Precoder Design for BICM-MIMO Systems Under Channel Estimation Error

If properly designed, the use of a linear precoder can achieve the maximum coding gain and diversity order in bit-interleaved coded modulation with multiple-input multiple-output systems. However, such maximum coding gain and diversity order are compromised under the practical scenario of having imperfect channel state information (CSI) at the receiver. To alleviate the impact of imperfect CSI on the coding gain and diversity order, joint linear precoder and training pattern are designed in this paper. The design is carried out by considering both the pairwise error probability and the mean square error of the channel estimator. The effectiveness of the proposed design is illustrated by comparing its performance with the performance obtained when only the training pattern is designed for an precoder optimized under the perfect CSI. In particular, simulation results show that a 1.5 dB gain is achieved by the proposed design.