– Power consumption
• Baseband:
– sub-1Gbps rates required by 4G and beyond-4G
– Power consumption
• Thesis main contribution: Propose a parallel low-complexity MIMO algorithm

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MIMO Capacity

Instantaneous, Ergodic and Outage MIMO Capacities

• r
ρ
y= Hs + n (1)
Nt
• Instantaneous open-loop (no feedback from RX to TX) capacity
  
 log2 det INr + ρ HH+ for Nr ≤ Nt
Nt
CH =   (2)
 log det IN + ρ H+ H for Nr > Nt ,
2 t Nt

• MIMO ergodic capacity C̄ = E {CH } (fast fading channels)

• MIMO outage capacity Pout (CH < Cx ) (block fading channels)

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MIMO Capacity

Figure 2: Ergodic capacity of i.i.d. MIMO channel for ρ = 15dB

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MIMO Capacity

Effect of Spatial Correlation

• Mainly caused by poor scattering, small angular spread, small spacing between
antenna elements
• Kronecker model:
1/2
H = Ψ1/2
r Hiid Ψt (3)

• Instantaneous capacity becomes:

h ρ i
+
CH ≈ log2 det Hiid Hiid + log2 det(Ψt ) + log2 det(Ψr ) (4)
N | {z }
=η(Ψt ,Ψr ) ≤0

• Spatial correlation reduces the achievable MIMO capacity

• Exponential correlation model

[Ψ]i,j = ψ |i−j| i, j ∈ {1, 2, ...., N } and ψ ∈ [0, 1) (5)

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MIMO Capacity

Effect of Spatial Correlation

Figure 3: Effect of correlation on a N × N MIMO capacity for ρ = 30 dB

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MIMO Detection Algorithms

MIMO Algorithms Classification

• Algorithms for maximizing spatial multiplexing gain Gm : Linear detectors (ZF
or MMSE), SIC detectors (ZF or MMSE), ML and ML-like detectors, etc
• Algorithms for maximizing diversity gain Gd (Space-Time codes): STTC,
STBC, OSTBC, etc
• Hybrid algorithms: QoSTBC, GSIC, GSTTC, etc.

Figure 4: 4x4 MIMO System Model

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MIMO Detection Algorithms: Spatial Multiplexing

Figure 5: BER comparison between various SM detection algorithms for a 4 × 4

MIMO channel with bandwidth efficiency of 8 bit/s/Hz

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MIMO Detection Algorithms: Alamouti Code

Figure 6: BER performance of 2 × Nr Alamouti STBC with 16QAM modulation

giving a total bandwidth efficiency of 4 bit/s/Hz

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MIMO Detection Algorithms

Summary

Algorithm Gmax
m Gmax
d Complexity
Alamouti 1 2N 0, O(N )
ZF N 1 O(N 3 ), O(N 2 )
MMSE N 1 O(N 3 ), O(N 2 )
ZF-VBLAST N 1 O(N 4 ), O(N 2 )
MMSE-VBLAST N 1 O(N4 ), O(N2 )
ML-like (SD) N ≈N O(N 3 ), ≥ O(N 4 )
ML N N 0, O(LN )

Table 1: Comparison between various N × N MIMO detection algorithms

• Problem definition: Find an algorithm that achieves better FER/capacity

performance than MMSE-VBLAST with same or reduced ’complexity’ keeping
in mind the need for efficient power consumption (parallel architecture)

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Proposed Architecture

Figure 7: Model of the proposed architecture

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

New Equation
• Using QR factorization any matrix H can be decomposed as H = QR where
Q is unitary, i.e. QQ+ = I and R is upper triangular
• Equation (1) can then be rewritten as
r
ρ
y= QRs + n (6)
Nt
• By multiplying the RX vector y from the left by Q+ we get the following
transformed vector
r
ρ
ỹ = Q+ y = Rs + ñ (7)
Nt
• Notice that all ñi still have unity variance, i.e. no noise amplification

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Model of Transformed MIMO System

 
r11 r12 . . . r1N
r  
ρ  0 r22 . . . r2N 
ỹ =  s + ñ (8)
 
N
 .. .. .. ..
 . . . . 

0 0 . . . rN N

Figure 8: Transformed 4 × 4 MIMO system with QR factorization

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Useful Relationships and Properties Related to R

• The magnitude square |rj,j |2 of the each diagonal entry rj,j is Chi-squared
distributed with 2(N − j + 1) degrees of freedom

P (|ri,j |2 < ε) ≈ εN −j+1 i=j (9)

P (|ri,j |2 < ε) ≈ ε i 6= j

•  
r(N −2q+1)(N −2q+1) r(N −2q+1)(N −2q+2)
Γq =   , q = 1, 2, ..., N (10)
0 r(N −2q+2)(N −2q+2) 2

ρ
• SNR of q th layer is N
||Γq ||2
• Diversity provided by Γq is equal to 4q.
• Outage performance is still dominated by diversity of first layer even in
absence of error propagation
• Ordering can improve performance

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Multiple-QR version
• Note that distinct QR decompositions can be obtained by permuting the
columns of R
N
• Maximum number of useful permutations is limited to Nqr = 2

• To maximize capacity and when the required Nqr < N2 choice of permutations
becomes important: optimum choice is based on average SNR

Nqr = /N = 4 6 8

1 (1, 2, 3, 4) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

2 (3, 4, 1, 2) (5, 6, 1, 2, 3, 4) (7, 8, 5, 6, 3, 4, 1, 2)

3 N/A (3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2) (5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4)

4 N/A N/A (3, 4, 1, 2, 7, 8, 5, 6)

Table 2: Optimum permutations

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Description of Multiple-QR version

Figure 9: Description of the proposed algorithm with multiple QR decompositions

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Simulation Results: Multiple-QR 8 x 8 i.i.d

Figure 10: FER of the various versions of the proposed algorithm for a 8 × 8 i.i.d
MIMO channel and a bandwidth efficiency of 16 bits/s/Hz

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Comparison to MMSE-VBLAST: 4 × 4 i.i.d

Figure 11: FER comparison between the multiple-QR version of our proposed al-
gorithm and that of MMSE-VBLAST for varying bandwidth efficiencies. 4 × 4 i.i.d
channel

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Comparison to MMSE-VBLAST: 8 × 8 i.i.d

Figure 12: FER comparison between the multiple-QR version of our proposed al-
gorithm and that of MMSE-VBLAST for varying bandwidth efficiencies. 8 × 8 i.i.d
channel

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Comparison to MMSE-VBLAST: 8 × 8 correlated

Figure 13: FER comparison between the multiple-QR version of our proposed al-
gorithm and that of MMSE-VBLAST for varying bandwidth efficiencies. 8 × 8
correlated channel. ψt = 0.7 and ψr = 0.2

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Comparison to Hybrid Algorithms: Group STTC

• All reviewed hybrid algorithms use matrix inversion (noise amplification)
• GSTTC is chosen because STTC provides SNR in addition to diversity gain
(best performance)
• STTC is used at TX in groups of two and heuristic power allocation. ML
decoding is employed at RX (HV1).
• Same as (HV1) with optimized power allocation at TX (HV2).
• HV1 uses 64-state trellis code while HV2 uses 16-state trellis code.

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Comparison to Hybrid Algorithms: 4 x 4 i.i.d

Figure 14: FER comparison between the multiple-QR version of our proposed algo-
rithm and that of HV1 and HV2 for the same bandwidth efficiency of 4 bit/s/Hz

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Comparison to Hybrid Algorithms: 8 x 8 i.i.d

Figure 15: FER comparison between the multiple-QR version of our proposed algo-
rithm and that of HV1 and HV2 for the same bandwidth efficiency of 8 bit/s/Hz

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Proposed Architecture and Associated Algorithms

Complexity Analysis
• Number of complex multiplications and additions
• CMULT=4 FLOPS, CADD=2 FLOPS
• LTE is chosen as a representative 4G standard

Algorithm N=4 N=6 N=8

MMSE-VBLAST 349184 1714176 5361664

SRAB 136192 435456 1003520

Proposed Algorithm 125104 504216 1389280

Table 3: Complexity comparison between MMSE-VBLAST, SRAB and the pro-

posed algorithm (with Nqr = N2 and two iterations) to process one RB when
Nsymb = 7

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 Conclusion and Suggested Future Work
• MIMO channel offers enormous capacity
• Practical algorithms do not attain MIMO capacity
• MMSE-VBLAST offers a compromise between performance and complexity
• Alamouti offers linear processing but limited to the use of two TX antennas
• Proposed an algorithm that combines low-complexity benefits of QR
decomposition and Alamouti coding/decoding
• Algorithm’s complexity is comparable to a reduced-complexity version of
MMSE-VBLAST with the added advantage of having a parallel architecture
and does not need knowledge of variance
• Suggested future work:
- Replace Alamouti by full-diversity full-rate codes such as Golden code
- Leave some symbols uncoded
- Investigate effects of LOS and mobility

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