Optimal Diversity-Multiplexing Tradeoff in Selective-Fading MIMO Channels

We establish the optimal diversity-multiplexing (DM) tradeoff of coherent time, frequency, and time-frequency selective-fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels and provide a code design criterion for DM tradeoff optimality. Our results are based on the new concept of the “Jensen channel” associated to a given selective-fading MIMO channel. While the original problem seems analytically intractable due to the mutual information between channel input and output being a sum of correlated random variables, the Jensen channel is equivalent to the original channel in the sense of the DM tradeoff and lends itself nicely to analytical treatment. We formulate a systematic procedure for designing DM tradeoff optimal codes for general selective-fading MIMO channels by demonstrating that the design problem can be separated into two simpler and independent problems: the design of an inner code, or precoder, adapted to the channel statistics (i.e., the selectivity characteristics) and an outer code independent of the channel statistics. Our results are supported by appealing geometric intuition, first pointed out for the flat-fading case by Zheng and Tse, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, 2003.