Analog joint source-channel coding over MIMO channels

Analog joint source-channel coding (JSCC) is a communication strategy that does not follow the separation principle of conventional digital systems but has been shown to approach the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff over additive white Gaussian noise channels. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of analog JSCC over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) fading channels. Since, due to complexity constraints, directly recovering the analog source information from the MIMO channel output is not possible, we propose the utilization of low-complexity two-stage receivers that separately perform detection and analog JSCC maximum likelihood decoding. We study analog JSCC MIMO receivers that utilize either linear minimummean square error or decision feedback MIMO detection. Computer experiments show the ability of the proposed analog JSCC receivers to approach the optimal distortion-cost tradeoff both in the low and high channel signal-to-noise ratio regimes. Performance is analyzed over both synthetically computer-generated Rayleigh fading channels and real indoor wireless measured channels.