Partial Channel State Info at Transmission for precoding
A Zaidi azaidi2@buffalo.edu Research scientist State University of New York
Abstract— MIMO wireless systems have been studied over the
past few years due to the promise of increased capacity and reli-
ability. Additional performance gains are possible when channel
state information is available at the transmitter (CSI-T). In this
work, we consider the case of partial CSI-T (channel transmit
covariance) and revisit precoder design for high rate space time
codes which do not have a unique minimum error matrix. Using a
set of minimum error matrices combined with traditional MIMO
precoder design results in improved performance over that of
previous design techniques based a single minimum error matrix.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Multiple antenna systems have received a significant amount
of interest by the research community in recent years. This
is mainly due to the promise of increased channel capacity,
reliability, and range of these multiple-input multiple-output
(MIMO) systems. Additionally, channel state information at
the transmitter (CSI-T) plays an important role in enhancing
these performance gains. When available, CSI-T can lead to
significant performance improvements. Full channel knowl-
edge has been shown to increase capacity and simplify imple-
nentation by decomposing the MIMO channel into effective
parallel channels [1], [2].
Unfortunately, full knowledge of the channel is not always
available to the transmitter in practical MIMO wireless sys-
tems. This is because the channel is changing and it takes time
to get an estimate to the transmitter. By the time the estimate
is available at the transmitter, it is old and no longer exactly
describes the channel. The faster the channel is changing,
which occurs with increasing Doppler spread, the quicker the
estimate of the channel expires.
Precoding for the case of partial CSI-T has taken several
different directions. This is because of different models for
channel estimation uncertainty and different design optimiza-
tion objectives. In the case of channel uncertainty, models
describing statistical channel transmit covariance, statistical
channel mean, and a combination of these two parameters have
been proposed [3]–[6]. In the case of precoder design, several
different objectives have been considered. These include error
probability Pe minimization [4]–[6], ergodic capacity maxi-
mization [3], [7], received signal mean squared error (MSE)
minimization [8], and outage probability minimization [9].
Finally, much of the precoder design work has focused on
design of linear precoders, but nonlinear precoders exist as
well, such as dirty paper coding [10]. Dirty paper coding
has been used extensively in multi-user channels, such as for
the rate region of the broadcast channel [11]. Unfortunately,
these nonlinear techniques typically do not perform well in
the presence of channel estimation error.
In this work, we consider precoder design to minimize
the detection error probability Pe for high rate space time
codes. High rate space time codes, specifically codes with
spatial rate greater than one, such as horizontal encoding [2],
[12] and the rotation code [13] for two transmit antennas,
cannot be described by a single error matrix. Instead, a set of
error matrices is required to describe the code. By revisiting
the precoder design of [6] and augmenting the optimization
with the additional error matrices, we design precoders with
superior performance to that of precoders using only a single
error matrix.
II. S YSTEM S ETUP
This work assumes a MIMO frequency-flat quasi-static
block fading channel, constant for N symbol periods, with
Mt transmit antennas and Mr receive antennas described by
y = Hx + n. (1)
Here, x ∈ C Mt is the input vector, y ∈ C Mr is the output vec-
tor, and n ∈ C Mr is an additive zero mean circularly symmetric
complex Gaussian noise vector distributed as CN (0, σn2 I). The
channel H ∈ C Mr ×Mt is generated according to
1
H = Hw Rt2 , (2)
where each element of Hw is generated as an i.i.d. circularly
symmetric complex Gaussian random variable CN (0, 1). CSI
is assumed to be known perfectly at the receiver, but the
transmitter is informed of only Rt . The system SNR is defined
as
Es
ρ= 2, (3)
σn
where Trace(Rxx ) = Es and Rxx = E(xx∗ ) is the transmit
covariance matrix. We consider linear precoders as shown in
Fig. 1, such that the transmitted symbol x is a linear function
of the columns c of the transmitted codeword C = [c1 c2 ...cN ], antennas. This code is described by the following space time
with C ∈ C Mt ×N . matrix
· ¸
x = Fc (4) x11 x12
C= , (10)
x21 x22
Here, F ∈ C Mt ×Mt is the linear precoding matrix.

III. P RECODER D ESIGN where

· ¸ · ¸· ¸
A. PEP Optimization x11 cos(θ1 ) − sin(θ1 ) s11
= , (11)
Following the steps of [6], we seek to minimize the pairwise x22 sin(θ1 ) cos(θ1 ) s22
error probability between two distinct codewords C and Ĉ.
· ¸ · ¸· ¸
Assuming ML detection, the pairwise error probability (PEP) x21 cos(θ2 ) − sin(θ2 ) s21
is given by = , (12)
x12 sin(θ2 ) cos(θ2 ) s12
à !
kHF (C − Ĉ)k2F
P (C → Ĉ) = Q (5) θ1 = tan−1 ( 21 ) θ2 = tan−1 (2), (13)
2σn2
and can be tightly upper bounded by using the Chernoff bound. and each sij is selected from a QAM constellation. This code
à ! has the following two minimum error product matrices
||HF (C − Ĉ||2F
P (C → Ĉ) ≤ exp − (6) · ¸
4σn2 0.0528 0
A1 = ∆ (14)
0 0.9471
Denoting the error product matrix A = E1s (C − Ĉ)(C − Ĉ)∗ ,
we can reformulate the Chernoff bound as follows as well as
³ ρ ´ · ¸
0.9471 0
P (C → Ĉ) ≤ exp − Tr(HF AF ∗ H ∗ ) . (7) A2 = ∆ (15)
4 0 0.0528
For codes that can be characterized by a single minimum error
product matrix, the following optimization was formulated where ∆ is the minimum distance of the QAM used in the
in [6] based on the Chernoff bound. code. Notice that both matrices are required to characterize
the minimum distance of the code since neither matrix can be
minF − log det(W ) considered smaller than the other.
s.t. W = ρ4 Rt F AF ∗ Rt + Rt (8) Next, consider the case of horizontally encoded spatial mul-
Tr(F F ∗) = 1 tiplexing for two transmit antennas described by the following
This can be recast as the following by alligning the eigenvec- space time matrix
· ¸
tors of Rt and A with the singular vectors of F s1
C= (16)
mindiag(Λ(F ))− log det(W ) s2
s.t. W = ρ4 λ(Rt )Λ(F )λ(A)Λ(F ∗ )λ(Rt ) + λ(Rt )
where each si is selected from a QAM constellation. In this
Tr(Λ(F )Λ(F )∗ ) = 1
(9) case, the two minimum error product matrices are given as
where A = UA λ(A)UA∗ is the eigendecomposition of A, · ¸ · ¸
∗ 1 0 0 0
Rt = URt λ(Rt )URt is the eigendecomposition of Rt , and A 1 = ∆ and A 2 = ∆. (17)
0 0 0 1
F = URt Λ(F )UA is the singular value decomposition of F .

B. Precoding for High Rate Space Time Codes
The optimization in Eq. (9) considers a single error prod-
uct matrix A. Space time codes with spatial rate less than
one (which are then limited to multiplexing gain less than
one [14]) can be characterized by a single error matrix, such
as OSTBC’s. High rate space time codes, with spatial rate
and multiplexing gain greater than one, cannot be described
with a single error product matrix. This is due to the effective
parallel channels exploited by the code in order to achieve
multiplexing gain greater than one.
We consider two high rate space time codes, the rotation
code and horizontally encoded spatial multiplexing. First,
consider the case of the rotation code [13], that has been shown
to be diversity-multiplexing [14] optimal for two transmit
Again, notice that both matrices are required to characterize
the minimum distance of the code. This is because neither
matrix can be considered to be smaller than the other.
In order to account for the two error product matrices,
we propose the following optimization for precoder design
which minimizes the maximum error probability due to the
two minimum error matrices:
mindiag(Λ(F )) max(− log det(W1 ), − log det(W2 ))
s.t. W1 = ρ4 λ(Rt )Λ(F )λ(A1 )Λ(F ∗ )λ(Rt ) + λ(Rt )
W2 = ρ4 λ(Rt )Λ(F )λ(A2 )Λ(F ∗ )λ(Rt ) + λ(Rt )
Tr(Λ(F )Λ(F )∗ ) = 1
(18)
Notice that this optimization is convex whenever (9) is convex,
as the max of two convex functions remains convex.
 n
Input Symbol
Symbols c x y ML Estimates
STBC F H
Detection

Fig. 1. Space Time Coded System with a Linear Precoder.

IV. S IMULATION R ESULTS
In this section, we compare the simulated performance of
precoders for high rate space time codes. In each of the
following simulations, we consider a quasi-static frequency-
flat block fading channel with two transmit and two receive
antennas (2x2) and with correlation
· ¸
1 0
Rt = , (19)
0 0.051
and consisting of a block size of 48 bits (6 symbol pe-
riods) with QPSK modulation. Simulation results for the
rotation code are shown in Fig. 3. Here, we see that the
proposed optimization has superior performance to alterna-
tive schemes including no precoding, beamforming on the
strongest eigenmode of Rt , optimizing using A = ∆I, or
using either A1 or A2 in a single error product matrix
optimization. Notice, though, that performance close to that
of the proposed technique can be achieved by performing
separate optimizations for A1 and A2 and selecting the best
power allocation. Simulation results for horizontally encoded
spatial multiplexing are shown in Fig. 3. Again notice that the
proposed technique is superior to no precoding, beamforming
on the strongest eigenmode of Rt , optimizing using A = ∆I,
or using either A1 or A2 in a single error product matrix
optimization.
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V. C ONCLUSIONS
Transmit precoder design for high rate space time codes
requires optimization over the set of minimum product error
matrices, as high rate codes can not be described by only one
error matrix. By formulating a new optimization that optimizes
the performance of the worst case of these two error product
matrices yields superior performance to techniques using only
a single error product matrix.

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 2x2 Rotation Code 48 Bits
0
10

−1
10
Probability of Error

−2
10

No Precoder
−3
10 Beamforming
Precode Optimization A= ∆ I
Precode Optimization A=A1
Precode Optimization A=A2
Proposed Optimization A={A ,A }
1 2
−4
10
0 5 10 15 20 25
SNR (dB)

Fig. 2. Precoding for the Rotation Code.

2x2 Horizontal Encoding Code 48 Bits
0
10

−1
10
Probability of Error

−2
10

No Precoder
−3
10 Beamforming
Precode Optimization A= ∆ I
Precode Optimization A=A1
Precode Optimization A=A2
Proposed Optimization A={A1,A2}
−4
10
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
SNR (dB)

Fig. 3. Precoding for Horizontally Encoded Spatial Multiplexing