Effect of Non-Linearity on the Performance of a MIMO Zero-Forcing Receiver with Channel Estimation Errors

— Non-linear amplitude distortion may be the key impairment in some practical multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) communications systems. However, there are only a few past investigations addressing its impact on the system performance. In this paper, we derive an approximate upper bound on the bit error rate for MIMO zero-forcing receivers with M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) in the presence of channel estimation error, which is valid for any order of non-linearity and arbitrary numbers of transmit and receive antennas. In the absence of channel estimation error, the results derived herein give a true BER upper bound. Comparison with Monte Carlo simulations suggest that the theoretical bound is accurate and useful for practical system design.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2007
• Where: ICC
• Authors: Edward K. S. Au, Wai Ho Mow
• Keywords: Channel Estimation Error, Communications, ICC 2007, Non-linear Amplitude Distortion, Upper Bound