MIMO transmit weights for equal-rate data streams and joint detection receivers

Transmit weight designs have been proposed when the MIMO transmitter has channel knowledge and each data stream has the same modulation and coding type. However these existing transmit weights are designed for linear MMSE or successive cancellation receivers. In this paper, a novel technique for designing the transmit weights for equal-data rate MIMO streams is proposed assuming that the receiver performs joint detection (i.e., maximum likelihood symbol estimation). These weights can be designed so that the maximum theoretical capacity is still achievable. Simulation results show a BER performance improvement over previous transmit weight strategies for equal-rate data streams.